Education and Training in Pancasila Ethics as a Legal Mandate for Strengthening the Performance Character of the State Civil Apparatus: A Normative-Juridical Study

Abstract

The ethical conduct of the State Civil Apparatus (Aparatur Sipil Negara, ASN) shapes both the quality of public services and the legitimacy of local governance. Nevertheless, a persistent gap remains between the ethical norms mandated by law and the everyday work behavior of civil servants in regency bureaucracies. The central problem this study addresses is conceptual and juridical rather than empirical: although Law Number 20 of 2023 on the State Civil Apparatus obliges every government agency to internalize ethical values, the legal literature has not clarified whether—and on what statutory basis—the development of a Pancasila ethics education and training model can be grounded, nor how such a model connects to the concept of performance character. This study therefore pursues a dual contribution: a normative legal analysis of the statutory foundation for Pancasila ethics training, and a legal-conceptual framework linking Pancasila ethics to performance character as a basis for designing such training in regency governments. Employing doctrinal (normative) legal research with statutory and conceptual approaches, the study analyses primary legal materials—principally the 1945 Constitution and Law Number 20 of 2023 together with its implementing regulations—alongside secondary materials on Pancasila ethics and character-education theory, interpreted through grammatical, systematic, and teleological techniques. The findings show, first, that Pancasila functions constitutionally as the source of all sources of state law and, within that position, operates as the meta-juridical reference from which the ethical norms of civil-service law are derived. Second, the law establishes a layered institutional obligation—to internalize core values, the code of ethics, and the code of conduct; to enforce discipline; and to provide continuous, work-integrated competency development—that together constitute a firm legal mandate for an ethics training model. Third, the statutory orientation of performance management toward both work results and work behavior provides a juridical bridge linking Pancasila ethics to performance character, understood as diligence, self-discipline, and work ethic. The study concludes that a Pancasila ethics training model built on value indicators, habituation, and integrated learning systems rests on a strong legal mandate; as a normative study, it proposes an evaluative mechanism rather than demonstrating its effectiveness, and its practical contribution lies in offering regency governments a legal-conceptual basis for competency-development policy and curriculum design that requires subsequent empirical testing.