Governance at the Local Level in Melanesia – Absent the State

David Hegarty

doi:10.5130/cjlg.v0i0.1099

Abstract

At independence the three Melanesian states of the Pacific Islands region – Papua New Guinea (1975), Solomon Islands (1978) and Vanuatu (1980) – opted for decentralised systems of government. In all cases a three-tier system of national, provincial and local government was introduced, although the specific arrangements and allocation of powers differed substantially. Since that time there has been a good deal of analysis about the policy processes of decentralisation itself and about the effectiveness (or otherwise) of national-level governance in these countries; but until recently little has been written about the lower levels.This short article surveys some of the recent research and commentary on local-level governance relating particularly to Papua New Guinea (PNG) and Solomon Islands. It focuses on both the poor condition of formal local-level government as well as on the rise of informal governance-type activity at the local level which might be described as ‘civil society in formation’.

Highlights

At independence the three Melanesian states of the Pacific Islands region – Papua New Guinea (1975), Solomon Islands (1978) and Vanuatu (1980) – opted for decentralised systems of government
HEGARTY: It is clear in these two countries that the formal institutions of Local Level Government (LLG) – with a small number of notable exceptions in Papua New Guinea (PNG) – have not worked well nor gained much traction as effective instruments of administration and service delivery within the communities they were established to serve
In some ways this is a surprising result given the famed diversity of Melanesia’s small-scale socio-political units which, together with fissiparous tendencies evident in the late colonial period, led observers at that time to the view that these countries were ripe for the transplantation and uptake of local-level forms of government

Summary

Introduction

At independence the three Melanesian states of the Pacific Islands region – Papua New Guinea (1975), Solomon Islands (1978) and Vanuatu (1980) – opted for decentralised systems of government. HEGARTY: It is clear in these two countries that the formal institutions of Local Level Government (LLG) – with a small number of notable exceptions in PNG – have not worked well nor gained much traction as effective instruments of administration and service delivery within the communities they were established to serve.

Results

Conclusion