The research highlights that despite limited public services, local leadership in Western Province thrives by leveraging external opportunities, with women leaders enhancing governance.

Arriving in most rural and remote villages in Western Province, the near absence of services or public expenditure is striking. It is easy to assume that these villages are ungoverned, beyond the limits of the PNG state. Yet local forms of leadership thrive, as they coalesce around external opportunities, whether via aid development projects, market value chains, neighbouring states, mining or limited PNG government funding.

The research explored the plurality of formal and informal governance and their dynamics around external finances, and proposed what more ‘politically-informed’ programming and grant arrangements might look like.  It also found that women leaders and their networks have the potential to challenge or at least create an alternative to the excesses of male-dominated patronage politics, to strengthen the subnational governance and finance system.

Speaker: Dr Mark Moran

The monthly ANU-UPNG seminar series is part of the partnership between the ANU Crawford School of Public Policy and the UPNG, supported by the PNG-Aus Partnership.

This a hybrid seminar held at ANU, UPNG’s School of Business and Public Policy MBA Suite and online via Zoom.

The time in Papua New Guinea is 12.30pm – 1.30pm PGT.