Public Choice in Melanesia: Community, bureaucracy and the market in land management

Abstract

AbstractThe relationship between bureaucracy, market and community is a political issue in many countries, for example in debates about privatization or welfare policy. The following article considers how some of the arguments apply in the circumstances of the island South Pacific where community forms of organization have persisted in spite of the introduction of markets and states. Examples are drawn from land management, though similar arguments could be applied to other sectors such as housing or health. The paper deals mainly with the independent Melanesian states (including Fiji). First it looks at the relationship between land ownership and management. Then it defines three kinds of management—by bureaucracies, markets, and communities—in terms of ‘ideal types’, and the triangular relationships between them. Much policymaking about land in Melanesia in the 1970s concerned the relationship between bureaucracy and community. In the 1980s, and since independence, there has been more government concern with another arm of the triangle, between bureaucracy and the market. The relationship between bureaucracy and markets is a theme of the so called ‘public choice’ approach to administrative theory. The article concludes with a discussion of the relevance of ‘public choice’ approaches to management in the Melanesian states.