From Rights to Oversight: Coalition Competition and Institutional Design in UU PDP No. 27/2022

Abstract

Background: This article analyzes why Indonesia’s Personal Data Protection Law (UU PDP) produced a state-biased institutional design for its supervisory authority, despite rhetorically adopting a GDPR-style rights framework.

Objective: This study explains how coalition competition and institutional mechanisms produced this outcome.

Methods: Drawing on qualitative methods and primary data from the Working Committee meeting minutes of Commission I of the DPR RI, this article integrates the Advocacy Coalition Framework (ACF), selected because it captures how competing belief systems shape institutional outcomes, and complements it with three variants of new institutionalism as explanatory layers.

Results: The findings show that competition between a governmental-centralized coalition favoring ministry-based oversight and a semi-independent coalition favoring institutional distance from the ministry under presidential accountability produced an asymmetric compromise: a partial victory for the latter through separation from Kominfo, but persistent governmental dominance in the exemption dimension, explained by path dependency, the government’s veto position, and mimetic isomorphism.

Conclusion: The article argues that meaningful data protection reform demands coalition reconfiguration, not statutory revision alone, particularly as Indonesia’s data protection authority is being formed. Theoretically, it refines the ACF by showing that stable compromise emerges when coalitions share a commitment to executive control and that the absence of a coalition option is as informative as coalition competition itself.