How Capital Projects are Allocated in Papua New Guinean Villages : The Influence of Local Collective Action, Local-level Institutions, and Electoral Politics

Hasnain, Zahid ; Keefer, Philip ; Menzies, Nicholas

World Bank, Washington, DC

关键词: ACTIVE INVOLVEMENT;    BENEFICIARIES;    BLOCK GRANTS;    CANDIDATES;    CAPITAL PROJECTS;   

RP-ID  :  70080

学科分类：社会科学、人文和艺术（综合）

来源: World Bank Open Knowledge Repository

【 摘 要 】

Papua New Guinea (PNG) has implementednumerous institutional changes over the past fifteen yearswith the avowed aim of bringing government closer to thepeople, improving accountability and, by extension, localinfrastructure development and service delivery. To datehowever, there has been little empirical evidence toestablish whether these changes have impacted the provisionof local infrastructure. Similarly, there is littleempirical evidence revealing the main political economyfactors that influence the way that resources are actuallyplanned, spent, and impact communities at the sub-nationallevel. This report investigates the determinants of localinfrastructure projects at the ward level, the lowest levelof government in PNG, to assess the impact of theseinstitutional changes and to identify the importance ofother factors, in particular local collective action. Itdoes this through a survey covering more than 1000households across 49 yards in nine PNG districts. It alsopresents descriptive statistics on the basic characteristicsof the households that were surveyed, their knowledge oflocal level institutions, their participation in groups, andtheir voting behavior. The report explores especially thedeterminants of variation within districts in terms of thepresence of new projects. Common wisdom in PNG suggests thatthe home wards of Members of Parliament (MPs) should beespecially favored with projects. In six districts, the dataincludes this ward; these six home wards are no differentfrom other wards in their district with respect to thepresence of new projects. The survey asked questions aboutelectoral behavior, the provision of cash and other gifts inexchange for votes and electoral violence. The survey foundsignificant inter-district variation, with vote-buyingdramatically higher in the three Highlands districts, where42 percent of respondents report receiving cash, compared to9 percent in the other districts. Within districts,vote-buying and the provision of local public works projectsare inversely related. Vote-buying is also far more commonin the three districts that exhibit the most electoral violence.