Email this article The Illusion of Meritocracy: State Hegemony and the Discourse of Exclusion in Indonesia’s Teacher Recruitment Policy
), Elly Malihah Setiadi(2), Tutin Aryanti(3)
| 
Country:
(1) Department of Sociology Education, Universitas Pendidikan Indonesia, Indonesia
(2) Department of Sociology Education, Universitas Pendidikan Indonesia, Indonesia
(3) Department of Sociology Education, Universitas Pendidikan Indonesia, Indonesia
Corresponding Author
The recruitment of government employees with work agreements (PPPK) is often seen as a space of hope for senior honorary officials who no longer meet the age requirements to participate in the civil servant candidate recruitment process. However, in reality, the policy is not supported by the regulatory apparatus, which sides with their position, thus placing senior honorary officers in a structural injustice. This study aims to critically examine the construction of meritocracy and state hegemony in the PPPK recruitment policy for senior honorary teachers in Lebak Regency, Banten, and to explore how they interpret their experiences and perceptions of the policy. This research used a qualitative-critical approach through the analysis of critical discourse, drawing on the thinking of Michel Foucault, or Foucauldian Discourse Analysis (FDA), developed by Kendall & Wickham. The power of meritocracy discourse works by ignoring the appreciation of age and work experience in the 2024 PPPK recruitment, prioritizing technocratic-procedural logic, normalizing uncertainty through overlapping and inconsistent regulations, and reproducing structural gaps due to limited formation and fiscal capacity. The repeated failures experienced by senior honorary teachers give rise to a sense of disrespect and exclusion by a system perceived as more favorable to young teachers. For them, the PPPK recruitment is not a fair meritocratic mechanism, but a process that ignores devotion while increasing the uncertainty of life. The PPPK recruitment policy operates through a meritocratic discourse that prioritizes objective standards. The state positions meritocracy as the fairest means of assessing the quality of PPPK-civil servants. The state maintains its hegemony by making senior honorary teachers accept the logic of meritocracy, even though it is detrimental to them, because it is presented as the only legal route to obtaining PPPK-civil servant status.
Keywords: hegemony, honorary teachers, meritocracy, PPPK recruitment.
Afrizalni, I., Fitri, H. D., Putri, S. M., & Hanoselina, Y. (2024). Masa depan guru honorer terkait dengan penghapusan tenaga honorer berdasarkan UU Nomor 20 Tahun 2023 [The future of honorary teachers in relation to the elimination of honorary workers based on law number 20 of 2023]. JIMBE: Jurnal Ilmu Manajemen, Bisinis, Dan Ekonomi, 2(1), 21–30.
Andina, E., & Arifa, F. N. (2021). Problematika seleksi dan rekrutmen guru pemerintah di indonesia [Problems of government teacher selection and recruitment in indonesia]. Aspirasi: Jurnal Masalah-Masalah Sosial , 12(1), 85–105.
Avgerou, C., & Bonina, C. (2020). Ideologies implicated in IT innovation in government: a critical discourse analysis of mexico’s international trade administration. Information Systems Journal, 30, 70–95.
Azzahra, S. (2023). Implikasi pelanggaran hak asasi manusia: ketidaksetaraan upah guru honorer dalam sistem pendidikan [Implications of human rights violations: inequality of honorary teachers' wages in the education system]. Triwikrama: Jurnal Ilmu Sosial, 1(5), 50–60.
Bahasoan, A., & Kotarumalos, A. F. (2014). Praktik relasi wacana dan kuasa foucaultdian dalam realitas multi profesi di indonesia [The practice of foucaultdian discourse and power relations in the reality of multi-professions in indonesia]. Populis, 8(1), 13–22.
Barak, M. H., & Shoshana, A. (2025). “Soon you will go far”: Discourse Analysis on Vocational Education Policy of Israel. Compare: A Journal of Comparative and International Education, 55(5), 887–905.
Bourdieu, P. (1991). Language and symbolic power. Harvard University Press.
Bracho, C. A. (2024). Demanding justicia: the justice orientations of oaxaca’s sección 22 teachers. Globalisation, Societies and Education.
Brogger, K. (2019). How education standards gain hegemonic power and become international: the case of higher education and the bologna process. EERJ: European Educational Research Journal, 18(2), 158–180.
Bruni, L., & Santori, P. (2021). The illusion of merit and the demons of economic meritocracy: which are the legitimate expectations of the market? Journal of Business Ethics.
Cobbe, B. S., & Douglas, A. (2024). Meritocracy in the political and economic spheres. Philosophy Compass, 1–15.
Crome, J. (2022). Panic and stoicism: Media, PISA and the construction of truth. Policy Futures in Education, 20(7), 828–839.
Cunningham, C., & Samson, C. (2021). Neoliberal meritocracy: how “widening participation” to universities in england reinforces class divisions. On_education: Journal for Research and Debate, 4(10).
Darke, L., Paterson, H., & Golde, C. van. (2025). Illuminating gaslighting: a comprehensive interdisciplinary review of gaslighting literature. Journal of Family Violence.
Ezeudu, T. S., & Yau, I. Z. (2023). The impact of culture on effective public administration in nigeria. Journal of Political Discourse, 1(1), 53–66.
Faruk. (2013). Pengantar Sosiologi Sastra. Pustaka Pelajar .
Fauzan, G. A. (2021). Guru honorer dalam lingkaran ketidakadilan [Honorary teachers in the circle of injustice]. Journal on Education, 4(1), 197–208.
Foucault, M. (1974). The archeology of knowledge. Tavistock Publication.
Foucault, M. (1977). Discipline and punish. The Birth of the Prison (terj. A. Sheridan). Billing & Sons.
Foucault, M. (1980a). Power/Knowledge selected interviews and other writings 1972-1977 [Trans. Colin Gordon et al. (C. Gordon, Ed.). The Harvester Press.
Foucault, M. (1980b). Wacana kuasa/pengetahuan (terj. Yudi Santosa). Narasi dan Pustaka Promethea.
Foucault, M. (2002a). Archaeology of knowledge (trans. sheridan smith). Routledge.
Foucault, M. (2002b). Menggugat sejarah ide. Ircisod.
Foucault, M. (2005). Order of things: the archaeology of the human sciences (trans. tavistok/routledge). Routledge.
Foucault, M. (2021). Michel foucault disiplin tubuh: bengkel individu modern (terj. Petrus Sunu Hardiyanta). LKiS.
Fromm, E. (2004). Konsep manusia menurut marx. Pustaka Pelajar Offset.
Gandolfi, H., & Mills, M. A. (2022). Teachers for social justice: exploring the lives and work of teachers commited to social justice in education. Oxford Review of Education, 1–19.
Gramsci, A. (1976). Selection from the prison notebooks. International Publisher.
Gupta, A., & Zhao, X. (2023). Teachers’ work under responsibilising policies: an analysis of educators’ views on china’s 2021 educational reforms. Journal of Education Policy.
Haryatmoko. (2025). Membongkar rezim kepastian: pemikiran kritis post-strukturalis (Widiantoro, Ed.). PT Kanisius.
Jorgensen, M. W., & Phillips, L. J. (2002). Discourse analysis as theory and method. Sage Publications.
Joseph, J. (2017). The hegemony of governmentality: towards a research agenda. All Azimuth, 6(2), 5–18.
Karnovsky, S., & Gobby, B. (2024). How teacher wellbeing can be cruel: refusing discourses of wellbeing in an online reddit forum. British Journal of Sociology of Education, 1–19.
Katharina, R. (2019). Reformasi birokrasi indonesia dan revolusi industri 4.0. Yayasan Pustaka Obor Indonesia.
Marto, L. S., Mayseni, B., Mawaddah, Franchika, T. M., & Muslim. (2023). Implementasi kebijakan pengangkatan tenaga guru honorer menjadi pegawai pemerintah dengan perjanjian kerja (PPPK) di kota palembang [Implementation of the policy for appointing honorary teachers as government employees with work agreements (PPPK) in palembang city]. Jurnal Ilmu Sosial, Manajemenm Akuntansi, & Bisnis, 4(4), 197–217.
Musahwi. (2013). Di balik pelarangan negara terhadap prostitusi: studi tentang politik kepentingan dalam wacana amoralitas prostitusi dan perlawanan kaum prostitusi di parangtritis. Universitas Airlangga.
Myers, R., Rutt, R., McDermott, C., Maryudi, A., Acheampong, E., Camargo, M., & Cam, H. (2020). Imposing legality: hegemony and resistance under the EU Forest Law Enforcement, Governance, and Trade (FLEGT) initiative. Journal of Political Ecology, 27, 125–146.
Neuman, W. L. (1997). Social research methods: qualitative and quantitative approaches (3rd ed.). Allyn and Bacon.
Ordonez, B. R. O. (2024). The politics of false consciousness: hermeneutics of the philosophy of suspicion in marx, nietzsche, and freud. ARANDU UTIC: Revista Científica Internacional, 11(1), 313–326.
Patria, N., & Arief, A. (2015). Antonio gramsci: negara & hegemoni (E. Prasetyo, Ed.). Pustaka Pelajar.
Peng, P. (2025). Meritocracy reimagined: ideational foundations of state-building in imperial china. Journal of Historical Political Economy, 4(4), 439–469.
Purbiyati, Y. S., & Riyanto, E. A. (2022). The problem of education fighters’ sense of injustice in the education system in indonesia. International Journal of Economics, Business and Accounting Research, 6(1).
Sabani, A., Aulia, N., Mazaya, N., & Niken, S. (2024a). Pentingnya implementasi sistem meritokrasi dalam instansi pemerintahan indonesia [The importance of implementing a meritocracy system in indonesian government institutions]. Aktivisme: Jurnal Ilmu Pendidikan, Politik Dan Sosial Indonesia, 1(3), 144–152.
Sabon, S. S. (2022). Permasalahan pengelolaan guru honorer pada jenjang pendidikan dasar [Problems in managing honorary teachers at the elementary education level]. Jurnal Penelitian Kebijakan Pendidikan, 15(2), 119–134.
Saltini, M. R., Vidal, A. G., & Sobrinho, A. S. O. (2014). Public policies of education and precarious work in são paulo, brazil: abandonment of the teaching profession state public. 23(1), 99–117.
Sandel, M. (2020). The tyranny of merit: what’s become of the common good? Farrar, Straus and Giroux.
Simon, R. (1999). Gramsci’s political thought: an introduction. ElecBook.
Steed, K., Nobile, J. De, & Waniganayake, M. (2021). Promotion to leadership, not just merit, but insider knowledge: what do school principals say? Journal of Educational Leadership, Policy and Practice, 36.
Sugiono. (2010). Penelitian kuantitatif, kualitatif dan R&D. Alfabeta.
Suseno, F. M. (1999). Pemikiran karl marx dari sosialisme utopis ke perselihan revolusioner. PT SUN.
Tan, S. (2024). Merit and inequality: confucian and communitarian perspectives on singapore’s meritocracy. Journal of Confucian Philosophy and Culture, 41, 29–63.
Young, M. (1961). The rise of meritocracy 1870-2033, an essay on education and equality. Penguin Books.
Refbacks
- There are currently no refbacks.
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.
View My Stats