Comments

With respect, I must disagree with your characterisation of this blog, Mark. I think this blog addressed the basic facts surrounding the conduct of the 2017 PNG election (that you write of) and did so pointedly, whilst maintaining an objective, academic and dispassionate character - as one would expect from a professional social scientist writing in a credible forum such as Devpolicy. Perhaps you were looking for a more polemical piece? If so, I can understand that, having seen the 2017 elections firsthand and being personally concerned with what happened. But such writing is best left for other forums. There's more than enough emotion surrounding the conduct of the 2017 elections already, and there's an important place for dispassionate well-informed analysis, to try and get to the bottom of what went wrong. And this article in my view does that very well and is a very good contribution to the conversation.

"Depending if I was working five days or less, I would send NZ$200 or more home per week. My family used the money for the church as we have to help pay the village loan for our new church building." This issue of using remittance income to make loan payments for Church buildings (spiritual v community development and poverty alleviation) is quite serious for some Samoan families struggling to make ends meet.

Hi Mark, I'm used to people commenting on my blog posts without having read them carefully. But you clearly didn't even bother to read the first paragraph. Terence

Thank you Clive and Terence. Fantastic.

Hi Kurt, Thank you for the question. It's a very interesting one. It's still not exactly clear to me what in practice was decentralised vis a vis some previous elections (although some additional decentralisation did occur). Certainly, you can imagine decentralisation having an impact of the sort you describe (regardless of whether the impact was or was not intended). Terence

Typically wishy washy, platitudinous, feel-good gibberish. Next time start with the 80 election deaths (likely to be more from continuing violence), retributative rape of girls, murder of policemen by candidates and their supporters, etc etc. Then move on to blatant fixing and manipulation of EC official appointments by candidates and parties, examples of roll-fixing on a grand scale, voting-day violence, intimidation and outright fraud, the rigging of counting by EC officials and candidates, manipulation of declarations and return of writs ... I could go on but it's too depressing.

Thank you Dr Wood for this very good commentary. In my view you have correctly pointed out that the central and key cause of state incapacity in PNG is political, and the authors of this incapacity are the central political powerbrokers in PNG, many of whom are senior members of government. And they act so deliberately, because state incapacity directly benefits their personal and private interests. Following, I have one question for you - is it possible that the political decision to decentralise PNGEC administrative control over the election was made so that local subversion of formal electoral law and processes would be made easier?

Ladies, I am from Papua New Guinea and have started up a project in partnership with Bridgetown Days for Girls in Australia, in the Province I'm living in. Has any of you heard of Days for Girls?? Check Days for Girls International out on the Web or if you want to know more, you can contact me on my gmail. alvameti426@gmail.com

Thanks Shahar As you say, an interesting debate and I can easily get behind 'politics of scale' providing an interesting and new perspective. I just don't really see how it 'fully accounts' for variability in outcomes - especially not in a way that is substantially more useful than previous approaches. I'm interested in your statement: "For us, actors are not ‘scales’; actors make scales and associated institutions..." A very quick 'find' in Acrobat turns out 21 instances in which the term 'national elites' is used in the book, to describe a group of actors and the incentives or imperatives influencing that group. "National elites" even gets an index entry! Doesn't this indicate that actors and scales are being used interchangeably, at least in shorthand? You seem to acknowledge this yourself for Solomon Islands when you say "the overwhelming reliance of all national politicians on a system that centralises rents from extractive activities within Honiara and then redistributes some resources back to the periphery to win elections, this elite’s class interests are remarkably cohesive." I guess my claim is that these interests are not at all as cohesive as you state and that you lose more than you gain when bundling elites using a scale framing. I'm also interested in the claim that you (as above) don't intend to present a 'model'. In your text you claim to be seeking to rectify a failing in existing literature that 'agency of those targeted by intervention had previously been relatively neglected'. Through doing so you seek to 'explain diverse intervention outcomes in given contexts'. I wonder how you can do these things without a model? More specifically, I wonder what exactly can be explained through reference to 'politics of scale' and 'scalar strategies' that cannot be explained by a more traditional political economy perspective (even one that resorts to simplifying public choice assumptions)? Such analysis would equally point to the need for national MPs to raise discretionary resources for distribution through patronage networks (this is a common finding across many countries via the neo-patrimonialism literature). Great discussion. best T

Thanks, very interesting comparison. I've got to say I'm with the public on disaster relief being the most important use of aid. It's surely more likely that on average disaster relief will make a decisive difference than any other type of aid.

Excellent work, easy to read and understand from a well qualified researcher. Congratulation Dr. Hukula.

Hi Jeremy, please share the details of the model paperwork if possible. I'm just interested to know what efforts our two major cities have already done so far. Solid waste management needs a collective effort from all of us, and a vibrant awareness campaign and key messages on environmental impact at all levels is paramount at this stage. PNG needs to wake up to the effects of climate change on all fronts.