Bigmen and Wantoks: Social Capital and Group Behaviour in Papua New Guinea

The concept of social capital has received a lot of attention in the social sciences in the last few years. It has come to be seen as an important factor in promoting socio-economic development. Despite the diversity of definitions available and the lack of clarity surrounding the concept, it is claimed that the level of trust, and the presence of the norms and networks that constitute social capital play an important role in enhancing economic efficiency and promoting government effectiveness. These claims, however, need to be properly qualified, as the nature and scope of social capital is much more ambiguous than is often suggested. High stocks of social capital can stifle development efforts in close-knit communities, and can be used to achieve objectives that may have negative effects on the wider community. More generally, the attempt to subsume a theory of institutions and a theory of group behaviour under the unifying label of social capital may not be very enlightening. Nevertheless, the social capital approach can provide useful insights for the study of group behaviour, related to the importance of looking at the characteristics of cooperation within groups and to state-society relations as important factors in determining the outcome of group functioning. Some characteristics of social organisation in Papua New Guinea demonstrate these points quite clearly. The existence in Papua New Guinea of a complex web of reciprocity obligations based mostly on ethnic identity (the wantok system) shows how existing social capital based on trust and cooperation within groups can have both positive and negative overall effects on group functioning. Moreover, the nature and structure of state-society relations, based on the country's colonial history and its institutional framework, influence group behaviour in a way that seems to promote vertical linkages of patronage and reinforce the negative effects of the wantok system.

Open Budgets. Transform Lives. The Open Budget Survey 2008

Provides a comparative measure of government budget transparency in eighty-five countries. Discusses contributing factors and makes recommendations for improving transparency, increasing public participation, and strengthening accountability oversight

The impacts of fiscal openness

Fiscal transparency and participation in government budgeting are widely promoted, yet claims about their benefits are rarely based on convincing evidence. We provide the first systematic review covering 38 empirical studies published between 1991 and early 2015. Increased budgetary disclosure and participation – which we call “fiscal openness” – are consistently associated with improvements in the quality of the budget, as well as governance and development outcomes. Only a handful of studies, however, are able to convincingly identify causal effects, in the form of reduced corruption, enhanced electoral accountability, and improved allocation of resources. We highlight gaps and set out a research agenda that consists of: (a) disaggregating broad measures of budget transparency to uncover which specific disclosures are related to outcomes; (b) tracing causal mechanisms to connect fiscal openness interventions with ultimate impacts on human development; (c) investigating the relative effectiveness of alternative interventions; (d) examining the relationship between transparency and participation; and (e) clarifying the contextual conditions that support particular interventions

Prioritising PPCR Investments in Mozambique: The Politics of ‘Country Ownership’ and ‘Stakeholder Participation’

Mozambique is both one of the poorest countries and one with the highest level of vulnerability to multiple potential consequences of climate change, including drought, flood, sea level rise and increased frequency and severity of tropical cyclones – making it a natural candidate for inclusion in the Pilot Program for Climate Resilience (PPCR), which aims to help poorer countries to integrate climate change response into their national development processes. This article examines the process of prioritising investments under the PPCR in Mozambique, and asks to what extent this process has demonstrated the ‘country ownership’ and ‘broad participation’ which the PPCR claims to promote. It particularly focuses on the coastal cities component of the programme, and the question of whether the opposition?controlled port city of Beira should receive priority in PPCR investments

Aid Transparency and Accountability: ‘Build It and They’ll Come’?

Concerns about the transparency of aid have become more prominent against a recent backdrop of donor commitments to increase aid effectiveness. Innovative approaches to providing more and better information about aid have been developed. This article explores the contemporary focus on aid transparency in the context of longer-standing concerns over accountable aid. It finds that the links between inputs, outputs and impacts in aid transparency and accountability initiatives are often not articulated or well-understood, and that the link between aid transparency and accountable aid is barely addressed. Future attempts to develop effective aid TAIs need to take full account of the diverse motivations, approaches and actors implicated in their – often implicit – theories of change, in particular the citizens of aid-recipient countries

Reducing Inequality – The Missing MDG: A Content Review of PRSPs and Bilateral Donor Policy Statements

Although important gains have been made in reducing global poverty, the pace of progress across the world is not on track to achieve the 2015 MDG targets. Is this due to lack of ownership on the part of national governments and the international community? This article examines whether the Poverty Reduction Strategy Papers (PRSPs) and donor policy statements are aligned with MDG priorities and targets. The analysis found a high degree of commitment to MDGs as a whole but both PRSPs and donor statements are selective, consistently emphasising income poverty and social investments for education, health and water but not other targets concerned with empowerment and inclusion of the most vulnerable such as gender violence or women's political representation. The article concludes that a new, ninth Goal needs to be added – to reduce inequality – to make the MDGs aligned to the original purpose of the Millennium Declaration

National identity in fragile states: insights from tertiary students in Melanesia and Timor-Leste

The challenges of nation building in Melanesia and Timor-Leste have often been neglected in the regional focus on state-building challenges. High levels of ethno-linguistic diversity, combined with an array of regional, historical and cultural divisions, continue to present obstacles to the creation of a cohesive sense of national political community leading these nations to be labelled ‘fragile’. This paper presents the findings of a comparative study on the attitudes of tertiary students in Melanesia and Timor-Leste to national identity and nation building. A strong pan-Melanesian pattern of group identification was identified, common to Papua New Guinea, Solomon Islands and Vanuatu. The ongoing importance of traditional authority and custom in informing conceptions of political community and identity was evident in all four case study sites, but was in each case matched by indicators of respect for modern state authority. The survey also reveals some significant gender differences in key attitudes towards national identity, including the role of traditional authorities. Most importantly, the study reveals high degrees of national pride, and faith in democratic principles and citizenship; but conversely, low levels of pride in contemporary democratic performance and inter-group tolerance

Regionalism and African agency : negotiating an Economic Partnership Agreement between the European Union and SADC-Minus

This article investigates the regional dynamics of African agency in the case of negotiations for an Economic Partnership Agreement (EPA) between the EU and a group of Southern African countries, known as SADC-Minus. I argue that these negotiations were shaped by a pattern of differentiated responses to the choice set on offer under the EPAs by SADC-Minus policymakers and by a series of strategic interactions and power plays between them. I offer two contributions to an emerging literature on the role of African agency in international politics. First, I argue for a clear separation between ontological claims about the structure-agency relationship and empirical questions about the preferences, strategies and influence of African actors. Second, I suggest that in order to understand the regional dynamics of African agency it is important to pay close attention to the diversity and contingency of African preferences and to the role of both power politics and rhetorical contestation in regional political processes

Fiscal Transparency, Elections and Public Employment: Evidence from the OECD

There is considerable variation in levels and changes in public employment within and between developed democracies. This article highlights the importance of fiscal transparency in determining changes in public employment. It argues that economic growth increases public employment under low fiscal transparency and that this effect is strongest in years of election. These hypotheses are tested on a panel of 20 OECD countries from 1995 to 2010. The analyses show substantial evidence in favor of the arguments. Fiscal transparency lowers the positive effect of growth on public employment, a relationship, which is most robust in election years

The independent group looks at London's west end

In the early 1950s, British culture was dominated by welfare-state visions of urban reconstruction. These projections of a stable civic society were premised on a particular way of looking at and reading the metropolitan environment. At odds with this project, the Independent Group's discussions and collaborative work developed an alternative urban semiology, which found the city to be already rich in visual resources for fashioning a more profound form of social democracy. Soon, this critical engagement would develop in different directions, represented here by Lawrence Alloway's commentary on Piccadilly Circus in his essay 'City Notes' and the London footage inserted by John McHale into his film for the Smithsons' Berlin Hauptstadt project (both 1959). By the end of the 1950s, members of the erstwhile Independent Group had produced two contrasting critical accounts of how the metropolitan centre should be looked at, which challenged the strictures of post-war reconstruction in distinct and conflicting ways. © The Author(s), 2013