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When dreaming about the things, our mind can confuse us. Our mind can make every thing possible. But to put in practice, it will take time. 1 Time and resource 2 Management and leadership 3 Political influence 4 Corruption 5 Policy Just for the limited time, if PM managed above 5 points, then at least he will do some changes. Otherwise there are big question marks.
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Spot on Graham and not just UK and not just DFAT.
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Certainly the point about buying short-term results is relevant: there can never be any 'skipping straight to Weber'. Now Raab has been sacked it will be interesting to see what may change. Probably little.
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The report for me truly is unsound. I suppose there is another interest that we can not easily figure out. Using Western Template to measure hunger in PNG does not resonate. I have land which I own, I have forest which I own, I have waters which I own. Only the lazy go hungry.
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Very insightful and useful blog Graham. Might also be relevant to DFAT right now???
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Great piece - with much to consider for the direction of Australia's aid program and the need for approaches underpinned by this kind of sophisticated understanding around how social change happens and the usefulness (or otherwise) of external actors in that process.
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Thanks for the insight
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Thank you Kurt, That's an excellent, interesting comment. My understanding is that part of the original academic case for LPV was that it would make campaigning less zero sum and more transactional, fostering cooperation. Although I don't think the original designers envisaged "transactions" in the form of vote-buying. Rather, they were thinking more along the lines of "you get my second preferences, I get yours, and we don't fight." Regardless, I agree with you that vote-buying is better than violence. (Or, more accurately, less bad). At this point, an opponent might say that we've gotten both vote-buying and violence, which is true. Although, of course, I don't think LPV really caused the vote buying, and it's always possible violence would be worse still without LPV. Thanks again for an interesting, insightful comment. Terence
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Thanks to the authors for an excellent blog. It is suggested in the blog that there's a "...potential downside to LPV: vote buying. Vote buying has increased, something often attributed to LPV." May I suggest that perhaps vote buying is an intended upside of LPV? My reasoning follows. As implied in the blog, a specific original design objective of LPV was inclusivity - FPTP elections were becoming characterised as violent zero-sum affairs, by candidates firstly monopolising their base vote (less than 10% of vote in some elections), and then doing anything possible (no holds barred!) to prevent their rivals from getting their monopolised votes entered into the formal count. Instead, the basic formula for winning LPV elections is that the candidate with the most 2s and 3s wins (after they've avoided elimination through early rounds with their high count of 1s). This requires complex negotiation with enemies and rivals, deal-making, and compromise. These negotiations between rival camps happen many months (sometimes years) before elections. Seen from one angle this looks suspiciously like the roots of inter-group social capital. The latter may be seen by some as the "corruption" of LPV elections. If it is, it's important to remember the old maxim about corruption from Samuel Huntington (paraphrased) - "if not corruption, then direct political violence". Perhaps a pragmatic view is that PNG elections aren't going to look like Denmark in the near future, but that the "vote-buying corruption" of LPV is better than the only realistic alternative, which is the zero-sum all-or-nothing game of FPTP? In some respects, elections are not about who wins or loses. One of their most important functions is as a participatory exercise that engineers the legitimacy of the state. With that objective in mind, LPV should be seen as successful. FPTP elections resulted with winning candidates with less than 10% of the available vote connected to them. The average for LPV is much better. If state legitimacy is an issue (which it is, in PNG), the objective should be to maximise the connection between each individual voter's ballot paper, and the individuals who end up in Parliament. Durable governance improvements are never silver bullets. They are simply bricks that seek to shore-up perpetually fragile human systems that attempt to organise raw power. Perhaps LPV should be seen in this light. There are no silver bullets for PNG governance, but it looks like LPV nudges the complex system in the right direction. In the real world, this is better than the alternative. The governance system of modern Denmark is just an assemblage of a myriad of small nudges and bricks over many hundreds and indeed, thousands of years. It wasn’t built in a day.
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Very true. The key elements to help appreciate the Kina value is trapped in the production sector. We continue to import more and export far below. Government need to allow more foreign investment and set up more factories of the goods to begin with the most frequently imported products.
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