Legal Authority in an Extralegal Setting: The Case of Land Rights in Jakarta, Indonesia

Abstract

Although popular settlements in the cities of developing countries exist wholly or partially outside of the legal framework of the state, they must nonetheless follow some sort of rule of law. In the case of quasi-legal or informal land ownership claims, the sale and transfer of land rights must be guaranteed in order for a land market to exist. To fully understand this "rule of law outside the law," it is important to inquire as to the source of legal authority in what is essentially an extralegal situation. An examination of the literature on the subject shows that, in the case of urban residential land markets, three types of extralegal authority may be discerned in practice. This paper examines the case of land regulation in Jakarta, Indonesia, in terms of these models and stresses the value of this type of analysis in the setting of policies for land regularization.