Why Public Officials Complicit in Corruption? : An Exploratory Study of Doers' Personal Views and Experiences in Central Java, Indoniesia

Abstract: Why public officials complicit in corruption? It is absolutely a nagging and antiquated question. This thesis examines the corruption on a micro-scale from those convicted in corruption cases in Central Java Province, Indonesia, more specifically by taking the personal views and experiences of the imprisoned actors into account. Broadly speaking, the problem of corruption is a tantalizing daily issue around Indonesia. Despite the government is highly committed to overcome corruption, it is argued that national corruption eradication efforts have not simply failed to diminish the number of corruption cases, but they - at least until 2019 – failed to impede the deployment of corruption from central to local government levels. Empirically, this study explores corruption from leadership theories to build its own analytical framework of corruption, namely administrative and political corruption. Using narrative analysis methods, this study analyses nine interviews with elective public officials at district and village levels, combined with several secondary techniques. In drawing its conclusions, this study highlights three major findings to understand the failure of government in addressing corruption, each of which is related to 1) critical role of public legitimacy built upon informal norms; 2) strict bureaucratic function built upon formal norms; 3) cleavages between formal and informal norms that encourage public officials to enact one or both types of corruption. Above all, the idea of ‘private gain’ as the central element of corruption cannot be found in this study. Ultimately, this study provides some direction for future research that would suggest academia and policymakers to better understand the corruption in the public sector by taking informal norms into consideration.