Devpolicy Talks

In this podcast, you'll hear a panel discussion on the 2017 Papua New Guinea National Elections. The elections, held in June and July, copped both criticism and praise — but mostly criticism. Ballot box mysteries, corruption allegations, electoral roll issues, unpaid striking polling workers and localised violence dominated news headlines.

Despite all this, and despite the many legal challenges to results yet to be resolved, huge numbers of voters turned out to exercise their democratic right, and a government has formed under returning Prime Minister Peter O’Neill.

Now that the excitement of the vote itself has passed, what are the implications for PNG’s political landscape? And what are the lessons learned to improve the running of future elections?

A panel of experts (Nicole Haley, Bell School; Terence Wood, Development Policy Centre; Ronald May, College of Asia and the Pacific; Bal Kama, ANU College of Law) discussed how the vote went, the winners and losers, and the longer-run political challenges that the government may face in its term.

Nicole Haley provided an overview of the insights from electoral observers, while Terence Wood discussed election results and issues. Ron May analysed how the parties fared, who won and who lost, and why. Bal Kama explored the legal issues facing the new government and the many appeals against declared outcomes. The panel was chaired by Stephen Howes.

This forum was the second in a series on PNG after the 2017 elections, hosted by the Development Policy Centre.

Devpolicy Talks is the podcast of the Australian National University's Development Policy Centre.

Read and subscribe to our daily blogs at devpolicy.org.

Learn more about our research and join our public events at devpolicy.anu.edu.au.

Follow us on Facebook, LinkedIn, Instagram and X for updates on blog posts, publications and events.

You can send feedback, and ideas for episodes too, to [email protected].

Speakers: Nelson Nema, School of Business and Public Policy, University of PNG; Marcel Schröder, School of Business and Public Policy, University of PNG; Rohan Fox, Research Officer, Development Policy Centre.

The colourful banners and huge campaign rallies of the 2017 Papua New Guinea National Elections held in June and July may have put policy on the backburner for some as they were swept up in the excitement of the vote.

But one issue was never far from voters’ minds as they headed to the polls — the concerning state of the country’s economy, and the impact on their own lives.

The returned O’Neill government faces major economic challenges. So what are the problems, and what should the Prime Minister and his new Treasurer do about them?

Marcel Schröder, Rohan Fox and Nelson Nema presented their 2017 PNG Economic Survey, co-authored with their colleague, Stephen Howes, on 11 October 2017.

The panel was chaired by Michelle Rooney.

This was the first in a two-part series on PNG after the 2017 elections.

This event was presented as part of the Development Policy Centre’s PNG Project, which receives funding from the Australian Aid Program through the Pacific Governance and Leadership Precinct.

Devpolicy Talks is the podcast of the Australian National University's Development Policy Centre.

Read and subscribe to our daily blogs at devpolicy.org.

Learn more about our research and join our public events at devpolicy.anu.edu.au.

Follow us on Facebook, LinkedIn, Instagram and X for updates on blog posts, publications and events.

You can send feedback, and ideas for episodes too, to [email protected].

Aid paradoxes in Afghanistan: building and undermining the state.

The relationship between aid and state building is highly complex and the effects of aid on weak states depend on donors’ interests, aid modalities and the recipient’s pre-existing institutional and socio-political conditions. This book argues that, in the case of Afghanistan, the country inherited conditions that were not favourable for effective state building. Although some of the problems that emerged in the post-2001 state building process were predictable, the types of interventions that occurred—including an aid architecture which largely bypassed the state, the subordination of state building to the war on terror, and the short horizon policy choices of donors and the Afghan government—reduced the effectiveness of the aid and undermined effective state building.

By examining how foreign aid affected state building in Afghanistan since the US militarily intervened in Afghanistan in late 2001 until the end of President Hamid Karzai’s first term in 2009, this book reveals the dynamic and complex relations between the Afghan government and foreign donors in their efforts to rebuild state institutions. The work explores three key areas: how donors supported government reforms to improve the taxation system, how government reorganised the state’s fiscal management system, and how aid dependency and aid distribution outside the government budget affected interactions between state and society. Given that external revenue in the form of tribute, subsidies and aid has shaped the characteristics of the state in Afghanistan since the mid-eighteenth century, this book situates state building in a historical context.

In this podcast of a recorded event, author and Devpolicy Visiting Fellow Dr Nematullah Bizhan will speak on his findings, while Professor Mark Evans, will officially launch the book.

Nematullah Bizhan is Research Fellow at the Oxford University’s Blavatnik School of Government. He is also a Senior Research Associate at the Oxford University’s Global Economic Governance Program and a Visiting Fellow at Asia Pacific College of Diplomacy and Development Policy Centre, The Australian National University. He has a PhD in Political Science and International Relations from The Australian National University and was previously a high-level participant in the post-2001 government of Afghanistan.

Devpolicy Talks is the podcast of the Australian National University's Development Policy Centre.

Read and subscribe to our daily blogs at devpolicy.org.

Learn more about our research and join our public events at devpolicy.anu.edu.au.

Follow us on Facebook, LinkedIn, Instagram and X for updates on blog posts, publications and events.

You can send feedback, and ideas for episodes too, to [email protected].

Corruption is a pernicious societal disease that has devastating consequences that can cripple a nation. Although corruption has become a global challenge, its scale and prevalence in any country depend on how it is being addressed. There are countries that are perceived to be less corrupt as graded by Transparency International’s annual Corruption Perception Index, such as Finland, Denmark and New Zealand, and there are others that were once corrupt, such as Hong Kong and Singapore, that have now become the epitome of the fight against corruption.

In this seminar, Sam Koim will draw from the literature on experiences of other anti-corruption agencies, his own experience as the former head of Papua New Guinea’s anti-corruption Investigation Task-Force Sweep, and discuss how addressing police corruption is the lynchpin to combating corruption.

The presentation is part of a research paper he is working on about addressing corruption in resource rich developing countries with communal social contexts. He has designed a four-pronged approach to curb corruption effectively, focusing on PNG as a case study.

This seminar is co-hosted by the ANU Development Policy Centre, the School of Regulation and Global Governance (RegNet) and the State, Society and Governance in Melanesia program.

Sam Koim has been one of the most significant legal investigators and policymakers in PNG in recent years. From 2011 to April 2017 he was Chairman and Principal Legal Officer of Investigation Task-Force Sweep, a national multiagency team investigating corruption, prosecuting offenders, recovering tax and proceeds of crime, and recommending administrative disciplinary actions. Prior to his appointment to the taskforce, he was Principal Legal Officer in the Department of Justice and Attorney General, Papua New Guinea.

Devpolicy Talks is the podcast of the Australian National University's Development Policy Centre.

Read and subscribe to our daily blogs at devpolicy.org.

Learn more about our research and join our public events at devpolicy.anu.edu.au.

Follow us on Facebook, LinkedIn, Instagram and X for updates on blog posts, publications and events.

You can send feedback, and ideas for episodes too, to [email protected].

International peace and statebuilding interventions have become ubiquitous since the 1990s. Their frequent failures, however, have prompted some researchers and practitioners to move beyond focusing on interveners’ ideas and approaches to analysing how their interactions with recipients shape outcomes. The recently published book by Shahar Hameiri, Caroline Hughes and Fabio Scarpello, International Interventions and Local Politics: Fragmented States and the Politics of Scale (Cambridge University Press, 2017), critically evaluates these analyses, advancing an innovative approach, placing the politics of scale at the core of the conflicts and compromises shaping the outcomes of international interventions. Different scales — e.g. local, national and international — privilege different interests, unevenly allocating power, resources and political opportunities.

In this podcast of a panel discussion, two of the book’s authors will discuss their approaches, demonstrating their utility with a case study of the Aceh Government Transformation Program. Saku Akmeemana will act as discussant, providing a policy practitioner’s perspective on the book’s findings.

Shahar Hameiri is Associate Professor of International Politics and Associate Director of the Graduate Centre in Governance and International Affairs, School of Political Science and International Studies, University of Queensland.

Fabio Scarpello is a Consultant with VJW International and an Associate Fellow of the Asia Research Centre, Murdoch University.

Saku Akmeemana is the Principal Specialist, Governance, at the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade.

Devpolicy Talks is the podcast of the Australian National University's Development Policy Centre.

Read and subscribe to our daily blogs at devpolicy.org.

Learn more about our research and join our public events at devpolicy.anu.edu.au.

Follow us on Facebook, LinkedIn, Instagram and X for updates on blog posts, publications and events.

You can send feedback, and ideas for episodes too, to [email protected].

The Australian aid program faces a fundamental dilemma: how, in the absence of deep popular support, should it generate the political legitimacy required to safeguard its budget and administering institutions?

A new book by Jack Corbett entitled 'Australia’s Foreign Aid Dilemma: Humanitarian Aspirations Confront Democratic Legitimacy', tells the story of the actors who have grappled with this question over 40 years. It draws on extensive interviews and archival material to uncover how ‘court politics’ shapes both aid policy and administration. The lesson for scholars and practitioners is that any holistic understanding of the development enterprise must account for the complex relationship between the aid program of individual governments and the domestic political and bureaucratic contexts in which it is embedded. If the way funding is administered shapes development outcomes, then understanding the ‘court politics’ of aid matters.

In this podcast and subsequent Q&A of the Canberra book launch, author Jack Corbett discusses the book. Michael Wesley, Professor of International Affairs and Dean of the College of Asia and the Pacific at the Australian National University, provides opening comments and launches the book. Stephen Howes chairs the session.

Jack Corbett is Associate Professor of Politics at the University of Southampton, UK; Honorary Associate Professor at The Australian National University’s Coral Bell School of Asia Pacific Affairs; and Adjunct Senior Research Fellow at the Centre for Governance and Public Policy, Griffith University, Australia.

He is the author of Being Political Leadership and Democracy in the Pacific Islands (2015, University of Hawaii Press); Australia’s Foreign Aid Dilemma: Humanitarian Aspirations Confront Democratic Legitimacy (2017, Routledge); and with Wouter Veenendaal, Democracy in Small States: Why It Can Persist Against the Odds (forthcoming, Oxford University Press).

Devpolicy Talks is the podcast of the Australian National University's Development Policy Centre.

Read and subscribe to our daily blogs at devpolicy.org.

Learn more about our research and join our public events at devpolicy.anu.edu.au.

Follow us on Facebook, LinkedIn, Instagram and X for updates on blog posts, publications and events.

You can send feedback, and ideas for episodes too, to [email protected].

Speaker: Alice Albright, Chief Executive Officer, Global Partnership for Education (GPE).

Investing in equitable, quality education systems has a powerful positive impact on economies and societies, and in turn drives progress across the range of the UN Sustainable Development Goals. Educating and empowering girls and women in particular helps to strengthen economic prosperity, and improves stability and health outcomes.

However, the education sector is chronically underfunded.

Until recently, the Global Partnership for Education (GPE) has relied largely on financing from traditional donors. Over the past year, GPE has developed a new comprehensive financing and funding framework to mobilise additional, more diverse and better financing for education, and to more efficiently deploy its funding ahead of its next replenishment to be held in early 2018. For Australia, the replenishment and new financing and funding framework provide opportunities to emphasise the education challenges faced by the Asia-Pacific region, as well as to identify and target new resources to tackle these challenges.

In this public lecture, Alice Albright, Chief Executive Officer of GPE, discussed the global and regional education opportunities, these financing challenges and how GPE is adapting and innovating to address them.

Devpolicy Talks is the podcast of the Australian National University's Development Policy Centre.

Read and subscribe to our daily blogs at devpolicy.org.

Learn more about our research and join our public events at devpolicy.anu.edu.au.

Follow us on Facebook, LinkedIn, Instagram and X for updates on blog posts, publications and events.

You can send feedback, and ideas for episodes too, to [email protected].

Speakers: Staff from the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade, Cardno, and The Australian National University.

This forum, which was jointly organised by the Development Policy Centre and the Office of Development Effectiveness (ODE) and held on 11 August 2017, was the latest in a series on the evaluation of Australian aid.

It focused on two recent evaluations. The second evaluation, discussed in this podcast, focused on pandemics and emerging infectious diseases, with the view of contributing to the evidence base on strengthening health systems in the Asia-Pacific region to prevent, detect and respond. The evaluation informed decision-making about future Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade (DFAT) investments and policy engagement on regional health security, and approaches for future DFAT responses to disease outbreaks. The evaluation also contributed to the literature on lessons learned from previous outbreak responses, with a focus on impact on human and animal health systems and community engagement on prevention and detection of emerging infectious diseases.

Devpolicy Talks is the podcast of the Australian National University's Development Policy Centre.

Read and subscribe to our daily blogs at devpolicy.org.

Learn more about our research and join our public events at devpolicy.anu.edu.au.

Follow us on Facebook, LinkedIn, Instagram and X for updates on blog posts, publications and events.

You can send feedback, and ideas for episodes too, to [email protected].

Speakers: Staff from the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade, Cardno, and The Australian National University.

This forum, which was jointly organised by the Development Policy Centre and the Office of Development Effectiveness (ODE) and held on 11 August 2017, was the latest in a series on the evaluation of Australian aid.

It focused on two recent evaluations. The first part, discussed in this podcast, was an end of program review for the Basic Education Assistance for Muslim Mindanao (BEAM-ARMM) program, which involved four implementing partners working across four distinct components in the conflict-affected Autonomous Region of Muslim Mindanao. It’s objective was to contribute to poverty alleviation and sustainable peace, through increasing access and quality of basic education, and training for Out of School Youth. The review highlighted some of the challenges and lessons for evaluating and achieving improved educational outcomes in complex, high-risk environments.

Devpolicy Talks is the podcast of the Australian National University's Development Policy Centre.

Read and subscribe to our daily blogs at devpolicy.org.

Learn more about our research and join our public events at devpolicy.anu.edu.au.

Follow us on Facebook, LinkedIn, Instagram and X for updates on blog posts, publications and events.

You can send feedback, and ideas for episodes too, to [email protected].

Over the last decade, international development policies, most notably in the UK, have advanced ‘political settlements’ as a framing concept to guide statebuilding practice in fragile and conflict-affected states. Such policies have encouraged efforts towards achieving an inclusive, or inclusive enough, political settlement as a bulwark against instability. The empirical research underpinning the policy dictum, however, is surprisingly thin.

This podcast of Sue's presentation will probe the relationship between the character of a post-conflict political settlement and subsequent trajectories of stability or instability through two case studies: Timor-Leste and Bougainville.

While there is a headline correlation between an inclusive settlement and stability, and an exclusionary settlement and instability, the processes at work are more nuanced. In these two case studies the proximate drivers of instability, which may be the product of an exclusionary settlement, are serious elite splits and rent restriction. Conversely, elite cooperation and rent sharing support stability. The case studies also highlight several factors that can accentuate or moderate the motivation and capacity of elites to destabilise, and of citizens to fall in behind them.

This seminar was presented by the Development Policy Centre in conjunction with The State, Society and Governance in Melanesia (SSGM) program.

Sue Ingram is an honorary senior policy fellow with the State, Society and Governance in Melanesia (SSGM) program in the College of Asia and the Pacific, the Australian National University.

Devpolicy Talks is the podcast of the Australian National University's Development Policy Centre.

Read and subscribe to our daily blogs at devpolicy.org.

Learn more about our research and join our public events at devpolicy.anu.edu.au.

Follow us on Facebook, LinkedIn, Instagram and X for updates on blog posts, publications and events.

You can send feedback, and ideas for episodes too, to [email protected].