Reconstructing Indonesian State-Owned Enterprise Governance under the Welfare State Paradigm: Lessons from Malaysia and Norway

The governance of state-owned enterprises (SOEs) in Indonesia reveals a persistent legal tension between the constitutional mandate of the welfare state and the corporate logic of efficiency, profitability, and managerial autonomy. The main legal weakness lies in the unclear boundary between state control, corporate autonomy, and public accountability, particularly in the regulation of state capital, ministerial supervision, board appointments, and public audit mechanisms. This study aims to reconstruct an Indonesian SOE governance model that aligns corporate performance with constitutional responsibility and social welfare. Using a juridical-normative method with statutory, conceptual, and comparative approaches, the study examines Indonesia’s SOE legal framework in comparison with Malaysia’s developmental-state model and Norway’s welfare-oriented public ownership model. The findings show that Indonesia requires a governance framework that does not treat SOEs merely as commercial corporations, but as public fiduciary institutions entrusted with advancing collective welfare. The proposed Welfare-Oriented SOE Governance model consists of four pillars: welfare-based accountability, ethical corporate autonomy, participatory oversight, and transparent execution. Its practical implication is the need to reform SOE law by clarifying welfare-based objectives, strengthening merit-based appointments, institutionalizing public ownership reporting, and integrating welfare indicators into SOE performance evaluation. The novelty of this study lies in combining welfare constitutionalism, responsive law, and social economic law into a concrete legal framework for reconstructing SOE governance in Indonesia