When Electoral Lawmakers Choose Silence
In a democracy, public attention usually focuses on laws made by the state. Political debates, constitutional challenges, and criticism from civil society generally centre on the content of a regulation. Yet threats to democracy do not always arise from laws that are made; they can also emerge when laws that should be made are never made at all. This is what Titi Anggraini demonstrates in her book ‘Legislative Inaction in Electoral Law: Causes, Impacts and Institutional Solutions’.
In other words, in a democracy, not making law can be an exercise of power just as significant as making it. The idea may sound simple, but its implications are profound. Legislative power has hitherto mostly been understood through the legal products it generates, whereas the decision not to amend a law, not to follow up on policy evaluations, or not to respond to the need for legal renewal is also a political choice with real consequences for democratic life.
The book shows how this phenomenon has occurred in the context of Indonesian electoral law. Stemming from fundamental problems identified during the evaluation of the 2019 simultaneous elections, including the workload of election organisers, the determination of the number and size of electoral districts, and the need to refine the design of simultaneous elections, hopes arose that the Election Law would be revised before the 2024 elections. Instead, the opposite happened: the Election Law bill was removed from the national legislation programme, so the anticipated legal renewal never materialised.
One of the book’s main strengths lies in its combination of analytical depth and practical experience. Titi Anggraini is not an academic observing elections from an ivory tower, but someone who has devoted more than two and a half decades of her life to electoral affairs.
The book’s strength also lies in the perspective it offers. Studies of electoral law in Indonesia have tended to focus on the electoral system, nomination thresholds, election organisers, or election dispute resolution. Titi directs attention to a relatively rarely discussed issue: the consequences of legislators’ inaction. By placing legislative inaction at the centre of analysis, the book invites readers to see that the quality of democracy is determined not only by the laws made, but also by the laws that fail to be made or are never made at all.
Importantly, the book does not stop at the question of what happened, but also seeks to explain why it happened. The author employs public choice theory as an analytical lens, viewing lawmakers not merely as constitutional actors but also as political actors with interests, incentives and electoral calculations.
From that perspective, legislative inaction is not always born of incapacity or negligence. Under certain conditions, inaction can be a political choice considered more advantageous than undertaking reforms that could alter the existing balance of interests.
Through this blend of empirical experience, theoretical approach and institutional analysis, the discussion of legislative inaction feels vivid. Readers are invited not merely to understand a concept, but to see how legislative inaction can concretely affect electoral governance. In this perspective, the silence of lawmakers is not the absence of action, but a political act in itself.
While identifying the problem, the author also offers a way out. In her view, one fundamental problem in Indonesian electoral law is the absence of an institution specifically tasked with safeguarding the continuity of electoral law reform. As a result, reform agendas often rise and fall with political dynamics and the short-term interests of lawmakers.
It is this void that, according to the book, often pushes the Constitutional Court to play an increasingly large role in the development of electoral law, even though the Court is essentially designed to test the constitutionality of laws, not to serve as the main engine of legislative reform. Consequently, changes to electoral law often occur reactively through court rulings after problems emerge, rather than through well-planned processes of evaluation and renewal.
Hence the idea of establishing an electoral law commission. Such a body is envisioned not as a replacement for the government and the House of Representatives as lawmakers, but as a guardian of the continuity of electoral law reform, ensuring that the evaluation, renewal and refinement of electoral regulations do not stall simply because of shifting political priorities among lawmakers.
The idea is not entirely novel. Several countries, such as Canada, the United Kingdom, New Zealand and South Africa, have institutional mechanisms that allow periodic evaluation of the electoral system, the arrangement of electoral districts and proportionality, election funding, and the provision of other electoral law reform recommendations by experts.
In that context, Titi’s proposal for an electoral law commission can be understood as an effort to introduce a similar mechanism adapted to Indonesia’s needs and constitutional framework.
One point worth underlining is that the idea is supported not only by policy arguments but also by constitutional foundations. The author cites Article 22E of the 1945 Constitution and Constitutional Court Decision No 11/PUU-VIII/2010, which open space for developing institutions that support the electoral system.
Through that ruling, the Court affirmed that the institutional design of election organisers does not stop at the General Election Commission (KPU) alone, but may evolve according to the need to strengthen the quality of democracy and election administration. The more important question, however, is no longer whether constitutional space for such an institution exists, but whether the need for it is becoming more urgent. According to the book, the answer is yes.
The idea of an electoral law commission feels even more relevant after the Constitutional Court ruled to separate national and regional elections through Decision 135/PUU-XXII/2024. Major changes in the electoral design will require substantial regulatory adjustments, including rules of the game that are inevitably entangled with the stratagems of their drafters.
Amid these challenges, the book reminds us that democracy requires not only free and fair elections, but also the ability to continually improve its rules of the game. Without a mechanism to safeguard continuous legal renewal, the same problems risk recurring from one election to the next.
The need for electoral law renewal has in fact been repeatedly flagged by the Constitutional Court in several rulings, including 55/PUU-XVII/2019, 116/XXI/2023, 62/PUU-XXII/2024 and 135/PUU-XXII/2024. Broadly, in these rulings the Court has consistently provided guidance to lawmakers in designing the future electoral system, with two recurring reminders: lawmakers must carefully account for all the technical implications of their legal choices, and those legal choices must not be changed too frequently so as to create certainty in election administration.
Of course, the proposal for an electoral law commission is not without challenges. Questions about effectiveness, potential overlaps of authority, and the possibility of a new state institution adding complexity to electoral governance will remain subjects of debate.
Regardless of whether one agrees with the proposed solution, the book succeeds in shifting the debate from mere electoral design issues to a more fundamental question: how to ensure that electoral law reform takes place continuously.
Therefore, the issue is not simply whether electoral laws are amended or not. The issue is what happens when the need for legal renewal is left idle in the face of ever-moving political interests. The book reminds us that democracy is shaped not only by the laws that are made, but also by the laws that are never made. At that point, legislative inaction is no longer merely the absence of action, but a matter of the accountability of power whose consequences are felt by all citizens.