From its very beginnings, decentralization in Papua New Guinea has had a chequered history. There is little doubt that for the period between 1978 and 1995 one cause of problems was the initial decision to institute a uniform decentralization across all provinces, irrespective of capacity. But it is also clear from the record that successive national governments made little attempt to address emerging problems, even when (as, notably, in the case of financial arrangements) they had clear and sensible recommendations before them.

A major reason for this was that the interests of national politicians and public servants at the national level do not necessarily coincide with those of political actors and public servants at the provincial, district and local levels. The ‘reforms’ of 1995, which abolished elected provincial assemblies nominally in the interests of greater decentralization but in reality with the effect of placing greater power in the hands of national politicians, owed much to a growing antipathy between national MPs and provincial MPs from the same province, the latter being frequently seen as undermining the power bases of the former. As predicted by some commentators in 1994–1995, one effect of the arrangements introduced under the new organic law seems to have been the increasing politicization of administration and service delivery at sub-national level.

The 1995 reforms envisaged a substantial transfer of functions to the sub-national governments, but failed to clarify the respective roles of the provincial administrators/district administrators and the national departments, and failed to align functions and funding; indeed there has been some further shifting of functions from the national government to sub-national governments since 1999 while funding to provinces has steadily deteriorated. This has contributed to the ongoing decline in service delivery at provincial, district and local level.

But if the arrangements introduced in 1995 have not measured up to popular expectations, this is not to say that a solution lies in yet another fundamental restructuring of intergovernmental relations, as some people are proposing. As in other areas of policy making and implementation, improved service delivery and greater equity between provinces and districts requires policies to effectively address clearly identified problems, rather than wholesale changes in institutions, policies and personnel. Since 1999 there has been a proliferation of initiatives aimed at improving governance at provincial, district and local level, much of which has been driven by external donors. In many cases initiatives have not been followed through; where they have, lack of capacity in most provinces, weak institutional memories and sometimes poor understanding of policies, and frequently inadequate support from the national government have often limited the effectiveness of the measures.

In a culturally diverse, geographically challenging, and fractious country like Papua New Guinea, achieving good governance across the nation is extraordinarily difficult, but, as other chapters in this volume suggest, given that much of the responsibility for service delivery rests with sub-national governments, without effective policies on decentralization, good policy outcomes in health, education, agriculture, economic development, law and justice, and other sectors will be difficult to achieve.