Institutional Change and Corruption of Public Leaders: A Social Capital Perspective on Indonesia

Abstract

Incidents of corruption by local public leaders have increased in Indonesia in the era of a decentralized democratic regime, in which regional governments enjoy greater power and autonomy to manage regional resources. Previous research suggests that the shift of formal power from the central government to regional governments resulted in new actors at the local level becoming involved in corruption. Building on ideas from social capital theory, the current study attempts to complement previous work by analyzing the shifts of public leaders' corruption behavior under the decentralized democratic government. We suggest that besides formal power relations, informal relations are important for initiating and sustaining corruptive transactions, and corruption requires a different social capital base in different institutional settings. The objectives of this paper are (1) to organize current knowledge on institutional change and corruption, (2) to extend current thinking on public leaders' corruption in Indonesia and beyond, and (3) to suggest a framework for future empirical study. We present an empirical

Structure, multiplexity, and centrality in a corruption network: the Czech Rath affair

“…Corruption is generally defined as an Babuse of public power for private gain ( Funderburk 2012;Silitonga et al 2016;Uslaner 2008). While this general definition of corruption does not entail any particularly relational or interactional features, corruption as a phenomenon consists of a wide range of activities and some of them are intrinsically relational.…”

“…Nepotism and cronyism are based on pre-existing relationships with relatives or friends respectively, who are installed into influential or well-paid positions despite their incompetence. Although these are just the most common forms of corruption, there are more activities which could be labelled as such (for a detailed description, see Silitonga et al 2016). What is shared by all the mentioned forms of corruption, however, is that these activities take place in human interactions and relationships.…”

“…Another possible pitfall of media-based data is the tendency of journalists to focus on what or who they deem to be interesting and, consequently, focusing their reports on specific persons, making the data derived from these reports centralized as a result. Nevertheless, if the reported information is sufficiently detailed and carefully processed, it may yield meaningful results (see e.g., Athey and Bouchard 2013; Bright et al 2012;Krebs 2002;Milward and Raab 2006;Silitonga et al 2016). However, it is important to keep the limitations of the data in mind when interpreting the results and drawing conclusions.…”

Setting a Good Example? The Effect of Leader and Peer Behavior on Corruption among Indonesian Senior Civil Servants

“…31/1999 and20/2001), bribery is one the of the criminal activities classified as corruption. Furthermore, previous work has indicated that bribery is one of the most common types of corruption in the public sector in Indonesia (Silitonga et al 2016). Following Transparency International's widely used definition, we conceptualize bribery as "the offering, promising, giving, accepting or soliciting of an advantage as an inducement for an action which is illegal, unethical or a breach of trust.…”

“…Despite these government initiatives, corruption is still pervasive in Indonesia, not only among appointed political leaders but also among senior civil servants in both central and local government (Silitonga et al 2016). For example, as a recent Indonesia Corruption Report (GAN Business Anti-Corruption Portal 2017) emphasizes, a corrupt judiciary, extensive bribery in the public service, and the extortion of informal payments to register businesses or obtain licenses are still rampant and perceived not only to severely harm the efficiency of business but also to undermine property rights protections and weaken dispute settlement processes.…”