COMMERCIALISING PUBLIC OFFICE IN INDONESIA: Patronage, Evidentiary Gaps, Trading in Influence, and A Maqāṣid-Oriented Islamic Legal Response

Abstract

The commercialisation of public office—commonly described in Indonesia as jual-beli jabatan—converts bureaucratic appointment, promotion, and transfer into exchangeable political-economic assets. This article develops an interdisciplinary socio-legal account of the practice by integrating anti-corruption law, public-administration scholarship, political patronage, evidentiary doctrine, and Islamic criminal jurisprudence. It argues that office-selling is not adequately understood as an episodic bribery offence. Rather, it is a governance mechanism through which electoral costs, patron-client networks, discretionary personnel authority, and rent extraction become mutually reinforcing. The analysis revisits prominent Indonesian cases at ministerial and local-government levels and identifies three recurrent enforcement problems: symbiotic secrecy between giver and recipient, reliance on intermediaries and informal payments, and the incomplete domestication of the United Nations Convention against Corruption concept of trading in influence. It then reads Qurʾān 4:58 and 2:188 through a maqāṣid-oriented framework, particularly the ideas of public trust, justice, protection of wealth, and institutional welfare. The article concludes that a credible response requires simultaneous criminal-law reform, independent merit-system oversight, digital traceability of senior appointments, stronger whistle-blower protection, and a public-ethics framework that treats appointment power as a fiduciary trust rather than a distributable political reward.