Reconstructing Legal Politics and Law Enforcement In Indonesia’s Maritime Zones to Overcome Fragmented Authority and Strengthen Inter-Agency Synergy

Abstract

As an archipelagic state, Indonesia enforces the law in its maritime zones through multiple agencies: the Navy, the Maritime Security Agency (Bakamla), the Water and Air Police, the Sea and Coast Guard Unit, the Directorate General of Marine and Fisheries Resources Surveillance, and the Directorate General of Customs and Excise. Each agency acts under its own sectoral statute, with no definitive norm linking their powers. The result is overlapping authority, duplicated patrols, and legal uncertainty, as shown in the MT Arman 114 case, where a final criminal judgment conflicted with a civil ruling on the same evidence. This study examines three questions: (1) the forms and characteristics of fragmented authority in Indonesia’s maritime law enforcement system; (2) why national legal politics has failed to achieve institutional integration that guarantees legal certainty; and (3) the ideal regulatory reform for an integrated maritime law enforcement system. This is normative legal research supported by empirical data from interviews with maritime law enforcement agencies. It employs statutory, conceptual, and case approaches. The analysis is qualitative, using the theory of legal politics as the general theory, Lawrence M. Friedman’s legal system theory as the bridging theory, and the theory of legal certainty as the applied theory. The findings are threefold. First, fragmentation of authority takes three mutually reinforcing forms: institutional, sectoral-regulatory, and spatial across maritime zones. All three are marked by decentralised authority without centralised coordination, hyper-regulation without harmonisation, and structural inefficiency in budgets and resources. Second, the root cause is an accommodative, status-quo legal politics that accommodates sectoral interests without ever setting a binding direction for integration, reinforced by path dependence in maritime governance. Each new policy merely adds a layer of administrative coordination on top of existing institutions. Third, the study proposes a seven-level reconstruction of legal politics: philosophical, constitutional, legal-political, regulatory, institutional, authority, and operational coordination. It rests on a shift towards transformative-integrative legal politics, the enactment of a statute on law enforcement in maritime zones, the strengthening of Bakamla into a statute-based agency with executive coordinating powers, and a definitive authority matrix based on the principle of “one violation, one lead authority”. At the operational level, the reconstruction is carried out through five synergy models: integrated patrols, integrated investigations, integrated information systems, shared understanding and coordination, and joint inter-agency operations. These are synthesised into an integrated four-pillar model of clear division of authority, institutional integration, data integration, and institutional synergy, aimed at restoring legal certainty in Indonesia’s maritime zones.