Good Governance, Corruption, and Papua New Guinea’s Public Service

The Pacific Island region comprises a diverse array of countries that face a variety of challenges. For some, this includes weak governance and public sector corruption. This chapter explores these issues by drawing on research with public servants in the largest (by population and landmass) Pacific Island nation, Papua New Guinea, a country categorized by many as acutely corrupt. In line with scholars who suggest good governance should be tied to the delivery of political goods, it finds that public servants prioritize service delivery over impartiality. This is in part because many believe laws and rules are overly onerous, relevant guidelines and laws are difficult to locate, and public servants are under enormous pressure to provide unofficial favors to businesses, politicians, and kith and kin. Government policies that have strengthened relations between MPs, citizens, and public servants have exacerbated these pressures. In addition, public servants face significant barriers to reporting corruption, a key threat to good governance. The chapter highlights the importance of grounding debates about good governance by reflecting on the contextual challenges facing public servants. It argues that efforts to shift the status quo in PNG and places like it must take into account the contextually specific relationships between bureaucrats, business elites, politicians, and citizens, which vary across the country.