Polri’s Organisational Structure

The Indonesian National Police (Polri) operates under a hierarchical, centralised organisational structure characterised by high complexity, formalisation, and vertical command chains. This literature review examines scholarly sources from Indonesia and internationally to analyse Polri’s current organisational structure and to consider the declared case for transitioning to a more functional organisational form.  The evidence indicates that Polri’s mechanistic, hierarchical structure faces challenges widely described in comparative scholarship on centralised police systems, including slow decision-making, coordination difficulties, and limited external oversight. The review also considers the economic dimension of organisational reform, drawing on documented case studies from England and Wales, Canada, the United States, Japan, Germany, France, the Netherlands, Australia, and post-Soviet transition contexts. These cases suggest that organisational restructuring can be associated with meaningful cost efficiencies and improvements in personnel compensation, though they also document substantial implementation challenges, cultural resistance, and coordination risks.  The review concludes that functional reform of Polri could address several recognised limitations of the current structure, but that realising such benefits would require careful design, stakeholder engagement, and sustained implementation capacity. Claims advanced here pertain to declared reform possibilities and comparative inference drawn from the literature, not to verified operational outcomes within Polri.