Corruption as role distortion

By Ignas Kleden

JAKARTA (JP): Corruption in Indonesia should always be a question and an issue, never to be taken for granted because almost everybody is tempted to practice it.

If one looks at corruption in terms of class differentiation, it becomes obvious that the motives behind it can be very different.

Corruption, for lower-level government employees, is a means to supplant the deficit in their income, while assuming the role of an informal and illegal incentive-system for the workings of bureaucracy. Conversely, high-ranking officials earn enough from their positions. For them corruption is not a means to cover the lack of income, but a means of saving in the face of uncertain future.

In a time of crisis what matters is the present. The past is utilized as a political scapegoat whereas the future is indefinite and unpredictable because the course of events goes not according to the established order but according to occasional needs and drives.

However, the objective crisis aside, the vagueness and the unpredictability of the political future in Indonesia has long been brought about by a very ambiguous relationship between state and society, the lack of equal opportunity in economy, as well as extremely weak and inconsistent law enforcement.

So far there have been no serious problems to enforce the law among the people, but there are many difficulties applying the same standards to the powers-that-be.

Needless to say, corruption is a very complex social phenomenon, which cannot be attributed to one single factor. An effective fight against this bad habit, however, needs to take in account all factors that have swayed people to corruption.

This essay discusses one factor which might play a decisive role in the widening acceptance of corruption, namely the interchange of the role of a middleman and an agent which takes place within the bureaucracy.

Sociologically speaking, an agent is somebody who acts not on his or her own behalf but rather on behalf of the one from whom he or she has got an assignment. Accordingly they get paid on the basis of their assignment, and are not allowed to receive any other payment from other sources. This is important as a means to secure and to guarantee the loyalty and the commitment of the agent towards the one on whose behalf the agent acts.

By contrast, a middleman is someone who acts on his own behalf to mediate between two parties involved in a business or political transaction, and is therefore in a position to get paid from both sides.

Whereas an agent is supposed to be loyal to his employer and committed to his employer's interest, a middleman is usually loyal to himself and committed to his own interest.

The members of state bureaucracy are agents par excellence, because they are never allowed to act on their own behalf, but only on behalf of their bosses, who represent a particular aspect of state power and authority.

In that sense they are entitled to a corresponding payment by the state for their service, while they are not allowed to receive any other payment from other sources.

They are supposed to represent and to serve the interest of the state, and thereby serve the interest of the people, while being strictly forbidden to serve their own interests in doing their job. The essence of this responsibility is coined in the term "civil servants".

The distortion which takes place within the bureaucracy usually occurs in two related ways. First, the government employees do not see themselves as state agents anymore, but rather as free persons who can play the role of middlemen. They identify their private interest with that of the state.

There is no difference between carrying out an assignment for the state and acting on their own behalf and serving their own interest. This makes them feel free to receive payments not only from the state but also from other parties involved in transactions with the state.

According to this concept, corruption is nothing but an official action which benefits the perpetrator in contrast to the assignment of his boss and against the rules and regulations according to which he is supposed to act.

Conversely, if the act is committed with official approval of the boss, then there is no corruption anymore, because the agent is still acting according to the assignment of his boss.

If it turns out that in so doing he is transgressing against the law, it is not he but his boss who is responsible, because it is the boss who has given the assignment.

In reality, this is not the case in Indonesia, because there is no explicit assignment from the boss permitting employees to act against the rules and regulations.

What happens is that every transgression takes place tacitly in a silent agreement between everyone involved, but in which no one can be held responsible. In that way the employees make use of their position to make a deal with those who are looking for the service of bureaucracy and get paid from these people illegally.

The next step is to bring a major part of this deal to the boss in order to keep him silent and to make him behave as if nothing illegal had taken place.

Everyone gets a bit from the illegal payment, consequently, everyone is supposed to protect the one involved in the illegal activity, with the understanding that he or she is expected to do the same thing to protect his or her colleagues who are involved in other illegal activities.

In collusive relationship, corruption is a silent conspiracy against the state and the people, which undermines the efficiency of state bureaucracy, though it might encourage to certain extent the effectiveness of the workings of bureaucracy.

In the second situation, the bureaucrats no longer see themselves as civil servants, whose main job is to serve the state and the people, but as participants of state power on the one hand and as rulers of people on the other.

Bureaucracy as a state apparatus treats itself as a part of government, whereas it is by definition only a tool, indeed, a machine, which should facilitate the functions of government and serve the interests of the people.

In modern states with efficient bureaucracies, people are entitled to certain services from the bureaucracy without any payment required.

In the case of Indonesia there used to be no explicit refusal from the bureaucrats to provide the required services. What happened time and time again was a silent reluctance by means of delaying the completion of the procedure until the people understood by themselves that they had to pay something to get that service.

In that situation people have to choose between the costs of bringing a bureaucrat to court and a transaction cost which might be much lower in order to get a service without much delay.

In this context corruption is rather a conspiracy with the state against the people which benefits neither the state nor the people, but solely the corrupted bureaucrats.

The third way cannot be attributed to the corruptors within the bureaucracy but rather to the government, which treats bureaucracy not as state apparatus which should be ready to work for any legitimate government, but rather as its own apparatus which is subject to all the programs and political agenda of the incumbent government.

This was obviously the case with the New Order regime, in which all government employees were obliged to become members of the ruling Golkar party. President Soeharto at that time was the chairman of the board of trustees for the party, endowed with complete power to approve or veto the party chairman elected.

There was an interchange of roles between government and bureaucracy, which made no differentiation between those who give assignments, and those who must carry out the assignments without having to be responsible for the making such decisions.

Political decision-making became identical with bureaucratic procedures, resulting in the so-called over-bureaucratization of Indonesian politics.

In such a situation a politician cannot be made accountable for his decision, because everything is attributed to the bureaucratic procedure. Everybody can then justify himself only as an executor of instructions which have been made somewhere within the bureaucracy.

Corruption takes place because political decision-making is immune to accountability, by making such a decision totally impersonal and purely procedural.

Keeping those conditions in mind some proposals can be brought up to eliminate those tendencies which originate in role distortion.

First of all, government employees should be forbidden to play the role of middleman by eliminating all situations leading to this role distortion.

If the income of a middleman is much better and much more secure than that of an agent, people will be tempted to change their role while maintaining their status as agents of state bureaucracy.

In the same vein, the temptation of high-ranking people to commit corruption as a means of saving should be eliminated by providing them with a perspective of their career. It should be made very clear which high positions are political in nature, in which political power can interfere, and which positions are purely bureaucratic and should be judged on the basis of bureaucratic and professional criteria.

Secondly, bureaucracy as a state apparatus should be differentiated clearly from the incumbent government, so that corruption within the bureaucracy is not protected politically by political power, and bureaucracy as such is not treated and used as a tool to serve the interests of the ruling party.

The election and promotion of officials within the bureaucracy should not be done on the basis of political considerations of the ruling party, but on the basis of professional experience, technical expertise and moral commitment to one's job.

In that connection it is proposed that there should be a vertical division of labor within bureaucracy. This means that an official assuming a certain position is allowed to promote and to punish only people of three levels below his position and not more.

A director general of a department is not allowed to promote or to punish an office boy because the latter is too far away from the position of the first.

In so doing, each level of bureaucracy can be provided with a certain amount of real responsibility for which they can be required to give accountability.

Otherwise any requirement for responsibility can never be met because the official of the lower level will push the responsibility upward until we do not know who is responsible for what.

Third, if corruption is to be eliminated radically, it is necessary that the state should find an alternative incentive- system to replace corruption which has long made the workings of Indonesian bureaucracy effective though far from efficient.

If there is no alternative incentive-system it is possible that we might finally have a clean bureaucracy which, however, is not effective because the people working within it are not sufficiently motivated to do their job.

Besides that, bureaucrats must not be made insecure in the face of political decision-making, because political power turned out to be able to eliminate ministries or departments without much preparation.

This situation of insecurity might lead to a sort of bureaucratic entropy where no one is motivated to work and everyone is prepared to do anything to secure his or her future in the face of political volatility and decisional arbitrariness.

The writer is sociologist, Director of The Go-East Institute (Institute for East-Indonesian Affairs), Jakarta, national consultant to the preparation of Anti-Corruption Commission, Indonesia.