Reimagining Legislative Representation in Indonesia: Integrating Regional Interests within Constitutional Checks and Balances

The Regional Representative Council (DPD), established after Indonesia's third constitutional amendment, was designed with dual missions: providing checks and balances against the House of Representatives (DPR) and channeling regional aspirations into central government policies. However, the DPD's limited authority has compromised its effectiveness in fulfilling these missions. This study examines whether the DPD's current regulatory framework reflects balanced power relations and effective checks and balances while representing regional interests in central government policies. It also explores potential restructuring of DPD-DPR authority to achieve these objectives. Using juridical-normative methodology, this research reveals that Indonesia's post-amendment representative system reflects asymmetric weak bicameralism, failing to achieve balanced DPD-DPR power relations or effective checks and balances. This weakness consequently undermines regional interest representation in central policy-making. The study proposes asymmetric strong bicameralism as a solution for achieving balanced power relations while ensuring regional representation. This reconstruction necessitates amending Law Number 17 of 2014 to strengthen the DPD's position as a regional representative institution.