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Abstract

Indonesia’s post-Reform constitutional architecture creates a persistent classificatory problem for the People’s Consultative Assembly (Majelis Permusyawaratan Rakyat, MPR). The MPR is constitutionally constituted, continuously organized, and supported as a permanent state institution, yet several of its most consequential powers are exercised only when a specified constitutional event occurs. This article develops the concept of intermittent constitutional authority to explain that configuration. It asks how the MPR’s institutional identity should be understood after the 1999-2002 amendments and how its authority can be reconstructed without reviving pre-Reform parliamentary supremacy. Using doctrinal legal research, the article combines constitutional, statutory, jurisprudential, historical, conceptual, and comparative approaches, with functional comparisons to France, Germany, the United States, South Africa, and India. The analysis finds that institutional permanence and operational frequency are analytically distinct: an authority may remain continuously vested while its exercise is episodic, contingent, and non-routine. The MPR therefore cannot be reduced either to a weak residual chamber or to a mere joint sitting of the DPR and DPD. Its defining role is a form of high-intensity, trigger-based constitutional stewardship involving amendment, presidential succession, inauguration, and removal. The article proposes a reconstruction based on trigger discipline, procedural readiness, agenda exclusivity, non-encroachment on ordinary government, and transparent activation protocols. This preserves the MPR as a permanent constitutional institution while confining its exceptional authority to constitutionally specified moments.

Keywords

People’s Consultative Assembly intermittent constitutional authority constitutional identity constitutional amendment institutional design

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Arifin, F., Fernando, Z. J., & Pratama, M. A. (2026). PERMANENT INSTITUTION, INTERMITTENT CONSTITUTIONAL AUTHORITY: RECONSTRUCTING THE INSTITUTIONAL IDENTITY OF INDONESIA’S PEOPLE’S CONSULTATIVE ASSEMBLY. Journal of Constitutional Law Society, 5(2), 398–430. https://doi.org/10.36448/jcls.v5i2.175
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