New development: Developmentalism, accounting and digital activism—insights from public unrest in Indonesia

IMPACTA combination of government accounting and fiscal information with digital activism can be a powerful tool for public oversight. It enables citizens to identify systemic governance failures, expose élite misconduct, and reveal entrenched inequalities, nepotism, corruption, and patronage within government and parliament. In Indonesia, for example, the dissemination of parliamentary salaries or revenue disparities between officials and the public—drawn from government reports and reframed by social activists—has played a central role during periods of social unrest, demonstrating how transparency, coupled with activist engagement, can challenge élite power structures. This illustrates a compelling dynamic: patterns of patronage and corruption within government, along with their consequences, have increasingly been counterbalanced by digital activism, as social media platforms empower citizens to contest government policies and highlight poor governmental performance. Similar dynamics have also emerged in other developing and emerging democracies, highlighting the broader relevance of this pattern.