ALSA 2025 meeting

This paper seeks to provide conceptual and empirical justifications for conducting civil servant disobedience to curb bureaucratic pathology. Various civil servants have long complained about facing illegal instructions from their superiors. It is a recurring problem in many places in Indonesia. Thus, the problem shall be seen as a bureaucratic pathology rather than a maladministration. As reporting them to legal enforcers may be too risky, the disobedience can be done by refusing to cooperate with superiors who give illegal instructions. The term 'superiors' here focuses on positions in government held by politicians, temporary positions obtained through elections, i.e., President, Governor, Mayor, Regent, or temporary political positions given through appointment to a particular person, such as a Minister. There are four arguments to conduct bureaucrat disobedience. First, the conceptual justification long rooted in civil disobedience can be adapted to bureaucrats. Second, legal justification dictates that civil servants' loyalty is not to their superiors but primarily to society and the law. Third, cost and benefit analysis based on several court decisions revealed that the benefits to bureaucrats of following illegal instructions from politicians are not worth comparing to the risks and sanctions. Fourth, from a religious sociological perspective, religion requires obedience only to God, not servitude to man or worldly interests. The article also provides several different variants of civil disobedience in Indonesia, which are based on research and respondents. The offered justifications to conduct civil servant disobedience here may be used for the Indonesian context and as food for thought for any country facing similar situations.