Security sector reform and the TNI-Polri rivalry in post-Reformasi Indonesia

• Main Author: Pratama, Januar Aditya
• Other Authors: -
• Format: Thesis-Master by Coursework
• Language: English
• Published: Nanyang Technological University 2025
• Subjects: Social Sciences
• Online Access: https://hdl.handle.net/10356/182933
• Institution: Nanyang Technological University

While the security sector reform (SSR) in Indonesia has been left an ‘unfinished business,’ the study on it has remained underdeveloped. One understudied issue that stems from it is the rivalry between the Indonesian military (TNI) and police (Polri) which took place in multiple sectors: the security, budgetary and economic, and political sectors. Hence, this study aims to unravel how the SSR process post Reformasi contributed to the TNI Polri rivalry, borrowing concepts from the study of civil military relations such as civilian control and transactionalism. Employing a qualitative method, both primary and secondary data are sourced to re examine the existing literature in the discourse. This study found that several factors are limiting the civilian prowess in reforming the two institutions, namely (1) the legal and structural nature of the military reform, (2) the condition of civil governance decentralisation, (3) the foreign support during the War on Terror, and (4) the lack of an external existential threat perception. Most importantly, the aforementioned factors exacerbated the most critical aspect of the reform: the lack of doctrinal reform within the military. In the end , this study argues against the existing literature that mostly focuses on the legal and political nature of SSR in Indonesia.