Comments

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.

I note with concern comments from Marcus re. ‘contracting and procurement’, issues of significant concern as between 60% and 70% of all government expenditure, including SIG, is thru its procurement system. I do understand that the SIG is currently taking action to improve its procurement specifically by undertaking a review of the PFAA was expected to go to Cabinet in October 2012 with a plan to pass legislation in early 2013 and enact the new legislation in January 2014. I also understand that the Treasury Division may take the opportunity to update the FIs in relation to procurement and draft a Procurement Manual and a set of standard bidding documents, including draft contracts. However, implementation of new legislation can take time and can be difficult. Implementation must be well planned and properly resourced. All are important steps to ensure that the SIG procurement system operates effectively and efficiently. However, a procurement system consists of more than just legislation, regulations and standard bidding documents. The SIG procurement system also includes (1) various procurement structures including a central government procurement unit and ministry procurement units, various tender boards, etc; (2) professional procurement staff in each of these procurement structures; (3) a body to oversight of all procurement; and (4) readily available procurement data, information and reporting. Where is the emphasis on these four components of the SIG procurement system? I do hope that Marcus’ current perception of SIG procurement will change with the current and possible future initiatives to reform and to strengthen the SIG procurement system. E. John Blunt is a Procurement and Institutional Expert with extensive experience in leading public procurement reforms in a variety of international development environments. He has recently completed a procurement reform assignment with the Southern African Development Community Secretariat and is currently on assignment with the Swaziland Revenue Authority to strengthen its procurement system.

Bob: I always find kernels of wisdom in your reviews. I am especially struck with your comment: "...in making the assumption that education equates with teaching and learning, whole areas of institutional and organisational change, school improvement, the economics of education, finance, management, governance, and leadership are all at risk of being overlooked. It is exactly the complex interplay of teaching and learning with these areas that occupies so much time and attention in development." After working 6+ years on a USAID basic education management and governance project, I'm convinced that teaching and learning improvements cannot take place without appreciating the economics and governance issues. As an over simplified example: projects/program promote pedagogies based on whole language which require children to write as they read which requires lots of paper and pencils.If parents cannot afford the paper or schools decide to build a new gateway to the school instead of buying paper, how does the pedagogy get applied?

Henry Thanks for your comment. I think this is worth responding to because you seem to have captured the essence of a wider reaction to this article, which I believe to be based on misunderstanding. I certaintly didn't mean to come across as some kind of rational-choice ideologue (and certainly not "depressingly narrow and robotic"). While I'm a professional economist, my initial academic background was in sociology, and I am very aware of the many short-comings of narrow "self interested utility maximiser" frameworks for considering human behavior. As I say repeatedly in both my blog post and my paper - "there is no single answer" and "the incentives that people act on are undoubtedly multifaceted and complex". Nevertheless, when it comes to public policy, I believe that economic frameworks have much to offer in understanding the likely impacts of institutions and policies on human behavior. On average and in aggregate, and taking account of other considerations, people tend to respond to strong material incentives. This is not an extreme position (and one that nearly all of those I love would share). We should therefore carefully consider the incentives established by institutions and policies in Solomon Islands when thinking about development problems (in the same way we do when thinking about policy questions in industrialised countries). This won't provide us with a comprehensive understanding of the full range of possible responses and outcomes. But it is more useful than a narrative of Solomon Islands exceptionalism in which "culture" is the catch-all explanation for every behavior that is inconsistent with better development outcomes. Yes, culture plays a role in human behavior. But material incentives also play a role. If people are acting in ways that are not useful for society, institutions and policies have a role in creating incentives that discourage, rather than encourage, such behaviors. Is that really so extreme?