Suchergebnisse

THE DILEMMA OF RELATIVELY OPEN DEVELOPING POLITICAL SYSTEMS LIKE THAT OF PAPUA NEW GUINEA IS THAT THEY ARE CALLED UPON TO UNDERTAKE FUNCTIONS THAT EVEN DEVELOPED POLITICAL SYSTEMS ARE HESISTANT TO UNDERTAKE, WHILE LACKING THE LATTERS RESOURCES. IN THE PNG THERE IS THE ADDITIONAL FEAR OF CENTRIFUGAL TENDENCIES AND THE POSSIBILITY OF NATIONAL DISINTEGRATION. IT HAS SET A COURSE OF MODERNIZATION.

Natural disasters invariably involve complex social, political and economic systems that can make a bad situation worse. The 2015 El Niño drought in Papua New Guinea (PNG) has few precedents. Poor strategy in response could have serious implications. Rather than a centrally coordinated national disaster response, the PNG government has decided to provide drought relief through the controversial District Services Improvement Program (DSIP), coordinated by the recently introduced District Development Authorities (DDAs). Drawing on recent fieldwork in three drought-affected districts, this In Brief considers the risks of relying on politically controlled development funds to provide drought relief to communities that need it most. ; AusAID

This article examines the relationship between ethnicity, democracy and development in Papua New Guinea. Drawing on an earlier co-authored study, it shows that a key cause of disparities in provincial development in Papua New Guinea is variation in the levels of ethnic diversity between provinces. Even when alternative explanations such as size, government performance and resource endowments are factored in, more diverse provinces have significantly lower development levels than more homogeneous ones. Increasing levels of ethnic diversity are associated with lower overall levels of development, in part because ethnic divisions encourage rent-seeking behaviour, leading to sub-optimal outcomes for the country as a whole.

An area of continuing debate in anthropology is that of the conceptual distinction between culture and observable behavior. This paper accepts the distinction between culture as an ideational system and behavior and an attempt is made to show how the ideational system may be elaborated. Using a data collection technique developed by Dawson and his colleagues, the culture of a rural population in Papua New Guinea is analyzedfor differences between and within village samples. Hierarchies of cultural elements, arrived at by Warfield's structural modeling procedures, indicate how cultural systems change unevenly and at different rates.

Papua New Guinea has been described as a 'fragile state', though it has maintained an unbroken record of democracy—at least up till August 2011. In that month, while Prime Minister Somare was on extended medical absence the National Parliament declared the prime ministership vacant and elected a new prime minister, Peter O'Neill. The Parliament's actions were challenged and the Supreme Court subsequently upheld the challenge, but O'Neill ignored the Court's ruling, creating an impasse with two claimants to the office of prime minister. A national election in mid-2012—which O'Neill's group sought to postpone—eventually resolved the situation. O'Neill became prime minister, and, in an odd twist, Somare joined the coalition government.

That large-scale capital drives inequality in states like Papua New Guinea is clear enough; how it does so is less clear. This edited collection presents studies of the local contexts of capital-intensive projects in the mining, oil and gas, and agro-industry sectors in rural and semi-rural parts of Papua New Guinea; it asks what is involved when large-scale capital and its agents begin to become significant nodes in hitherto more local social networks. Its contributors describe the processes initiated by the (planned) presence of extractive industries that tend to reinforce already existing inequalities, or to create and socially entrench novel inequalities. The studies largely focus on the beginnings of such transformations, when hopes for social improvement are highest and economic inequalities still incipient. They show how those hopes, and the encompassing socio-political transformations characteristic of this phase, act to produce far-reaching impacts on ways of life, setting precedents for and embedding the social distribution of gains and losses. The chapters address a range of settings: the PNG Liquid Natural Gas pipeline; newly established eucalyptus and oil palm plantations; a planned copper-gold mine; and one in which rumours of development diffuse through a rural social network as yet unaffected by any actual or planned capital investments. The analyses all demonstrate that questions around land, leadership and information are central to the current and future social profile of local inequality in all its facets.

In 1942, US and Australian forces waged a brutal war against the Japanese in the jungles of Papua New Guinea. Plunged into a primitive, hostile world in which their modes of battle seemed out of place and time, they fought, suffered, hated, starved, and killed in muck and mud. James Carafano's vivid history brings this all to life. Ranging from detailed descriptions of specific battles to accounts of the fates of prisoners and the crucial role played by New Guinea's Fuzzy Wuzzy Angels, Carafano chronicles the grueling, and ultimately successful, Allied campaign, telling a tale of war at the very edge of human endurance.

AbstractAlthough official statistics show that an economic recovery is underway in Papua New Guinea, the country's new Prime Minister has stated that the economy is "bleeding and struggling." Disappointing 2019 first‐half‐year revenue results and the reintensification of foreign exchange shortages suggest that last year's (nonresource) recovery, which was based on unsustainable fiscal expansion, has not endured; that this year's growth statistics may need to be further revised downwards; and that the government's growth and fiscal challenges are once again intensifying. The new government's governance reforms are promising; but they are no substitute for reviewing exchange rate and fiscal policy, perhaps by turning to the International Monetary Fund for advice and support to address the problems it has inherited, including in relation to arrears, guarantees, and state‐owned enterprise debt.