Corruption in Indonesia: A Critical Essay

Statement of Authorship
I confirm that the work presented in this critical essay has been performed and interpreted solely by myself except where explicitly identified to the contrary. I confirm that this work is submitted in partial fulfillment for Political Economics subject and has not been submitted elsewhere in any other form for the fulfillment of other tasks. Signature:_______________________________________ Dated: _________________________________________ Name: Devina Anindita, NPM: 1006666702 At the heart of corruption in Indonesia is a failure to comprehend the root of the existence of corruption itself. Corruption in principle is a culmination of our human compromise against others interests, where the need for self before others is calibrated to the need for self even at the expense of others that sometimes we even invest the demise of others as a means of staying successful.1 Corruption is a battle of interests: between a greater interest (for example public interest) and specific interests for example (personal interest) that result into abuse by either party on the same, or not the acts per se. Due to this principle of corruption, it is not sufficient to just search for the general (macro perspective) of corruption, but it is also necessary to understand personal (micro perspective) to be able to fully comprehend the dimensions of corruption. From macro point of view, some economists have come up with a simple equation placing corruption, C, as a function of monopoly (M), discretion (D) and accountability (A): C=M+D-A. This demonstrates clearly how corruption exists in an environment where a state organization has monopoly power over the distribution of goods, economic rents exist, a discretion to decide who receives them and no responsibility of being accountable for its actions (Wagle, 1998) 2. It is why in countries which are leaning more to centralized government role, corruption is a common daily occurrence in public sector as a specific form of rent seeking where access, especially to politics is restricted by limited transparency, limited competition and domination of narrow interest. In Indonesia which previously was a very centralized government, corruption has been an extensive social pervasion and media airtime over time. The relationship between survival tactics

The psychology of corruption defiance of logic or logic at work, Costantine V Magavilla Published on www.magavilla.com
2

As cited in Corruption: A Psychosocial Issue, Niranjan Prasad Upadhyay

and scarcity is also a pivotal point for corruption. A paper made by J. Vernon Henderson and Ari Kuncoro3 explained the corruption in local government.
To understand the potential link between corruption and fiscal arrangements, we think of the government of a district as hiring local officials to administer regulations, as well as provide services. The district government has a local property tax base, where de facto tax rates are capped at low levels; and fiscal transfers are modest. It is widely acknowledged that revenues from tax and transfer sources both before and after decentralization are insufficient to pay for even minimal mandated public service levels, so the local government needs to seek other forms of revenue. Local red tape such as licenses and levies provide indirect revenues in the form of bribes, as well as direct revenues. Bribes received by local officials to ameliorate the impact of red tape mean the local government can pay lower salaries to officials; i.e., expected bribes received are capitalized into lower official salaries. [This does not say whether the freed up money is used for best purposes; below we model that explicitly.]

The insufficient amount of wage for government officials is to some extent understandable through the relations between government and unemployment in which the government is responsible to lower the number of unemployment; therefore, resulting in relatively lower wage for public sector compared to private sector to be able to accommodate greater number of employment with allocation of decent pension. This fat government structure of low level employment is also equipped with low-disciplined standard of work that comes with difficult process of firing 4 and no significant evaluation system. The existence of corruption institutionalization through public sector wage positioning in the past, as cited by Ross H. McLeod 5 is also part of the influence that changing the values and perception of public sector in society and also internally.
In short, the kind of salary structure chosen for public sector institutions was such as to discourage the entry of highly principled individuals (which is not to deny that many such were recruited, nevertheless), and correspondingly to encourage that of people who at least would not concern themselves too greatly about the sources of their special allowances and other salary supplements or, better still, of those predisposed to engage actively in the work of the franchise. This is the only plausible explanation for the fact that individuals were willing to pay for the privilege of embarking on, and persevering with, a career characterized by increasingly large shortfalls bellow market salary levels the higher one rose in the hierarchy.

As corruption is a type of deviation from social norms, a type of control is expected to stop it from continuing; it is called social control. Social control is defined in Modes and Patterns of Social Control Implications for Human Rights Policy 6 as the following.
Social control in terms of its role in securing conformity with established norms by preventing, adjudicating, remedying and sanctioning non-compliance. It focuses on intentional, planned and programmed responses by state authorities and corporations to activities, behaviors or status that are perceived to be criminal, problematic, undesirable, dangerous or troublesome. The anchors of this form of social control are institutions that deal with crime, dangerousness, delinquency and
3

Corruption in Indonesia. J. Vernon Henderson Ari Kuncoro Brown University and University of Indonesia. April 2006
4

http://www.bkn.go.id/in/peraturan/pedoman/pedoman-berhenti-pns.html Institutionalized Public Sector CorruptionA Legacy of The Suharto Franchise. Ross H. McLeod. 2010. International Council on Human Rights Policy

other social problems, including the criminal justice system, the health system, immigration and border control, the welfare system and urban planning authorities.

From the definition above, it can be concluded that a type of social control would not work if no institutions are taking responsibility of enforcing the norms thoroughly. The problem is glaringly prominent in Indonesia where the judicial system is also highly polluted with corruption as a legacy of unquestionable authoritarian government with no democracy in the past. For a case example of judicial corruption, in August 2012, The Corruption Eradication Commission (KPK) caught two anticorruption court judges red-handed as they were allegedly receiving bribes in the Central Java town of Semarang.7 It is already hard for judges to refuse the amount of bribes offeredeven for anti-corrruption judges; in contrast, those who refused bribery from the accused often find themselves in threat of danger. In Indonesia, there was Kartasasmita shooting case. Syafiuddin Kartasasmita was a Supreme court judge who was responsible for deciding Hutomo 'Tommy' Mandala Putras and a Soeharto crony, Mohamad 'Bob Hassans cases , additionally he was also the one who accepted Soeharto's 'Pinochet' defence.8 He was killed on July 26, 2001 and by July 2002, Tommy Soeharto was found guilty on charges of Kartasasmitas murder 9. With this type of case, people see that as the stake getting higher, the law cannot protect those who enforcing it; creating feelings of insecurity and inadequacy to protect justice among the people. At the micro level, the internalization of corruption which is also the source of institutionalized corruption is becoming more complex as people try to understand more about it in personal level. The beginning of social control in a persons life may have started with the family as the first social control institution. Every one's personality is the creation of his or her family. Family provides a framework within which human being may find roots, continuity and sense of belonging. Parents serve as the first socializing agents. Sound family environment always persists disciplines, moral and nurtures self-esteem. However in Indonesia, the upbringing method usually is still homogenous, with the parents and society teaching children of full obedience and complete dependence with little monitoring and control or logical reasoning explanation for behavior from the family; creating personalities that lack self-esteem to make their own judgment and to stand by it, do not have any trust for their own capacities and capabilities, have needs to please their masters and also family members: two roles which are deemed important in Indonesian society. That is why at the same time, corrupt act is also a social-behavioral phenomenon which is a product of society. Psychologists especially argue that nice and clean man may change his or her behavior on the basis of social and family pressures and circumstances. American psychologist, David G. Myers (1994) 10 has stressed in his book entitled "Exploring Social Psychology" that nice people also become corrupted through excessive social pressures. Basically, in developing countries like Indonesia, people are always trying to accumulate money. Especially with day-to day practice in which family members begin to put pressure on the nice and clean public servant to get money
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Two Indonesian Anti-Corruption Judges Caught Red-Handed Receiving Bribes. Ezra Sihite. August 17, 2012. http://www.thejakartaglobe.com/home/two-indonesian-anti-corruption-judges-caught-red-handedreceiving-bribes/538838
8
9

Who Killed the Judge - And Why? Tim Lindsey. The Age. Tuesday 31 July, 2001. Chronology of case Tommy Suharto http://www.assetrecovery.org/ 10 As cited in Corruption: A Psychosocial Issue, Niranjan Prasad Upadhyay

by any means. Actually, such types of daily pressures of the family may disturb the mental balance of government and non-governmental personnel. A great gap of wealth may have been the cause of social jealousy and also one of the factors which create an urge to reduce the gap by any means. Flows of Internalization of Corruption

From: The Motivations behind and Conditioning of Corruption in India, Divyanshi Chugh, Lady Shri Ram College for Women

Basically, man is influenced by various factors and those factors disturb his entire personality. Maximizing utilities is still the basic of a humans economic behavior; therefore, it is nave to think that people will put others interest before their own automatically. However the act of abusing power is mainly because a lot of people let themthere is no social control institution with real power to keep corruption low. Since corruption, arguably, emanates from the battle of interests between a greater interest and specific interests, there is no standard for it and it heavily depends on whose interests are being affected and how. Then it is the responsibility of those representing specific interest to protect their interest just as much as it is that of those with greater interests to protect theirs. At the end, corruption needs to be better comprehended by people. Humans have a tendency towards self-serving biases, leading to unethical behavior. (Johns,1999; Moore and Loewernstein, 2004).11 When people fail to escape from corrupt acts (either passively or actively) repeatedly, they develop learned helplessness. Their past experiences of repeated failure inhibit escape from an unpleasant situation. Thus, despite such anger toward corruption, there also appears to be a sense of helplessness in doing something about it. While ethical codes are helpful, counterproductive cognitive mechanisms that blame everyone (but no one in particular) have to be altered to be able to face the real problem; therefore. If dishonesty is the fault of individuals, then they must be able to be removed. The next is an excerpt from Psychology of Corruption that describes clearly how corruption evolves from being internalized to being institutionalized.
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As cited in The Motivations behind and Conditioning of Corruption in India, Divyanshi Chugh

Big acts start with small ones. People become habituated to corrupt acts. Through Socialization, they learn that corruption is a widespread behavior and that there is an approval of this problem behavior, thus they get habituated to corrupt acts. Compliance Tactic, Foot in the Door Phenomena operates as the individual gradually complies with relatively bigger acts Door in the Face Phenomena operates as people deny employment in extremely large corrupt act; accede to a more reasonable second request. Individuals first cross their morally ambiguous zone, and as behavior within the zone becomes more acceptable, they slide down the slippery slope i.e. it then becomes easier to extend the boundaries of moral ambiguity out farther into previously unconsidered territory, leading to escalation of commitment. People who engage in negative behaviors will typically seek to justify their behaviors by denial of responsibility or denial of injury so they do not feel conflicted.

Bibliography Chugh, Divyanshi.The Motivations behind and Conditioning of Corruption in India . Lady Shri Ram College for Women Henderson, J. Vernon and Ari Kuncoro. Corruption in Indonesia.Brown University and University of Indonesia. April 2006 International Council on Human Rights Policy. Modes and Patterns of Social Control Implications for Human Rights Policy. 2010. Magavilla, Costantine V. The psychology of corruption defiance of logic or logic at work . Published on www.magavilla.com McLeod, Ross H. Institutionalized Public Sector CorruptionA Legacy of The Suharto Franchise. Upadhyay, Niranjan Prasad. Corruption: A Psychosocial Issue http://www.bkn.go.id/in/peraturan/pedoman/pedoman-berhenti-pns.html