Corruption as role distortion

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.