STRENGTHENING BAPEMPERDA'S INSTITUTIONAL ROLE IN REGIONAL LAW-MAKING: A SOCIO-LEGAL STUDY OF RESPONSIVE AND EQUITABLE LOCAL GOVERNANCE IN INDONESIA

ABSTRACT

The formation of regional regulations constitutes a strategic element of decentralized governance in Indonesia and functions as a legal instrument for realizing responsive and equitable local governance. Within this framework, the Regional Regulation Formation Body (Badan Pembentukan Peraturan Daerah—BAPEMPERDA) plays an important institutional role in planning, coordinating, and supporting regional legislative processes. Nevertheless, despite the existence of an established legal framework governing regional legislation, regional law-making continues to face challenges related to procedural formalism, limited legislative analysis, insufficient public participation, and the absence of institutional mechanisms ensuring substantive legislative quality. These conditions indicate that BAPEMPERDA’s institutional role has not yet been fully optimized to support the formation of responsive and equitable regional regulations. This study therefore aims to analyze the institutional position of BAPEMPERDA and formulate a normative model for strengthening its role in regional regulation formation. This study employs normative legal research using both a statutory approach and a conceptual approach. Primary legal materials consist of legislation governing regional government and legislative formation, while secondary legal materials include legal doctrines, scholarly literature, and academic publications related to responsive law and legislative governance. Legal materials were collected through library research and analyzed qualitatively using deductive legal reasoning. The findings demonstrate that the existing legal framework remains predominantly procedural and provides limited institutional support for legislative evaluation and quality control. Accordingly, this study proposes a Normative Institutional Strengthening Model consisting of legislative planning, legal and policy analysis, regulatory impact assessment, participatory legislative governance, equity-based legislative review, and post-legislative scrutiny. The study concludes that strengthening BAPEMPERDA should be understood as a normative transformation of regional legislative governance aimed at enhancing legal certainty, responsiveness, accountability, and equitable regulatory outcomes.