Abstract for IIAS Conference
Public Trust toward Public Institutions: Does It Matter?
Gabriel Lele PhD
Department of Public Policy and Management
Gadjah Mada University
Indonesia
gabilel@ugm.ac.id
Since democratic transition in 1999, the performance of Indonesian public institutions have
been under continuous surveillance by many actors. Among such actors are independent
pollster conducting serial surveys on how Indonesian people perceive their government.
Despite some variations, there are common trends of public distrust to public institutions and
this is especially true for issues of direct consequences to the people such as corruption
eradication, poverty alleviation, and law enforcement. Amidst this wide publication, little is
known as to whether such public evaluation matters for public institutions. This article will
deeply investigate the extent to which public trust affects the way public institutions operate
their business and why. In so doing, this article will use anecdotal evidence from electronic
media publication during SBY presidency (2004 to now).
Introduction
This article will assess the level of public trust toward government institutions in
democratizing Indonesia. It will look specifically at how Indonesian people perceive their
government in performing its jobs and government response toward such perception. This
topic begs academic attention for two reasons.
First, after transition to democracy in 1998, the interaction between citizens and government
has changed dramatically. No longer can the government maintain a closed operation of its
businesses. On the contrary, whatever government does or fails to do is subject to public
evaluation. Under new democratic framework, Indonesian people now have more rooms to
maneuver against their government.
Second, amidst increasing public evaluation against government businesses, little is known as
to what extent has the government succeeded or failed to respond to such evaluation. A rough
observation will lead us to conclude that the government does care to such evaluation. The
fascination lies, however, on the degree of success of such response. As will be elaborated in
later section, this article will show that the more government tries to respond to public
evaluation, the clearer the fact it could only achieve very limited performance. This leads
directly to ever increasing public distrust toward government.
This article argues that government’s limited success to respond even to the most critical
public evaluation is institutionally embedded. Put it differently, government fails to provide
proper response to public distrust because it has to work under unfavorable institutional
arrangements. While efforts to respond to public distrust require consolidated collective
actions, the current institutional arrangements make it extremely difficult to mobilize
collective action among government institutions. On the contrary, the way government
institutions operate their businesses only worsened public perception toward them.
To pursue this argument, this article will look at the current institutional arrangements
especially the one involving the relationships between the executive and legislative branches
of government. The focus is chosen because of several reasons. Firstly, there have been
significant changes on the ways these two institutions operate and interact. Until 1999, it was
the executive branch which controlled the country and the legislative branch was no more
than a rubber stamp to the executive. From 1999 onward, the constitutional amendment has
made the legislature a very powerful actor – a superbody institution – in running the
government (Thohari 2003; Ziegenhain 2008). This has led a very dramatic picture as far as
executive-legislative relationship is concerned. Secondly, amidst this significant change,
there have been also widespread criticisms and frustration among Indonesian citizen. This is
due to the overall poor performance of the newly empowered institutions. Parliament, for
example, are more often perceived as the locus of corruption, a group of oligarchic actors
with entrenched interests having its separate aspiration from the public (Sherlock 2003:30;
Wessel 2005:21).
This article uses qualitative method by employing anecdotal evidence from media. Most data
used in this article are taken from the Lembaga Survey Indonesia (LSI), a leading pollster in
Indonesia. Combined with data from online media, this article focuses on how and to what
extent President Susilo Bambang Yudoyono administration (2004 to now) responded to
public evaluation. In doing so, this article connects government response to institutional
arrangements, specifically how fragmented was power organization under his administration.
Literature
In the case of Indonesia, the literature on public trust or distrust on government is still
limited, if any. This does not imply that there is no discourse over public trust or distrust on
government. Indeed, there have been hot debates on this issue among researchers. However,
such discourse is still limited on the polling arena. Several pollsters have played a critical role
in provoking public debates on the performance of government institutions and public trust
and distrust which follow it.
Determinants of trust
Forms of government responses
But not the extent or capacity of government response.
Public Trust toward Government Institutions
The publication and discourse on public trust toward government institutions in Indonesia
have increased quite significantly in the last ten years. Looking specifically at the period
under SBY administration (2004 to now), we can find some publication on this issue and this
is done by polling institutions. One of the leading pollsters is Lembaga Survey Indonesia or
Indonesian Survey Institution (LSI). This institution has conducted serial and periodic polling
over public opinion toward many issues. One of the issues which attracts the attention of this
institution is public trust over government institutions. For instance, in 2011, LSI published a
survey on the performance of law enforcement. As shown in the following graph, the survey
reveals public evaluation on law enforcement in Indonesia. Though the percentage of
respondents which judges government performance in law enforcement as good and bad is
relatively comparable, those who pose negative perception had overall outnumbered those
who expressed positive attitude.
Graph 1
Performance in Law Enforcement
35
32.6
31.3
30
25
18
20
15
9.8
10
5
6.3
1.9
0
Very Good
Source: LSI (2012)
Good
Fair
Bad
Very Bad No Response
The survey also paid special attention to corruption eradication. A question was raised as to
how good or successful is the government in controlling corruption. As shown in graph 2,
there has been a systematic and significant decline in public perception on this issue. In the
period of only four years, there has been a decline by almost fifty percent.
Graph 2
Performance in corruption erradication (%)
90
80
77
70
59
60
52
50
44
40
30
20
10
0
Dec 2008
Dec 2009
Dec 2010
Dec 2011
Source: LSI (2012)
The same survey also tried to capture public perception on how free are government
institutions from corruption. As shown in graph 3, it is surprising that Indonesia’s Armed
Forces was perceived as the cleanest institutions, even cleaner than the Anti-Corruption
Agency (KPK). This is surprising given the fact that Indonesia’s Armed Forces was notorious
for corrupt practices during the Soeharto era (1967-1997).
Graph 3
Institutions free from corruption (%)
Political Parties
30.2
Parliament
31.1
Attorney General
33.2
State Auditor
33.8
Supreme Court
34.9
Constitutional Court
37.7
Central Bank
38.2
Anti-Corruption Agency
38.5
Police Department
39.3
President
51
Military Forces
57.2
0
10
20
30
40
50
60
70
Source: LSI (2011)
Graph 4
Institutions which most represent public interest
Don't Know
23
Others
1
Political parties
11
Bureaucracy
11
Mass Organizations
24
Mass Media
31
0
5
10
15
20
25
30
35
Source: LSI (2008)
In line with LSI, other pollsters also release their survey results quite often. For example, in
October 2011, Lingkaran Survey Indonesia released a report on public satisfaction over SBY
administration. The level of satisfaction had far decreased compared to the time when SBY
was re-elected. It has decreased from 63,1 percent in January 2010 to 60,7 percent in October
2010 to 56,7 percent in January 2011 and then dropped even more significantly to 46,2
percent in October 2011 (Indonesia Today, 16 October 2011; Antara News, 26 June 2011).
Looking at sector by sector, the lowest public satisfaction was in national security and
stability (14,9 percent), followed by law enforcement (33,1 percent), political areas (33,9
percent) and economic areas (35,7 percent).
A more recent survey on public satisfaction was released by Charta Politica in August 2012.
Public dissatisfaction to government performance in economic areas reached as high as 67
percent while in law enforcement it reached 58 percent. Similarly, public satisfaction to the
performance on individual ministers recorded only 26 percent to its highest (Kompas, 30
August 2012).
The most current survey was conducted by Indonesia Network for Election Survey. Released
in November 2012, this pollster looked more specifically to critical sector such as corruption
eradication and law enforcement, social stability and public welfare. It revealed that 94,8
percent of respondents expressed their dissatisfaction with government performance in
corruption eradication and law enforcement. While in maintaining social stability and
improving public welfare, 42,5 percent of respondent said that there had been a decline
(Transparency International, 20 November 2012).
There are many more pollsters conducted surveys on public satisfaction or trust. Despite
some slight variations, they came to similar conclusion. Overall, they showed the ever
decreasing level of public trust – or increasing public distrust – and public dissatisfaction
toward government institutions.
One of the public issues getting specific attention from pollsters is corruption eradication. In
this area, the findings were comparatively similar across time since 2009. Based on its serial
surveys, Lembaga Survey Indonesia, for example, indicates that the level of public trust
toward government had consistently decreased to its lowest level. Prior to 2009, the level of
trust was relatively stable at 23 percent in December 2005, 24 percent in December 2006 and
20 percent in December 2007. The rate then declined drastically to 5 percent in December
2009, 2 percent in December 2010 and reached its lowest point at minus 7 percent in
December 2011 (Lembaga Survey Indonesia 2012).
Government Response
Every time survey-based public opinion was released the government of Indonesia paid
serious attention. There are some ways the government posed its response to public
evaluation. The most normal response is being defensive by showing its denial or rejection.
Normally, it was the president’s spokesman who expressed government denial by, for
example, questioning methodological flaw in conducting the survey such as the
representativeness of the respondents and the parameters used (Vivanews 27 June 2011). In
other situations, government denial is based on the timing of polling. It consistently argued
for many times that many polling were conducted under abnormal conditions such as when
big cases or scandals are publicly shared. Should such polling were undertaken under normal
situation, so the government argued, public perception would be different.
A clear example of such response is when LSI released its survey on public evaluation of 100
days of the second term of SBY administration. The survey revealed the decrease of public
satisfaction over SBY administration as well as president popularity. The same applies to
another survey conducted by LSI in 2011 on President SBY’s popularity. Being elected with
60.8 percent of electoral votes, his popularity dropped significantly in mid 2011 to only 47,1
percent, the lowest in his whole term. The survey also uncovered four fundamental reasons
behind this decline. The majority of respondent perceived that SBY government had failed to
solve big cases such as Century-Gate and other mega corruption scandal, reactionary
personality of the president especially in dealing with cases implicating himself, the lack of
political capital to deal with public concerns, and his disability to manage his party
(Vivanews, 26 June 2011).
In response to such evaluation, government response was that it is simply too early to judge
government performance in only 100 days. President’s spokesman addressed the survey by
saying that such evaluation is still normal or acceptable (Kompas 27 January 2010). The same
response was expressed by the spokesman of the vice president (Vivanews 27 January 2010).
He went on to say that such evaluation, though too early, is a gentle reminder for the
government to improve its performance. A more reactionary came from the House
Spokesperson who is also one of the chairmen of the president’s party. He said that such
evaluation is simply a survey which does not necessarily represent the opinion of Indonesian
people. He even questioned the method and instrument used in the survey and the way
respondents were asked to fill the questionnaire. He further maintained that such survey is
subject to manipulation (Vivanews, 26 June 2011).
Those reactions stood in contrast to public expectation to use polling result as one source of
information to improve government performance. Sunarto Ciptoharjono from the LSI
maintained that there is no alternative for SBY but to take any necessary revolutionary policy
measures to correct such negative perception. This is even more pressing given limited time
he has until 2014 (Vivanews, 26 June 2011).
These all are to show that government is unable to give proper response to public evaluation.
Rather than taking public evaluation as policy input, government took such evaluation as
something politically embarrassing. Because of this, instead of giving more concrete and
decisive corrective policy initiatives, the government involved in political game to safe its
face. The problem here is the farther it involves in such game, the clearer in the eyes of the
public that the government can do nothing. It is a political suicide indeed.
This condition deserves special attention, at least to me. Why does government behave like
that? Does defensive reaction imply that government is unwilling to correct itself? Or should
scholars find another alternative answer to this classic problem?
As maintained in the early section, this article tries to understand government response in a
more academically proportional way. While there are many angles which can be employed to
address such questions, this article will instead take institutional optic. The bottom line of the
argument is that government negative and reactionary response to public opinion is more a
symptom of a much deep-rooted institutional flaw. Why and how this is so?
In many occasions, SBY maintains his commitment to address the nation’s pressing agenda
such as fighting corruption, enforcing law, and alleviating poverty. He showed a prudent and
quite decisive leadership in responding those agenda, including ones coming directly from
public evaluation (Mietzner 2010). He again emphasized these in his five year development
plan as well as annual work plan. It is these issues which also attract public eyes and used as
the basis to judge government performance and popularity. It is also in these areas where
people perceive negatively. Unfortunately, the story in the fields worked almost always
against his vision and this is because government had in general failed to transform its plans
into actions.
This gap between prudent and decisive leadership and poor government performance – and
therefore, poor public trust to the government – has attracted academic interest. Scholars on
Indonesia have made these contradictory conditions an important research agenda. They
employed different angles in trying to explain or simply to understand the phenomenon. One
group of scholars employed interest-based perspective. It point to the effect of oligarchic
interests which survived democratic transition and now managed to capture most – if not all –
democratic institutions for the furtherance of their interests (Hadiz 2009; Robison and Hadiz,
2004; Hadiz and Robison 2003). These oligarchic actors also hijacked the government not to
respond to public concerns in the ways it is supposed to be.
This line of argument has also attracted criticisms. One of the most critical point of this
criticism refers to the autonomy of self-interested actors even under democratic system. This
is quite impossible given the already working democratic mechanisms in controlling selfinterested behaviors. Therefore some critiques prefer to look at broader context in or with
which the government must work. Institutional perspective is the offered to better understand
poor government response to public criticisms. Following institutional literature, political
institutions are important predictor of government capacity (for example Weaver and
Rockman 1993; Cox and McCubbins 2001;Tsebelis 2002; MacIntyre 2003).
Following this line of argument, the fact that SBY could only pose poor response to public
evaluation is significantly affected by the institutional arrangement he is working with. SBY
is the first Indonesian president directly elected by the people, first in 2004 and then in 2009.
In both elections, he secured comfortable majority votes of more than 60 percent. Having a
strong legitimacy, however, does not automatically allow him to govern the country in the
way he wants, especially in policy-making and implementation arenas. In these arenas, the
president needs to secure, first, legislative support and, second, ministerial compliance.
Indonesian constitution stipulates that policy making authority is shared between the
president and the House (DPR). Indeed, it is the DPR which now has the power to pass any
policy initiatives with the consent of the president; not vice versa as in the original
constitution. Because of this, the president has to secure legislative support to win any policy
agenda. The president has done this by establishing government coalition (table 1). Combined
with constitutional protection over terms of service (security of tenure), this should have
given SBY a very strong base to pursue any policy initiatives. However, as Linz and
Valenzuela (1994) have predicted, coalition does not always work under presidential system.
Even if it works, it is unpredictable and instable.
Table 1
Power configuration under SBY administration
Election
Year
Contesting
parties
Winning
parties
Fraction
Coalition
(% seat)
2004
24
16
10
75.3
2009
38
9
9
75.5
There are two important points to make from this power configuration. First, coalition has
two sides: collection and distribution (Laver and Shepsle 1996:282). In Indonesia,
distributive side of coalition is much stronger than the collective one. This implies that parties
join coalition not mainly to support the elected president but to gain access to state’s
resources which are controlled by the president. Therefore, as maintained by Slater
(2004:62), ‘political parties share power far more than they fight for it’ (italics in original).
Similarly, ‘coalitions are formed in order to gain power or to prevent other groups or
individuals from doing so’ (Wessel, 2005:118). Given this motive, it is sometimes SBY’s
coalition partners which avoid him from giving decisive responses to public evaluation. Some
coalition partners even have the motive to take credit from president’s poor performance in
the public eyes, especially when election is approaching. This is clear when a survey with bad
findings for the president is released. Among those who gave criticisms to the president are
also the president’s coalition partners. They blame the president for his poor performance
though they are themselves part of the problem.
Second, coalition is very much temporary and issue-based. This forces the president and his
party to work extra hard to mobilize support to secure decisive policy response. It is only
solid when then president establishes his cabinet, in which, political stakes over “who gets
what” are quite clear for parties. After that, the president sometimes has to find himself work
alone. This sometimes forces the president to govern alone, though the risk of doing so is
evidently clear as in the case of President Abdurrahman Wahid. He was sacked from the post
due to his hostile style of leadership to political parties and parliament on after 21 months in
power (Gorjao 2003:33).
Worse than this configuration is the effect it brings. With government power being shared
among many actors, there is no clear point of accountability. If coalition poses difficulties for
the president to give decisive policy response to the public, high power fragmentation makes
it difficult for the public to demand government accountability for its poor performance.
Although “voice and accountability” has overall increased under SBY administration (World
Bank 2011), it is extremely difficult, if not impossible, to locate a clear point of
accountability. As the president and his party run the government together with other parties,
it is confusing for the public to decide whom should be blamed or whom should be rewarded.
This blurred point of accountability has provided another opportunity for those running the
government to avoid public accountability (Weaver and Rockman 1993). What happens
amidst public distrust was blaming war, not between governing actors and opposition forces,
but mainly among government coalition parties themselves.
This combination has made it difficult for the president to take any policy initiatives in a
decisive and timely manner. Even if the president managed to solve this problem, the second
trap is still waiting for him and this is something to do with policy implementation. In many
cases, President SBY managed to make decisive policy, but it failed to be effectively
implemented. This is so because the real implementation actors lie on the ministers and
bureaucracy. In the first place, this needs a strong coordination among ministries and this did
not work as expected (World Bank 2009:16). More than the lack of coordination, the
underlying problem is politics. Due to the pressure for establishing inclusive coalition, the
president must distribute ministerial posts to his coalition partners. Again, as the motive is
rather to take than to give, distribution of ministerial posts only make things more
complicated. Party-affiliated ministers are more loyal to their parties than to the president.
Their main interests are to secure their party’s interests, rather than to help the president
implement his programs. For many times, SBY seemed to have lost control over his
ministries. Cabinet reshuffle only triggered more hostility with political parties. His initiative
to establish a joint secretariat for coalescing parties (the so called SEKBER Koalisi) also
failed to solve problems. It even created more problems than solving it (Kompas, 09 May
2010; Antaranews, 14 May 2010). This finally led to ineffective policy implementation and
this is even the most critical area the president failed to manage (Basri and Patunru
2006:313).
Given these institutional circumstances, even the most visionary and decisive president would
find it difficult to address public evaluation. It also explains why the more government
responded to public evaluation through public discourse, the clearer for the public that the
government can do nothing. Therefore, to enable the president to better respond to public
evaluation or distrust, Indonesia needs to rethink or reform its institutional framework. One
of such initiatives is to give the president more veto power in policy-making process. This
will have a snowball effect for president’s independence in selecting his cabinet. Having full
control is a minimal condition for the president to ensure effective implementation.
Conclusion
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