Protective repression, international pressure, and institutional design: Explaining labor reform in Indonesia

Scholars of comparative politics studying labor reform in developing countries have highlighted variables such as the power of the labor movement, the ordering of reforms, partisan links, and the strength of employer organizations to explain different labor reform outcomes. These variables, however, cannot explain labor’s success in Indonesia, where labor reforms both strengthened labor’s collective rights and defended against flexibilization. Through an analysis of the process of labor reform in Indonesia, this article stresses the impact of the institutional legacies of authoritarianism and the role of two variables overlooked or underemphasized in current studies—international pressure and institutional design.