SOME NEW CONVENTIONS ABOUT SOLOMON ISLANDS GOVERNMENT

Political settlements, pacts and capabilities

David Craig

1. Reversing the ‘Retreat of the State’– Solution = expanding capacity and

good governance outwards – Focus on deficits and capacity

building– Finding the political will: focus on

actors2. Working with a fraught political settlement and post intervention ‘Re-ordering of Political Capability’

– Focus on actual political-economic elites, their pacts and $$, and how these transform into institutional capabilities/ political settlements

EXISTING AND NEW CONVENTIONS ABOUT GOVERNMENT AND INSTITUTIONSIN SOLOMON ISLANDS

• Political settlements/ Khan: Elite power, pacts, institutions– Coalescing/ enrolling political and

economic power to invest rents in political authority and institutional capability for security/ development

• Slater: Provisioning vs protection pacts and institutional outcomes: unsustainable provisioning, fragmentation/ militarisation vs insecure elites ordering power via formal institutions for security/ development

• Tilly: ‘clientage’ payments bridging economic/ political divides

• Mann: ‘grasp and reach’ capability of institutions– grasping power/ rents centrally, and

reaching out to constituencies

SOME NEW CONCEPTS

• Dispersed constituencies, central political pacts focussed on provisioning

• Urban primacy (without political representation), centralised rents

• Weak party/ pact enrolment/ grasp: limited protection/ policy commitments, dissolution of governments through confidence votes

• Weak reach: enormous problems in provisioning, and expressing political agency/ electoral claiming through government machineries

LOGIC 1

FRAGMENTED GEOPOLITICS AND THE PRIMACY OF PROVISIONING

• Problems of elite cohesion, protection and concessionary provision

• Clientage, security and elite –provisioning in a fragmented trading economy

• One dimensional / short term cash transactions across ethnic divides

• AND Monetisation of elite political economic pacts, driven by fragmented concessionaires: timber/ trading/ gambling

• Institutionalised in the Two stage electoral process / ‘Club for Staying in Government Forever’

LOGIC 2

ETHNIC CLEAVAGES AND THE MONETISATION OF POLITICAL-ECONOMIC PACTS

• Co-production pacts: massive international commitment to security, justice, health and education, public finance– Political agency/ enrolment/

accountability corroded in mainstream public provision

• Vertical layering of capabilities/ rents into institutions to provision and enrol political support: Constituency Development Funds– Corrosive raiding of budgets for

new layered capabilities – Pre-empts effective

intergovernmental transfer system formation

LOGIC 3

SIG/ DONOR PACTS

CO-PRODUCTION AND INSTITUTIONAL LAYERING

• Slater’s provisioning outcomes: Fragmentation/ policing/ militarisation/ crisis prone – Security and basic services guarantee– Weak policy agency/ accountability – Unsustainable provisioning/ raiding

• But with durable layering and specific settlements– Co-production and cdfs– Different settlements by locality/ island

states/ Honiara/ sector?• What else might be transformational?

Consolidations– political consolidation: Local (stv), Honiara

(urban development and representation) – Political economy: consolidating mining

rents, with intergovernmental transfer system (PNG)

– Consolidated pathways: Education plus regional labour market integration

– Consolidated regional commitment (Barbara ‘co-ownership’ of long term security/ development)

FUTURE TRAJECTORIES