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Some New conventions about Solomon Islands government

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

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Some New conventions about Solomon Islands government

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  1. Some New conventions about Solomon Islands government Political settlements, pacts and capabilities David Craig

  2. 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 actors 2. 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

  3. 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

  4. 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

  5. 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

  6. 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 pactsCo-production and Institutional layering

  7. 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

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