"But that's not corruption": an interpretive approach to corruption in business-government relations in Indonesia

Abstract

Mainstream corruption research suggests that corruption is universally harmful or dysfunctional and is bad for development and democracy. It also assumes that people who engage in corruption are rational actors seeking to maximise gain and are detached from their social context. However, this view has been challenged by a group of scholars who argue that in order to better understand how corruption comes about, we need to study what it means in context. Observations of practices commonly labelled as corruption suggest there are locally situated understandings of corruption that diverge from its portrayal in the media and by the global anti-corruption movement. This research investigates t..