The making of competitive bureaucracy: A case of bureaucratic reform in West Java province

Abstract

In this study, bureaucratic reform is understood as the practice of power operating through discursive process, that is, through the creation of a claim of truth on certain reform model, which subsequently is followed by disciplining practice to transform bureaucrat’s behavior. To analyze it, this study uses a case study of the implementation of Competition Funding Program to accelerate the achievement of Human Development Index in West Java Indonesia during the period of 2005–2010. The result shows how normalization and performativity is operated as technologies of power to construct an identity of innovative bureaucracy. This construction is justified by the idea of competition as a system of knowledge to produce regime of truth of competitive bureaucracy as a counter identity for conventional bureaucracy. Through normalization, bureaucracy is categorized into innovative bureaucracy (an expertise-based identity) and conventional bureaucracy (an clerical-based identity). Performativity is embodied through standardization of new procedures of work based on knowledge management to enhance expertise. The result suggests that bureaucratic reform has become the practice of power that operates on minds (through the creation of a system of knowledge) and bodies (by disciplining), which occurs simultaneously.

Keywords:

• bureaucratic reform
• disciplining
• governmentality
• regime of competition

Public Interest Statement

Bureaucratic reform is a buzzword to show how government is responding to external changes and public demand for effective, efficient, and professional bureaucracy. Since then, bureaucracy has been targeted from various model of reform. Bureaucratic reform actually is more than choosing one model over the others. In fact, reforming bureaucracy is creating new identity for bureaucracy and ensuring that identity is well-performed by bureaucrats. This article describes how bureaucracy embraces the idea of innovative bureaucracy and embodies it by complying to the standard of performance. Understanding this process can improve future formulation and implementation of bureaucratic reform programs. Exploration of how bureaucrats' physical body is adapting and eventually institutionalizing the new identity can help policy makers to formulate an agency-based bureaucratic reform model.

Notes

1. Foucault criticizes the power that treats the power merely as something that “excludes”, “forces”, “censors”, “exploits”, “covers”, and “hides”, and he suggests starting to study power as something productive, as an ability to produce reality, to construct the domain of the and truth rites. See in Philpott (2003, p. 110).

2. Foucault elaborates the concept of governmentality to analyze the relation between what he calls technology of the self and technology of domination, and constitution of the subject with formation of the state (in Burchell, Gordon, & Miller, 1991). Government in the concept of governmentality means any more or less calculated and rational activity, undertaken by a multiplicity of authorities and agencies, employing a variety of techniques and forms of knowledge, that seeks to shape conduct by working through the desires, aspirations, interests and beliefs of various actors, for definite but shifting ends and with a diverse set of relatively unpredictable consequences, effects and outcomes (Dean, 2010). Hence, the analysis of governance relates to the methods of calculation, both qualitative and quantitative, types of authority institutions, forms of the utilized knowledge, techniques and method, governed entities and how the entities form, the goals to achieve, and results and consequences which emerge.

3. Tekhne is defined as proper training and exercise in order for a person to bring it to perfection (Foucault, in Harrer, 2005).

4. Attachment of the table format of data form in the proposal of self evaluation.

5. Guideline for writing the proposal of PPK-IPM 2007.

6. Guideline for writing the proposal of PPK-IPM 2007.

7. Guideline for writing the proposal of PPK-IPM 2007.

8. Interview with the informant, MS (2012).

9. It happened to Kuningan Regency, which had succeeded to be selected to the second stage, and it only needed to take the last stage of selection, namely Proposal of Implementation. The proposal had been ready to submit to Government of West Java Province to be assessed by the reviewer team. However, the region failed to receive the fund of PPK-IPM because it was late in submitting the proposal. It was due to the change of the head of the region; hence the new head of the region was late in signing the proposal. Although the reason was quite clear, the rule remained enforced and the region was forced to take the selection of PPK-IPM from the first stage in the next batch (Interview with the informant, IN, 2012).

10. Interview with the informant (MS, 2012).

11. Head of Industry, Trade, and Cooperatives Agency (Disperindagkop) of Bekasi City who is also the Manager of PPK-IPM of Bekasi City, Noviar Hermansyah explained that there are thousands of businesspersons of Small and Medium-sized Enterprises (SME) in Bekasi, but Disperindagkop still finds it difficult to collect data on the exact number of them because they are scattered around the city and sometimes they are undetected by the city government (in Anonymous, 2010).

12. Interview with the informant (MS, 2012).

13. Chief of the Implementer Unit of PPK-IPM of Ciamis Regency told: “Because PPK-IPM is a new program with a different pattern, that is, the requirement to submit a more complete and detailed proposal of clear programs, the team assigned to write the proposal worked on it tirelessly. During the proposal writing process a member had to be treated in hospital. A moment later, the Government of West Java Province stated their region as one of the recipients of the grant of PPK-IPM. The sick, fatigue, and tired feelings were paid” (in an interview, 2012).

14. Interview with the informant (SN, 2012).

15. Interview with the informant (H, 2012).

16. It was affirmed by the chief of the implementer unit of PPK-IPM of Ciamis Regency that: monitoring and evaluation system was strictly conducted by the Reviewer Team of West Java Province, so that the anticipation of the Implementer Unit of Ciamis Regency was always prepared to receive monitoring and evaluation from the Provincial Implementer Unit of PPK-IPM. We also had to be prepared to receive sharp criticism from the Monev/Reviewer Team of West Java Province which comprised not only the bureaucrat element but also the independent one. However, all of these certainly did not make us withdraw from the program; we were even motivated to correct the weaknesses (in an interview, 2012).

Additional information

Funding

Funding. The authors received no direct funding for this research.

Notes on contributors

Caroline Paskarina

Caroline Paskarina is a lecturer in Department of Political Science, Faculty of Political and Social Science, Universitas Padjadjaran, Indonesia. Her area of interest in research includes governmentality, discourse analysis, democracy, and local politics. This paper is her dissertation research for doctoral degree in Department of Political Science, Universitas Gadjah Mada, Indonesia. This paper is about disciplining bureaucracy in order to construct competitive bureaucracy. The argument is that bureaucratic reform is a practice of power operated through system of knowledge that disciplining body. Bureaucratic reform usually seen and analyzed through managerial perspective, whilst this paper offers power perspective as alternative. This perspective explains bureaucratic reform as discursive struggle manifest through technology of power and technology of self to create bureaucracy in certain identity. Hopefully this research can contribute to advance theorization of bureaucratic reform from Foucauldian study of power’s perspective.