Is Indonesia More of a Failed State Than I Realised?

What is a failed government and is Indonesia’s government a failure have always been big questions asked by Indonesians and the world, especially today.

Photo by Hobi industri on Unsplash

How governments should work

I recently watched a Hank Green video that talked about how governments fail. He says in the beginning of the video that there are “2 halves to the government working and both have to stay intact, or you lose the other” and I quote him verbatim on these next points:

1. The people who work for the government have to believe that they are serving the public and that is their goal.
2. The public has to believe that it is being served by the government.
3. This is a loop. If the public thinks that civil servants are lazy parasites, good people leave those jobs or they never join or if they stay, they are incapable of doing their jobs because no one will listen to them or work with them. If good people leave or they never join or if people will not work with them or if the citizens don’t vote for leaders who will support those things, the government gets worse. If the government gets worse, the public gets more evidence that civil servants are lazy parasites.

This is speaking about mere civil servants working the mundane, boring work to keep the government running, and not speaking into the politicking of politicians. Of course, the rest of the video is very US-centric because he is an American living in the USA. But hearing the way he laid this out about how the government should work really made me think a lot about my own country, Indonesia.

How the Indonesian government is

I immediately thought about how the Indonesian government is already a failure from a fundamental level. This definition is barely how the Indonesian government works at all. I want to believe the best in people, I want to give people the benefit of the doubt. I’m sure good civil servants who just want to serve the public exist in Indonesia, but I believe they are so rare, if they haven’t been ousted by the corrupt status quo in the first place.

Let’s start with how Indonesians think about working for the government. A lot of parents wish for their children to become civil servants because they believe that the paychecks are steady, the pay rises are guaranteed, and the pension is good. Even from this we can see, nowhere is anyone thinking that their children should be civil servants because they want their children to serve the public. This is on the most benevolent level.

However, the Indonesians who want to work for the government are usually those who are thinking about how they can make the most money out of extorting the public, citizens who are just trying to pay their taxes or build a company honestly. They are thinking about how all the lengthy, complicated bureaucratic steps can be exploited for embezzlement. They are thinking about all the bribes they can take. This is a massive problem in Indonesia. This is why nothing ever gets done because the system is corrupt to the core that it becomes impossible to do anything honestly.

Let me rephrase that. The system is not corrupt. The system is corruption, at this point.

There are good, honest, hardworking Indonesians who would probably love to work for the government to serve the public genuinely and want to do their best, to maintain their integrity, to not steal public funds. But the systemic corruption does not let them thrive at all. In fact, if you don’t play along, the others who are are going to mess up your life and just figure out a way to oust you entirely. Maybe even worse things might happen to you and your family. Nobody is willing to work with the goody-two-shoes. So, of course the good people don’t want to work for the government in the first place. Especially in the current political climate, everything is so much worse. In fact, people don’t even want to take any government projects at all at this point because of what might happen to them in the future.

As previously mentioned, this makes the public have more evidence that civil servants are just lazy parasites. The public have zero trust in the government now. I certainly don’t. We definitely do not believe that the government is serving us at all. Especially not right now. The Rupiah being at historic lows, the entire stock market is down, there are no jobs, while the leaders of the nation are using public funds to gallivant across the world in luxury hotels. The corruption has always been so blatant, somehow even more now.

We, the citizens, also more often than not, do not vote for good leaders. They always promise sweet nothings on the campaign trail, only to set everything on fire once they are in office. There are no good options. I didn’t even know who to vote for at the last presidential election until the last minute because there are no good options. Very few people actually think about who they’re going to vote for, anyway. People just vote for whoever is most popular, or the party that visited their village at paid them more money to vote for them. Politicians are treated like celebrities when they are well-liked. Everyone wants to meet them and worship them when they meet them in person. Very few people realise this is very strange behaviour. Nobody should be worshipping any politician. They should be, first and foremost, civil servants, public servants, who work for all of us, and are being paid by our taxes. They should be held to higher standards and also treated not as idols, but rather with accountability. This is, of course, non-existent in this country.

Is it the citizens’ fault for not voting smarter? Not entirely. The government does prefer to keep us stupid. We are fed a lot of nationalistic, patriotic propaganda. The social media algorithms have definitely not helped at all. “Buzzers” are big business here. Buzzers are people who get paid to tweet, comment certain statements to propel specific agendas on social media. They have thousands, maybe millions of accounts, and can sway opinions. Basically, it is like the monkeys enslaved by Lex Luthor in the 2025 Superman movie who tweet, comment, spread hate towards Superman. It is almost exactly like that, except actual humans are willing to do this for a living.

It also must be stated that corruption is also pervasive among the public. It is not just a government problem. It is a societal problem.

With the recent dubious cases against past ministers and even tech bros, the rule of law is dwindling. The courts are just instruments of personal vendettas at this point.

Conclusion

So, where am I getting with all of this? Hank’s video made me realise that perhaps Indonesia is more of a failed state than I previously thought. I know it is often asked whether Indonesia is a failed state or not, and there are arguments on why it might not be a completely failed state (yet). Despite all of these systemic and societal issues, somehow Indonesia has survived this long and is kind of functional. Somehow. I don’t even know how. But yes, ultimately, I think it is already wrong from a fundamental level. And I have no idea how to fix that.