Decolonizing accountability: social audit as epistemic and political resistance in Indonesia's postcolonial governance
Isnaini MuallidinPurpose
This article develops a decolonial framework to reconceptualize social audit in Indonesia as a tripartite praxis of epistemic resistance, political resistance and transformative hybridity. It examines how communities use audit to challenge colonial governance logics and reclaim accountability, moving beyond technical anti-corruption tools toward transformative state-society renegotiation.
Design/methodology/approach
Employing critical interpretive methodology, this study synthesizes diverse secondary data: NGO reports, policy documents, media analysis and academic literature across multiple Indonesian cases. Through abductive thematic and narrative analysis, it examines how social audit practices manifest as epistemic, political and hybrid dimensions of decolonial accountability.
Findings
The analysis reveals social audit as a tripartite decolonial praxis: (1) epistemic resistance challenges state knowledge monopolies through vernacular evidence; (2) political resistance reclaims space and reverses the audit gaze; and (3) transformative hybridity builds strategic bridges to reshape state logics from within, enabling fragile but significant accountability gains.
Research limitations/implications
Reliance on secondary data limits granular ethnographic insight. Future research requires longitudinal and comparative studies to trace institutional change. For practice, this implies shifting from toolkit approaches to supporting communities' epistemic infrastructure, protecting political space and fostering strategic state-society engagement for sustainable accountability.
Practical implications
Policymakers and practitioners must move beyond technical toolkits to support communities' epistemic infrastructure, protect political space from reprisal and foster long-term institutional engagement. This requires identifying reformist state allies and nurturing platforms for sustained state-society negotiation to enable transformative rather than ritualistic, accountability.
Social implications
This framework transforms accountability from a state-managed procedure to a democratically enacted right. It empowers communities as legitimate knowers and political actors, fostering civic dignity and reclaiming postcolonial citizenship. By bridging state-society divides, it seeds alternative democratic horizons in contexts of democratic erosion.
Originality/value
To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this study offers the first integrated decolonial framework of social audit as tripartite praxis, bridging critical political economy with epistemic critique. It advances accountability theory by conceptualizing transformative hybridity and provides empirical nuance from Indonesia, challenging universalist governance models with Southern pluriversal alternatives.