Summary :
There is a vast literature on the principles of public administration and good governance, and no shortage of theoreticians, practitioners and donors eager to push for public sector reform, especially in less-developed countries. Papua New Guinea has had its share of public sector reforms, frequently under the influence of multinational agencies, notably the World Bank and the Asian Development Bank, and aid donors, including AusAID. Yet there seems to be a general consensus, both within and outside Papua New Guinea, that policy making and implementation have fallen short of expectations, that there has been a failure to achieve ‘good governance’. This impression is supported in the indifferent performance of key social indicators in Papua New Guinea. However, since the early post-independence survey of policy making in Papua New Guinea edited by John Ballard (Ballard 1981), there has been little attempt to study the processes of policy making and implementation across a range of sectors and functions. To provide such an overview, a project was initiated in 2002 within the Australian National University’s State, Society and Governance in Melanesia Program, with assistance from AusAID, involving a group of scholars and policy practitioners from Papua New Guinea and Australia with deep experience in specific areas of policy, to examine policy making and implementation since independence, across a range of sectors but within a roughly common framework. Draft papers were presented to workshops in Port Moresby and Canberra, and some further papers subsequently added.