Ethics or the Right Thing? Corruption and Care in the Age of Good Governance by Sylvia Tidey (review)

Reviewed by: Ethics or the Right Thing? Corruption and Care in the Age of Good Governance by Sylvia Tidey Sari Damar Ratri Sylvia Tidey. Ethics or the Right Thing? Corruption and Care in the Age of Good Governance. Chicago: HAU Books, 2022. Corruption has long been a captivating subject for social scientists who study post-Reformasi Indonesia. Scholars of contemporary Indonesian politics and governance have been both intrigued and repulsed by the efforts of the Indonesian state and international agencies to revive the country from the aftermath of Suharto's corrupt regime. Despite Indonesia's endeavor to transition to a liberal democracy, many believe that it still suffers from persistent patronage politics and clientelism. In the immediate post-Reformasi years, the efforts to combat corruption appeared heroic. The endeavor to establish democracy under the banner of "good governance" was supported by "the international development and financial community" (3), and this has greatly influenced the perception of corruption as a problem rooted in the traditions of rational choice and economic liberalism, advocating for a lean state approach to address it. Ethics or the Right Thing? Corruption and Care in the Age of Good Governance was primarily written during a period when anti-corruption discourses were being institutionalized in Indonesia. The establishment of the Corruption Eradication Commission (I. Komisi Pemberantasan Korupsi, KPK), along with auditing bodies and anti-corruption courts served as evidence of this trend (3). At the time of Sylvia Tidey's fieldwork in Kupang, a city located in Indonesia's southernmost province of East Nusa Tenggara, anti-corruption efforts were deemed crucial for facilitating the country's transition to "a desired state of liberal democracy" (4). It is thus not surprising that this book marks another profound turn in the study of governance, politics, and ethics in Indonesia. Instead of exploring how civil servants in Kupang City have come to accept a global consensus regarding corruption, democracy, and the concept of good governance, Tidey reevaluates the relationship between these three elements by posing the opposite question: "what if anti-corruption efforts actually make governance worse? If we look beyond hegemonic understandings of corruption and conceptions of the governmental good, what shapes can good governance take and how does corruption figure within it?" Anyone who has visited East Nusa Tenggara can attest to the province's abundance of cultural and natural attractions, which have made it a significant draw for tourists. From exploring the Komodo National Park to creating your own tenun ikat in Sikka Village, East Nusa Tenggara offers an array of irresistible experiences in exchange for the province's local income. However, as Tidey notes, "the province of East Nusa Tenggara is among Indonesia's poorest" (6). The irony of living below the national poverty line despite having ample cultural and natural resources is best exemplified in the jokes about the acronym by which the province is known, NTT. Instead of Nusa Tenggara Timur, NTT stands for Nanti Tuhan Tolong (God will help later), Nasib Tak Tentu (uncertain fate), or Nusa Tetap Tertinggal (the island left behind) (6). People in Manggarai, one of East Nusa Tenggara's regencies where I conducted some of my research, use the same joke when discussing the roles of development projects in their communities. This highlights the contrast between the struggles people face to improve their lives and the abundant resources present in their neighborhoods. [End Page 187] The geographic location of East Nusa Tenggara signifies sociopolitical and structural attributes that give rise to a sense of remoteness, distance, and inaccessibility. These spatial discourses, based on East Nusa Tenggara's geography, underpin the logic of many intervention programs in the region. See, for example, Jesse H. Grayman's findings on the use of a "geographic vocabulary of fields (medan, lapangan) and topography (topografi)" by the village facilitators for the World Bank–funded program PNPM Generasi1 during routine supervision in the Manggarai highlands to address problems of scale and governance. These sociopolitical and structural features of East Nusa Tenggara's geography persist in development intervention practices and also continue to shape scholarly work on Eastern Indonesia. Gerry van Klinken and Edward Aspinal acknowledge the factors that contributed to the construction of the "remoteness...