Functional Differentiation or Institutional Fragmentation? A Policy Analysis of the Establishment of Universitas Republik Indonesia

Abstract

The inauguration of Universitas Republik Indonesia’s (URI) Governor and Vice-Governor by President Prabowo Subianto on 22 July 2026, under Presidential Decree Number 80/P of 2026, triggered a polarized public debate: the government frames the policy as functional differentiation strengthening national leadership development, while Commission X of the House of Representatives (DPR RI) and several legal scholars describe it as a procedurally flawed instance of institutional fragmentation. This study asks (1) how URI’s establishment can be mapped through William Dunn’s public-policy cycle, (2) whether the fragmentation criticism is structural-permanent or procedural-temporary, and (3) how institutional-differentiation theory and the critical-education perspectives of Paulo Freire and Ivan Illich can inform its evaluation. Using a qualitative, document-based policy analysis of a corpus of 34 official, legislative, media, and scholarly sources collected between 22 July and 18 August 2026, the study finds that URI’s agenda-setting stage was strong and centralized, whereas the formulation and legitimation stages show a documented procedural gap: no establishment regulation of equivalent force to Ministry of Education and Culture Regulations 17/2014 or 7/2020 was located within the corpus, and Commission X reports it had not been substantively consulted. The fragmentation criticism is accordingly read as an apparent, correctable procedural gap rather than a demonstrated legal violation, while the functional-differentiation rationale remains theoretically defensible only if legal certainty, an explicit authority matrix, budget transparency, and academic independence are subsequently secured. The article concludes that URI’s long-term legitimacy depends jointly on this procedural correction and on whether its future curriculum cultivates critical consciousness rather than technocratic compliance.