Transformasi Nahdlatul Ulama di Bawah Kepemimpinan KH. Yahya Cholil Staquf (2022 - 2026): Gagasan, Implementasi, dan Resistensi

Abstract

This article examines whether the organizational transformation agenda pursued by KH. Yahya Cholil Staquf as General Chairman of PBNU for the 2022-2026 term, which he termed Governing NU, can genuinely be called an organizational transformation. This article also traces the points at which resistance emerged along with the challenges it posed. The study employs Max Weber’s theory of authority and legitimacy, which distinguishes legal, traditional, and charismatic authority, with legal authority resting on five foundations: legal norms established through agreement, law as a consistent system of abstract rules, the superior’s own subjection to an impersonal order, obedience rendered purely as a member to the law, and obedience owed to the impersonal order. Data gathered through in-depth interviews with Gus Yahya as well as primary documents comprising organizational regulations, official letters, meeting minutes, and press reports. The findings show that the transformation was realized through three dimensions of consolidation (governance, human resources, and financing) producing twenty-seven organizational regulations, ranging from the DIGDAYA platform, a tiered cadre system, to the Special Bodies. Resistance appeared from the outset and culminated in the November 2025 impeachment. Yet every dispute ultimately reached a regulatory impasse. Non-structural initiatives were blocked by legal authority, and the impeachment argument itself rested on alleged violations of the statutes, sharia, and organizational regulations. The article concludes that a shift from charismatic and traditional authority toward legal authority is discernible, such that PBNU’s trajectory in 2022–2026 succeeded at the level of apparatus but not yet at the level of legitimacy.