Absorptive Backsliding: Coalitional Erosion and Constitutional Resilience in Indonesia, Hungary, and Poland

Abstract

Comparative scholarship on democratic backsliding has been built largely on two Central European paths: in Hungary a governing party with a two-thirds majority rewrote the constitution, while in Poland a governing party without that majority bypassed it through ordinary statutes. Both accounts assume that supermajority amendment rules and shared appointment powers protect democracy because they hand a veto to an opposition. Indonesia does not fit either path. Since 2014 successive presidents have built governing coalitions that absorb rather than defeat their rivals, reaching roughly four-fifths of the House of Representatives after 2024. Employing a functional comparative method, the article examines the constitutional texts, the principal decisions of the constitutional courts, statutes on courts, elections, and the armed forces, and Venice Commission opinions from 2010 to 2026. It finds that under absorption the text of the constitution is left intact while its protective rules are hollowed out: thresholds count seats rather than contestation, split appointment turns into a power of recall, and the Constitutional Court becomes both an instrument of erosion and the last site of resistance. The Hungarian restoration after 2026 and the stalled Polish restoration after 2023 show that repair inherits the design flaws that enabled the damage. The article proposes a third category, absorptive backsliding, and argues that resilient design in coalitional presidential systems should rely on time rather than numbers: guarantees that operate across elections, that freeze electoral rules before a vote, and that apply changes to judicial tenure only to future appointees.