Comments

Thanks Terence for this piece As a learned citizen of this country-PNG, what you have described did developed into a conventional electoral politics now unlike in the 70s and 80s. There is one common character shared by both PNG and SI that gave rise to this clientelism politics. That common shared cultural character remains in our blood system and it will not change in the near future-Melanesian way of life!. Not even foreign aid will improve that, even if the aid is tied to specific condition to improve clientelism politics. Therefore, to change this clientelism politics, it has to change from within ourselves-change our way of thinking and character. This would come with a new crop of leaders or citizens that can think differently -for an equitable governance and better life. If the aid programme were guided in this approach would be an ideal option. Otherwise, time will tell when this clientelism politics will continue until it blows out of proportion-rise in poor governance and worsen poverty across the country and citizens started to question each other and their leaders. This is the moment our electoral politics will change. Changing the election laws or improving the electoral system or introducing ID for voters will not change. It may work well in other countries but not in a Melanesian society where electoral politics is intertwined with cultural character, norms and values. To understand poor governance and poverty in an island countries like PNG and SI, one would need to go down that path of understand what is all about Melanesian politics. Currently clientelism politics is a stronghold status quo in PNG now.

Terence Wood, You have hit the nail on the head. PNG is currently not run with fairness in terms of Annual Budget fund allocations on timely basis. In the 20 years most Government run services hardly received annual full funding right across the country. Therefore it was very difficult for all citizens in accessing better services at all times.

Liked the analysis of the impacting of electoral politics on provision of public goods and services in SOI. Was useful for our analysis of fiscal resource constraints of Provincial governments for their assignment to deliver public goods and services.

Short of supporting the Solomon Islands Green Party which will soon be registered the best way for donors to support change would be to fund awareness programs on governance and democracy at village level.

I work in the Solomon Islands and recognise this is the #1 issue preventing sustainable development. To cange there needs to be major awareness campaigns in the villages. The SI government through the way it distributes the Rural Development Fund and MP termination oayments supports tbe status quo.

Thanks for this good article. This is a point I make a lot regarding politics in PNG. Sadly I think for many areas of PNG there is a downward spiral of fatalism. Many people I know believe most or all politicians will be corrupt and so they vote for their own tribesmen or whoever promises the most to their tribe (including money for voting). They often do this while openly admitting that the person they vote for will not be a good leader, but again since they believe there are few or no truly good leaders they want whoever will help them specifically the most. In fact as each group of corrupt or inept leaders continue to make the country worse in terms of economy and service provision it further drives people's desperation to benefit in some way making them ardent supporters of whoever promises them the most directly.... hence the downward spiral continues.

Nice piece, Terence. I’m interested in your views as to prospects for escaping clientelism. I would say that nearly every country initially suffered from clientelist politics. This seems the rule rather than the exception. While you posit bottom up social movements as the driver of change, lots of the most interesting recent literature has been about developmental clientelism (in which clientelism persists, but still leads to efficiency enhancing reallocations of social resources because patronage is productively used) and the role of elite pacts (stable elite pacts allow for the institutionalization of inter-elite bargains in ways that eventually lead to the emergence of an independent state and different types of electoral accountability - best exposition of this would be North, Wallis, Weingast). Do you think we need bottom up social movements or just lots more time and stable elite pacts? How compelling is the evidence on bottom up social movements relative to the elite pact arguments? Or are they somehow compatible? (Dan Slater argues that the threat of violence from bottom up movements actually forced East Asian elites into tighter elite bargains, therefore supporting greater state effectiveness - but a channel between social movements and state effectiveness quite different from the one you suggest). Interested in your thoughts.

Thank you for this succinct and insightful article. Ironically, Sir Nagora Bogan, the PNG University of Technology Chancellor, and candidate for Lae in Morobe province depicted in the picture, was cheated out of a seat by a lack of clientelism. Someone outside Morobe province paid a thug to burn the ballots where he was bound to get most votes, the PNG University of Technology voting station. They also interfered with the ballot boxes in his village, and the Lae voting station was occupied by armed men for several hours. He lost by a few hundred votes. If the clients' votes would have been counted, he would have won. Aid can help create conditions for more inclusive and democratic institutions, rather than extractive institutions benefiting the few. The last elections in PNG in 2017 where a shambles. Aid should have helped to create a proper ID card and voter registration system and a strong electoral commisison, but the PNG government did not want this. This would significantly reduce the opportunities to manipulate the results. Australia lacked the nerve to insist.

This is a very useful piece, especially its data presentation. The second graph, entitled “Aid and defence spending ($ billion, 2018 prices)“ highlights the aid bubble of the Rudd years, which has since receded as the aid budget has been slashed. This bubble was the topic of my critique which Stephen cites, but it was not just about the aid/military spending ratio. My concern was also that the huge upscaling of aid in this bubble period meant that some of it was being spent unwisely, a concern shared by at least some of the bureaucrats who were tasked with finding new ways to push the money out the door. The irony is that in many ways Defence has now supplanted AusAid as a funding source for all manner of tangential projects, including in academic centres, think tanks and research grant. And just as the aid bubble was driven by arbitrary targets to spend eg 0.5% of GDP, now Defence is struggling to hit its 2.0%. We would however have to spend much more than that if Trump’s nativist agenda sees a turn towards military isolationism from the US. I think Stephen is a bit too sanguine about that.

And that's just defence spending. The picture is even more extreme when domestic "security" expenditure is included.

Hi Glenn and Martyn. Excellent article - thanks. Three comments. First, the input-tax credit impact is possibly more significant than you indicate. ITCs totaled K901.2m from 2013 to 2016 according to p88 of the 2018 PNG Budget. Oil Search was by far the major user (abuser?) of this scheme, accounting for 56.5% of expenditure for ITC projects from 2013 to 2016 - p89 of 2018 Budget). On top of this, Oil Search is constructing APEC Haus through a K170m ITC arrangement (p90 of 2018 Budget) without any tendering process or other usual public procurement arrangements to protect the use of scarce PNG taxpayer funds. Second, the current SWF has a very major flaw in that Kumul Petroleum can divert any dividend revenues into its own operations - this is a major risk to good use of government funds as well as the SWF's counter-cyclical objectives and should be corrected before the fund is operationalised. Third, on low revenues, there is also the possibility of at least active tax minimisation activities by the major companies - it is hard to describe Exxon-Mobil's PNG activities being owned through a complex chain of companies extending through well known low tax countries other than in the context of this possibility (see Jubilee Australia report on the PNG LNG project). Expansion of PNG Internal Revenue Commission's large taxpayer office is a welcome development. Thanks again. Paul.

Very interesting, thanks.