Public Choice in Melanesia: Community, bureaucracy and the market in land management

Published date01 January 1990
DOIhttp://doi.org/10.1002/pad.4230100107
Date01 January 1990
PUBLIC ADMINISTRATION AND DEVELOPMENT, VOL.
10,5348
(1990)
Public Choice in Melanesia: community, bureaucracy and
the market in land management
PETER LARMOUR
University
of
Tusmaniu
SUMMARY
The relationship between bureaucracy, market and community is a political issue in many
countries, for example
in
debates about privatization
or
welfare policy. The following article
considers how some of the arguments apply in the circumstances
of
the island South Pacific
where community forms
of
organization have persisted
in
spite
of
the introduction
of
markets
and states. Examples are drawn from land management, though similar arguments could be
applied to other sectors such as housing or health. The paper deals mainly with the independent
Melanesian states (including Fiji). First
it
looks at the relationship between land ownership and
management. Then it defines three kinds
of
management-by bureaucracies, markets, and
communities-in terms
of
‘ideal types’, and the triangular relationships between them. Much
policymaking about land in Melanesia in the
1970s
concerned the relationship between
bureaucracy and community. In the
1980s,
and since independence, there has been more
government concern with another arm
of
the triangle, between bureaucracy and the market.
The relationship between bureaucracy and markets is a theme
of
the
so
called ‘public choice’
approach to administrative theory. The article concludes with
a
discussion
of
the relevance
of
‘public choice’ approaches to management in the Melanesian states.
INTRODUCTION
In the small island states of the South Pacific, land is managed by three methods: by
bureaucracies; by markets; and by communities. the bureaucracies consist
of
govern-
ment departments. The markets consist
of
independent buyers and sellers, supported
by systems
of
real estate agents, banks, and land title registries. Communities consist
of
small groups of people with common customs.
People can acquire land through any
of
these methods. A person needing land to
build a house may be granted land by a Lands Department, may buy land from its
existing owner (perhaps through a real estate agent, with
a
mortgage from a bank), or
use land by permission of the clan or landowning group
of
which he or she is (or
becomes) a member. Some members
of
the current Melanesian elite have access
to
all
three.
Similarly, the use
of
land may be regulated by bureaucracies (for example, when
inspectors enforce zoning regulations); by markets (when rising land values encour-
The author is Lecturer in Administration in the Department
of
Political Science at the University
of
Tasmania, P0252C. Hobart, Tasmania
7001,
Australia.
027
1-2075/90/010053-16$08.OO
01990
by John Wiley
&
Sons, Ltd.
54
P. Larmour
age changes from residential to commercial use); and by communities (when local
customs ensure that land is left fallow after harvesting).
A
particular piece of land may
be managed at different times by different combinations
of
all three.
The three methods of management correspond incompletely to the three types
of
land tenure-customary, freehold, and government-that exist in most
of
the island
states of the South Pacific. Table
1
shows the percentage
of
land in each category in
Papua New Guinea (PNG), Solomon Islands, Vanuatu and Fiji.
Table
1.
Customary, freehold and government land (as percentage
of
total land area)
Customary Private Government
freehold
PNG
Solomon Is.
Vanuatu
Fiji
97.2
86.7
98.8
82.5
0.2
4.4
0.0
10.0
2.6
8.9
1.2
7.5
Sources:
Papua New Guinea
1973,
p.
45
and
1981
Table
24
(only largeholdings); Solomon
Islands
1981,
p.
147;
Van Trease
1984,
p.
22;
Karnikamica
1987,
p.
226.
‘Customary’ or ‘native’ land is predominantly, but not completely, managed by
communities. ‘Freehold’ or ‘private’ land is predominantly managed by markets.
‘Government’, ‘state’ or ‘public’ land is predominantly managed by bureaucracies.
However some pieces of land may be managed in a mixture
of
ways. Public land under
lease to a private owner, for example, is subject to both market and bureaucratic
pressures. Or customary land may become registered, and
so
subject to a mix of
community, market and bureaucratic pressures. Legal forms such as the trust board,
the co-operative, and the joint venture agreement represent more complex relation-
ships between ownership and management.
BUREAUCRACY
The characteristics
of
bureaucracy were classically set out by Max Weber
(1968):
hi-
erarchy; conformity
to
rules; specialization; impersonality; and recruitment to a career
service, on the basis
of
merit. These characteristics constitute an ‘ideal type’. Particu-
lar organizations (such as a Lands Department in Melanesia) may,
or
may not, have
all the characteristics of a bureaucracy. Organizations using bureaucratic principles
have been regarded as, on the one hand, uniquely powerful and efficient instruments
of government, and on the other a hand as oppressive, rule-bound, irresponsive to
political direction and inappropriate to the tasks of development.
Governments are not necessarily bureaucratic: the early colonial governments
were very thinly staffed, without much specialization, and their field officers were
recruited on a personal basis, and governed in a highly personal and arbitrary way. The
PNG government, for example, may have only really become ‘bureaucratic’, in the
sense defined above, after the Second World War when, as Conyers describes, the
number of public servants rose from only
1,687
in 1949 to over 35,495 in the
1970s
(1976,
p. 5).
The late colonial governments in Melanesia were characteristically bureaucratic in

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