Comments

Thats all very well and fine for programmes in developing countries, but in conflict/post conflict areas the living conditions are crucial make or break factor with regards to staff retention. Try spending all day, every day in a combined office/guesthouse and not get pissed off with no running water in the middle of the winter? As for using 'security concerns' to justify accommodation requirements, its cheaper to pay for a secured, comfortable housing than to constantly replace staff, address cumulative stress issues and in the worse case scenarios, insurance or litigation payouts due to staff injuries or bereavements. Therefor, it's not a 'security concern' (a grey area that programme staff often like to rebel against) but a Duty of Care obligation. As for the Oxfam pool, why doesn't that surprise me? Their pool in Islamabad remained un-filled too

Many thanks for the update. The 'Buzz' is already becoming essential reading for education development specialists in the region. I did read the World Bank’s policy brief on their study of the teacher certification program in Indonesia. Very helpful. But, to be honest, I think its a bit too soon to dismiss the outcome of this massive program as a failure. Teacher certification and income increases are surely part of a long-term solution to improving the quality of Indonesia's nearly three million teachers. Raising teacher qualifications and income levels could not be expected to have much impact on student learning outcomes until a few years’ time. In the short term, the writers do note that fewer teachers now have second jobs, which is a gain. Having said this, I remain skeptical. Why? Because it is clear that the upgrading process conducted by the Ministry in collaboration with the universities is flawed in many ways. The in-service training is overly theoretical (although I believe that it does include classroom action research), the delivery is tricky (many are doing it online through the Open University and have limited contact with lecturers), some teachers are taking subjects unrelated to their teaching area (just what is available locally and easy to pass, I imagine) and, as usual, the process has been corrupted with many teachers just paying for the upgrade without doing the work and a percentage being certified on the basis of a portfolio rather than further study.

I find some of Sachs’ arguments a bit strange. From Sachs' points as summarised above: “The authors' assumption that authoritarian elites are necessarily hostile to economic progress is not entirely valid.” Acemoglu and Robinson in fact go to great lengths in their book to explain and analyse economic growth under “extractive” (i.e. authoritarian) political regimes. Also, Sachs’ point about the predictive power of the theory is, in my view, irrelevant to assessing the accuracy of the theory, because a theory does not have to have predictive power in order to be accurate. What if prediction is impossible? For example, the book highlights the contingent nature (and hence unpredictability) of the progression of a nation's institutions. For those interested, Acemoglu and Robinson recently <a href="http://whynationsfail.com/blog/2012/11/21/response-to-jeffrey-sachs.html" rel="nofollow">responded</a> (rather aggressively) to Sachs’ review.

Hi I am very impressed with the work the team has accomplished. We hear of development but what is it really to the people where the resources are? Obviously, the leadership in the province are hiding in the city and not doing enough. I thank you and really hope this will do a great impact to the people of Gulf and PNG as whole. Please deliver this to the Governer and Members of Gulf.

Thank you Colin and the team. As Tess stated eloquently, this is a powerful description and a very important project. Thank you for engaging in this challenging work and highlighting some of these challenges. Very important to hear that government officials understand that services have not been provided to the people and also to understand at least part of the reasons why. I look forward to reading more about the PEPE results including how we can support people like that head teacher / CHW that you met!

Thanks Marcus, I'm still chuckling at the thought that in a world of rational consumers the Economist probably wouldn't exist 🙂 I offer a qualified defence of rational choice modelling <a href="http://waylaiddialectic.wordpress.com/2012/08/05/is-it-really-rational-to-use-rational-choice-models-to-explain-political-behaviour-in-solomon-islands/" rel="nofollow">here</a>. To summarise very briefly I don't believe humans are rational utility maximisers however I believe that enough of the time we act **as if** we are for RC models to be useful, if very carefully used. Useful because they kind of approximate to reality. Useful because it is very hard to use models based on more complicated assumptions (game theory, for example, would be come very tricky if based on more complicated agents). Useful because where behaviour deviates significantly from what we would expect from the models (say in Mississippi) they still illuminate interesting questions: why, Mississippi, why? Re voting itself - that seems like a paradox but perhaps it isn't. As Andrew Gelman and others argue, if you believe that stakes in an election are high enough then it is still rational for you to vote, even if you know your own impact is trivial and there is inconvenience involved. In Solomons case, in a clientelistic polity, if you believe that candidates can figure out whether you voted and who your voted for, and if them providing future goods to you depends on you having voted for them, then it's definitely rational to go through the hassle of voting. Having said all that, I have to confess to actually enjoying voting: which is clearly irrational...such are the contradictions of life as a political science nerd.

Thank you Marcus for a very interesting comment. On point 1 - I agree with you with the caveat that possibly more imaginative electoral engineering, very approximately along the lines of the participatory budgeting system (which I've written about at link 1 below) might help, although it still wouldn't solve the central problems of Solomons PE. On point 2 - broadly I agree (more or less the same point I made in my post). On point 3 - I'm not sure that what you're suggesting is exactly what Collier had in mind, but it is certainly a very interesting. The challenges would be in the resources required to set it up and overcoming political opposition. Still, the idea is very interesting. Also, for those who are interested Daron Acemoglu and James Robinson have an interesting series of blog posts on how some countries have escaped clientelist traps (link 2 below). Link 1 <a href="http://www.cedla.uva.nl/50_publications/pdf/revista/83RevistaEuropea/83-Wood&Murray-ISSN-0924-0608.pdf" rel="nofollow">Participatory budgeting</a> [pdf]. Link 2: <a href="http://whynationsfail.com/blog/2012/12/4/disrupting-the-clientelistic-equilibrium-in-chile.html" rel="nofollow">A&R post</a> with links to previous posts.

Hi John, Thanks for your comment. I'm not familiar with the specifics but concur with your argument that procurement systems are weak and need to be further strengthened. I think donors can, and should, work in this area but I would also add that in a country such as Solomons where the forces of political governance pull strongly against efforts to strengthen the machinery of governance such strengthening will (a) be hard and (b) be almost impossible to do in a manner that will be sustained after donor pressure is removed (unless the political economy changes in the meantime). Such work is most definitely still worth doing. But we need to be realistic what it might achieve... Thanks for your comment. Terence

Thanks Colin for a really powerful description of the realities of service delivery in rural PNG. Many of the issues you have identified apply also in rural Vanuatu and I am sure elsewhere in the Pacific region. In fact a number of them are applicable in urban areas also no doubt. This should be required reading for anyone designing an aid project or programme plus those who would like to characterise development 'failures' as purely results of government or public service ineptitude or worse. It is only by knowing what the realities are in the environment where services are required that service providers can start to make resource allocations and other decisions that can hope to meet the real development challenges. Collecting this information and then getting it in front of the people who need it in a format they can make use of is itself a challenge (as you've shown us here) but I feel it is a vital foundation for improved policy and implementation. Very much looking forward to hearing more from PEPE in the coming months.

Good point: Indonesia certainly has high rates and numbers of tobacco users. We would have liked to have included Indonesia in our study but it was simply budget and time constraints of the research budget that prevented us from doing so. We hope to do follow up estimates on Indonesia later on. Ian Anderson.

This is a very thought provoking piece and the points that are raised will resonate elsewhere in the region. I am very glad I read to the end before writing my comment because the point I would have made (and with which I will now agree emphatically) is the one made in the final paragraph which is about the importance of information in order to support planning. There are lots of questions about informal economic activity that need to be identified and then addressed in order for the identified investments in the various bits of infrastructure (organisational, administrative, financial as well as physical) to generate maximum returns. I would also agree that the qualitative issues are important although I also think there is a need to address quantitative issues. Looking forward to learning more about this.

Many thanks to Scott MacWilliam for highlighting the desperate situation at UPNG. Urgent and comprehensive action is needed to respond to the situation he outlines. The students at UPNG are forced to live in student accommodation that is not only slum-like, but also dangerous. Their health and wellbeing is under threat. New students residences should be given a high priority. The students also deserve improved facilities that ensure their security, health and capacity to read widely and learn deeply. In addition to new teaching facilities, laboratories, and related learning resources, they also need a swimming pool, decent playing fields and areas to develop their own gardens - these should be part of an over-all plan to totally redevelop the University. The UPNG library is a tragedy - ill-stocked, grossly over-crowded, books rotting because of the malfunctioning air-conditioning, out of date books and journals, hopelessly inadequate internet resources. Mr MacWilliam is correct - academic standards are shockingly low and deteriorating; many staff are under-qualified; research barely exists. A system of "parallel support" is needed - i.e., bringing in overseas academics and administrators to work closely with local staff to help improve the teaching and learning at UPNG. Nearly every building on the UPNG Waigani campus is sub-standard. ODA donors should take a long hard look at the University and really come to grips with the appalling conditions and inadequate education the University is providing. They should come up with a comprehensive plan to reconstruct the entire University. Any thing less will be simply whistling in the wind. Until such a plan is activated the human capacity deficit that is undermining all attempts to lift the quality of life for all PNGeans will continuing growing. That plan should also bring all the other public universities together under one administrative umbrella - i.e., create a new national UPNG (PNGNU) that has significant outreach to and strong support from universities in Australia and New Zealand. Certainly the need for immediate action is profound. By assembling a national approach to high education capacity building in PNG, the universities there can achieve economies of scale and teaching and research coordination that they presently lack - with very negative consequences for the peoples of PNG.