Pranoto Iskandar (McGill University – Centre for Human Rights and Legal Pluralism; The Institute for Migrant Rights; Tarumanagara University; University of Khorfakkan; Universitas Islam Indonesia) has posted National Ideology in International Law: The Indonesian Case on SSRN. Here is the abstract:
In this paper, we attempt to show that the implicit, underlying, lived spirit of a received or domesticated form of international law is national ideology. There is nothing new about this assertion, obviously. But what makes this paper could be worth of another act of ink-spilling is related to its contextualization. That is, it takes the Indonesian context as a non-Western legal tradition to give empirical flesh to its argumentative bone. In addition, we also argue that the notion of national ideology as an analytical framework needs to be broadly understood as a way of explaining ideas that were deemed irrational and unreasonable. Through this broad conception of ideology, we unveil that national ideology is more than just a political instrument, it is deeply entrenched in the nation’s psyche. That said, this constitutes this is the unconscious force that maintains pattern to the domestic exceptionalism, cognitive source to resist change. In effect, we show that international law does not necessarily lead to, if any, meaningful changes.
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