Exploring accountability for corruption in the field of public financial management

This thesis explores accountability experiences and perceptions for an important social problem in the public sector, namely bureaucratic corruption. Specifically, I examine civil servants’ views when they encounter accountability demands for reporting corruption-related information in Indonesian public bureaucracies. The counter-corruption agenda Indonesia initiated since 1998 created new accountability requirements and expectations for civil servants, demanding them to call into question long established work and relational practices. To study the accountability experience in the above context, this research adopts a qualitative field study design in the Indonesian public financial management field focused on local governments. The empirical material relies primarily on interviews with civil servants, internal auditors, anti-corruption practitioners and other key actors. Data such as laws, regulations, policies, photographs, books and newspapers regarding anti-corruption are used to complement primary data. Drawing on Bourdieu's practise theory, this research begins by examining the nature of bureaucratic corruption as a relational practice in the Indonesian public financial management field. Situated concepts of corruption are explored and juxtaposed to dominant conceptions of corruption as either a rational or a structural problem arising from lack of accountability. It proceeds by exploring the ways in which the Indonesian state mobilising its material and symbolic power to impose novel anti-corruption norms on civil servants hence becoming de facto an accountability norm entrepreneur. Finally, I study the issues expressed by civil servants in making sense of the new state's demands, shedding light on the problematics of accountability for corruption including the vulnerabilities and silences it entails. The findings suggest that the counter-corruption has produced a state of hysteresis in the public financial management field, demanding civil servants to strike a difficult balance between the new state demands and elements of gift exchange ingrained in their habitus. Beliefs with functionality in relational practices remain integral to a civil servant’s accountability habitus and seem to be in conflict with imposed accountability norms. Fieldwork evidence reveals different approaches selected by civil servants in responding to hysteresis situation. As a hysteretic practice, accountability for corruption produces a ‘deafening silence’. This study is concluded by discussing the implications of such a silence for civil servants’ accountability