Public Service Ethics By State Apparatus In Indonesia: A Critical Reflection

Abstract

Public service should be understood as a set of efforts by state apparatus for fulfilling public needs to realize general welfare. General welfare is not realized due to the bad public service by state apparatus as corruption, indolent administrative service, discriminative and not smooth goods service, threatened people security and solidarity. Poor public service is opposed to morality. Public service ethics discourse is directed to improve poor public service by state apparatus as normative rules and code of conduct. Public service ethics fail to improve the poor public service. This research, with title Public Service ethics by State Apparatus in Indonesia: A Critical Reflection is reinterpreted to find out the new meaning of public service ethics.

This research is focused on research matter dealing with public service, state apparatus, general welfare, and ethics. This research is carried out with library study which focus on the books and journals. Research analysis is focused on verstehen analysis to understand the public service ethics by state apparatus as found in books and journals. Facts and thoughts of the authors are interpreted through hermeneutic method and trying to find the new meaning of public service ethics.

This research finds out that public service ethics deals not only with normative rule or code of ethics, but also with goal dimension, act dimension, and institutional dimension. In this perspective, ethics means as the goal of good life with and for others in just institution. Public service ethics is directed to construct the good life with and for others in just institution. Domination structure in institution dimension is the fundamental reasons of poor public service. Public service ethics constructs the good life with and for others in just institution by dismantling domination structure in public service as new habit in micro individual domain, remuneration improvement, retrospective justice, democratic relation among state apparatus, restructured public service organization as bureaucratic reformation, local autonomy in messo domain of organization, power rationalization, and discursive democracy with law protection of whistleblower, citizen charter, public choice model, civil society empowerment, and subsidiary principle in macro domain political system.

Key words: public service, state apparatus, domination structure and ethics