Legal Literacy - Every time the drums of the democratic party are beaten, our public space is filled with a sacred mantra called "neutrality." Circulars are issued massively, integrity pacts are signed, and alert roll calls are held from Sabang to Merauke. However, behind the grand legal ceremonial, reality works with its own logic. In the corridors of government offices, the fate of bureaucrats' careers is often not determined by public service performance, but by the agility to read the direction of the wind of power. This phenomenon is no longer a secret, but a reflection of the distortion of institutionalized legal design. This paper does not merely criticize the failure of practice, but proposes a theoretical proposition that the neutrality of state apparatus today has mutated into a political legal fiction, a juridical construction that is consciously designed not to create impartiality, but to cover up the power relations that grip the bureaucracy.

Distortion of Legal Design and Conceptual Confusion of ASN Neutrality

We are often lulled into the assumption that if the rules are written, the problem is solved. In fact, our positive law tries to build a dividing wall between administration and politics, but structurally hands over the key to politicians. In the framework of institutional theory, this condition is a concrete manifestation of bureaucratic capture. In…