From my experience, there is definitely a lack of coordination among government officials. To be honest, I don't understand why these guys don't meet and start to seriously work together in formulating clear and consistent policies, especially for sectors with high economic impacts. For ministries, this should be coordinated by the Coordinating Minister and supervised by the President, but I guess, that's still a dream in Indonesia.
By the way, the last time I joined a coordination meeting among different ministries for issuing a simple government regulation, it was a mess. Some officials only talk about the old precedent and don't want to make changes (which are actually necessary) simply because they need to discuss it again with their respective ministries. No coordination, no decision maker, and to add the problem, they don't want to listen to suggestions if those are not covered in their manual. Sometimes I wonder, with this kind of government officials, do we actually need a government to survive?
Designing anti corruption policy is indeed problematic and will need a thorough analysis. However, I would like to raise some general ideas that might be used in fighting corruption. Hopefully this can trigger a bigger discussion on how we can arrange the policy for the greater good of society. My post will deal with two designs, the design of penal sanctions and the design of the law enforcers (as a response to Cafe Salemba's post) Designing Penal Sanction for Anti Corruption Policy In my opinion, with respect to the anti corruption policy, the main focuses of our penal sanctions should be: (i) to ensure that the Government can retrieve all of the stolen assets (together with interests and any lost profits due to the inability to use those assets for certain period of time, and also the costs of investigating the cases); (ii) to prevent corruptors from repeating their criminal conduct and buying their freedom from any penal sanction; and (iii) to prevent the birth of new corruptors by imposing correct incentives. Does Indonesian anti corruption policy follow the above focuses? I don't think so.
What I see is that we only focus on sending the corruptors to prisons in the name of justice. I hate to say this, but it's useless. What's the purpose of sending these bad guys to the prison if you can't retrieve anything valuable from them and if they can still buy their way out of it? Prison only creates additional costs and expenses. It would be cheaper if we just give them death penalty. But then again, what for?
The biggest problem of corruption is that it diminishes the state assets. Those assets are supposed to be used for the greater good of the society, and we pay some of those assets from our taxes. Now, if the end result of our anti corruption policy is only to spend additional money to conduct the investigation for the purpose of paying the living expenses of these evil men in the prison, the entire policy is a big failure! It would be cheaper if we just let these corruptors run free. At least we don't need to pay for the expensive investigation process. If we really want to eradicate the corruption in accordance with the above focuses, the penal sanctions should be, among others: (i) taking over the entire assets of the corruptors (thus getting back the missing assets together with all of the interets and the lost profits); (ii) kicking out the corruptors from their official position and preventing them from getting any governmental position for their entire life (thus preventing their ability to repeat their criminal activities); and (iii) announcing the name of the corruptors in publicly accessed media (such as major newspapers) as a sample for their comrades (thus providing a good incentive for other would born corruptors to not follow the same path). Should we send the corruptors to the prison with the sanctions above? I believe, no. Our main interests have been satisfied, why bother imposing additional costs to the tax payer by sending these guys to the prison? What harm can these people do if they don't have any funds and access to perform their criminal activities? Designing Law Enforcers for Anti Corruption Policy In designing the policy for Anti Corruption Law Enforcers, our main focuses should be: (i) to create a task force that can deal with anti corruption cases quickly and efficiently; and (ii) to provide a better incentives for these law enforcers to perform properly. My first suggestion would be: adding more resources to the law enforcers which means that we don't need competition among law enforcers.
What we need is cooperation and collaboration! If there are 2 law enforcers, their performances should be linked. So a bad or good performance of one law enforcer will affect the other law enforcer. This can be implemented through the financial compensation of both law enforcers. I would prefer one single law enforcer though and add more resources to such body. My second suggestion: we can provide a good financial incentive in the form of granting a portion of the recovered state assets to the law enforcer who can successfully secure those assets from the corruptors. By doing this, we increase the cost of bribery to a new level. Imagine how much a corruptor must pay now to save his ass if he must compete with a portion of his own entire assets? This is also a good incentive to increase the performance of the law enforcers. Now, other than receive an honor as clean and professional law enforcers, they can receive a better financial benefit which is connected with their actual performance. It's time to bring this anti corruption fighting to a whole new business. This is my version of "Law for Sale".
From all the existing theories in the world, I bet conspiracy theories are the most long lasting ones. But why? Why people love conspiracy theories so much? What's the effect of these conspiracy theories and how the government should deal with it? A short paper from Cass Sunstein and Adrian Vermeule could give some hints to answer that. Download it here.
According to them, one of the distinctive characteristics of conspiracy theories is their "self sealing" quality, meaning, conspiracy theorists are not likely to be persuaded by an attempt to dispel their theories; they may even characterize that very attempt as further proof of the conspiracy. I begin to think that these conspiracy theorists are acting like religious fundamentalists, resistant to correction and living in denial :p.
In any way, the case of conspiracy theories is pretty relevant for Indonesia. The paper argues that conspiracy theories are more powerful in societies with systematical malfunctioning or skewed institutions of knowledge. Some simple questions, do you believe your own government, that they really work for the benefit of the society? Do you even believe that all of the cases related to "religious violence" are a part of bigger schemes?
Conspiracy theories can also be dangerous. We wouldn't have any problem if they stay as nice gossips material to be discussed at "warung kopi". The problem is, they are not as simple as that. In some cases, conspiracy theories can produce an imminent threat to the society. Consider the case of zionist-american conspiracy to control the world, that everything that happen in this world until today are the result of their control? Do you believe this? Personally, I don't buy it, especially with the current economic crisis in America. But as you may see, some people believe that. Try the terrorists who think that they are in a holy war with Americans because of such conspiracy theories. Or if we look nearby, the case of Ahmadiya persecution can be a solid example of the danger of conspiracy theories. Ahmadiya has existed in Indonesia for more than 75 years, why the dispute occurs now? What's behind all of this? Will the violence stop?
The paper further argues that the Government should carefully deal with conspiracy theories. Remember the "self-sealing" quality? Therefore, not all conspiracy theories should be rebutted, only the ones who pose the most serious danger. And even if it is the case, the rebuttal should not always be made by the Government, especially if the Government is the subject of the conspiracy theories. Independent think thank institutions can also help. Of course, these institutions must have solid credibilities to gain the trust of the people (and I must say, the case of establishing these trusted institutions is quite challenging in Indonesia).
I would suggest you to read the entire paper by yourself. This is a very short paper, consisting of 30 pages only and has summarized the basic issues of conspiracy theories. Hopefully, the paper can open our eyes on how easy we can fall into the prey of conspiracy theories.
I've just found this rather gloomy article accusing that some US law schools (mostly third and fourth tiers law schools) were tricking people to think that the super expensive tuition fee of those law schools is a good investment for their future, since in reality, many new law graduates later find out that they are succumbed to excessive amount of debt without any proper job to support the repayment. A pity indeed!
Based on the data provided in this site and my own personal research, the general annual cost for studying at a US private university law school, whether it is a top tier or low tier one, is around US$65,000-US$70,000 (meaning that a law student needs to spend around US$200,000 to finish a 3 years JD course!). The cost can be cheaper though if it is a public university, but still, it's expensive from any point of view. If you are interested, you can see the data of various US law schools ranking here.
With such huge amount of tuition fee and living expenses, no wonder law graduates are expecting to find a decent job that can help them to repay the loan as soon as possible. But, with a decline market for lawyers and the economic recession in the US (somehow the case is still the same for 2011), finding jobs are getting harder and harder for law graduates, and the situation is far worse for low tier graduates. Now, what surprises me is the fact that there are many people in the US who actually think that being enrolled in low ranked law schools can actually give them some advantages in competing with top tier graduates, especially when the tuition fees' discrepancy is relatively small. Are these people overestimated themselves, or are they simply the victims of an organized scam by law schools? Time will tell.
If you ask me, I am more interested to know why US law schools are very expensive and whether the same will someday happen in Indonesia. As a comparison, the total tuition fee of my law education for 3.5 years (2001-2005) at the University of Indonesia, an Indonesian public university, is only US$980 (with an exchange rate of US$1 = Rp9,000). Try to compare this with the current annual tuition fee of the University of Washington School of Law, a public university in the US, which reaches US$22,267 for residents and US$32,777 for non-residents. I know that University of Indonesia's tuition fee has increased significantly for the last few years, but I am certain that the total amount is far cheaper than its counterparts in the US.
Another interesting question, does the overall quality of top tier US law schools justify the expensive tuition fee? Hopefully yes, since I'll be going to one of them in September. Wish me luck :p