In The Economist there was a brief story on the troubles of Papua New Guinea. This large island nation is Asia’s disaster story. I would have called it a failed state but there really was never a state in the first place so nothing could have failed. In the last thirty years GDP has stagnated while the population continues to grow. The economy has not diversified beyond mining and plantations, and the average citizen scrapes by with subsistence farming little different from life a century ago.

The Economist seems to blame dodgy government for this situation. Politicians are content to dole out government money to their local districts to buy support. In our part of the world we would call it vote buying or patronage if you’re a fancy fellow, but when it comes to PNG we “don’t understand”.

I don’t want to focus on their corrupt society though. While reading about their government it occurred to me a parliamentary system is terrible for a place like PNG.

Voters in PNG mostly cast their ballots for local personalities. So another mixed-bag coalition, bolted together after fierce haggling, seems likely. It will be weeks before the country knows what sort of a government it has chosen.

The parliamentary system puts too much power into political parties which are weak, local and fractious in PNG. That country needs a system that diminishes parties and allows individuals to excel in office. I think PNG’s government would become a lot more stable if they adopted a system like the US. The election would be a simple matter of who wins or loses in a district. The winning representative would be sent off to the national legislature immediately. There wouldn’t be any post-election negotiations that can only serve to encourage corruption between parties.

It would make it a lot easier for representatives to work with each other. As I understand it, crossing party lines in a parliamentary government is politically dangerous. Political parties would still exist but they would lose their official position in government. Instead of two camps of government parties and opposition parties arguing back and forth, PNG’s legislature would have shifting political alliances among the representatives based on specific issues crossing party lines. I know it sounds more complicated but I think injecting that uncertainty into the legislature would do more to tone down corruption because it would make it horse-trading so much more complicated.

A politician, under a US-style system, would have to make individual deals among the dozens and dozens of fellow legislators to push their pet project through. Even though parties would still exist the number of them (33 according to Wikipedia) present in PNG would weaken their total power. As The Economist pointed out voters in PNG usually vote for local personalities. This gives the individual representative a lot of power over political parties because their office comes from their individual popularity in their district, not from the reputation of the party. If they get tossed out of their party another one will certainly try to sign them up, or even as an independent they can still get some things accomplished. This isn’t the case with the current party setup. A representative who is rejected from their party will find their power at home diminished because alone they won’t be bringing home any bacon. Their only option is to get into another party. That gives party bosses much more leverage.

Stability would be a good change for PNG. Diminishing the power of political parties would go a long towards that goal. Granted I don’t think this will ever happen. Parliamentary government seems to be entrenched in most of the world. Still though I think this idea would help.