Volume 2 Issue 1, April 2020 http://hk-publishing.id/ijd-demos 1 The Dark Side of Regulatory Economics: Evidence from the Salt Import Policy in Post-Soeharto Indonesia Rahmad Hidayat 1 Department of Administrative Science of STISIP Mbojo Bima rahidsmart@gmail.com Asrul Raman 2 STKIP Taman Siswa Bima asrulbima@gmail.com Abstract Economics regulation by the state is indeed very necessary to ensure that the pursuit of profit does not conflict with social welfare. That is the reason why regulatory economics becomes really important. However, the context in this paper contradicts with the ideal substance of regulatory economics in which the government proactively provides incentives to remain entrenched monopolistic business practices while taking a dominant role in importing salt commodity through the issuance of a public policy that is more permissive and accommodating to those interests. This paper aims to describe the political dynamics in the formulation and implementation of salt import policy in Post-Soeharto Indonesia which was mainly characterized by the practice of unfair business competition. As descriptive qualitative research, this study utilized in-depth interviews, observation, document tracking, and document analysis techniques in which a number of bureaucrats, entrepreneurs, and salt farmers were used as informants to mine the data. The results of this study show that government intervention through Permendag No. 125/2015 does not reveal a pure orientation of "liberating salt commodity trade from monopolistic business practices", but to satisfy its vested interests and save the sakes of certain importers who were being the important part of its business collusion. Content imperfections, deliberate elimination of substantive obligations, facilitation of rent-seeking and monopolistic business practices, and the impartiality of the regulation’s purpose with the livelihoods of salt farmers in Indonesia become primary impetuses of the resistance of various parties to the dark side of regulatory economics imposed by the government. Keywords: anticompetitive; import; monopoly; regulation; rent-seeking E-ISSN (2721-0642) Recieved: February 2 2020 Revised: April 6 2020 Accepted: April 11 2020 Doi Number 10.37950/ijd.v2i1.5