Effect of Budget Discretion on Corruption Level and Public Accountability: Evidence from Local Indonesian Government

This research investigates whether the level of corruption and public accountability of local government budgets differ between discretionary and non-discretionary types. This quantitative research uses secondary data of criminal law from the Attorney General. Accordingly, corruption cases related to misappropriation of budgets from Year 2010–2016 are used as the research sample. The results show that corruption cases of misappropriation in discretionary and non-discretionary budgets are indifferent. This indicates that the level of financial loss of the State is not associated with the type of budget. However, further tests show that there are differences in financial losses between high and low discretionary budgets. This means that, the higher the level of budget discretion, the bigger the opportunities of corruption. This research finds contrasting findings with regards to the accountability level, revealing differences between discretionary and non-discretionary budget cases. Keywords—corruption, discretionary budget, nondiscretionary budget, grant and social assistance budget, procurement budget