Papua New Guinea (PNG) is a post-colonial constitutional democracy. Its political system is generally described as fragile, despite the fact that it has never experienced the scale of internal civil war that has led to state collapse in many post-colonial societies. Most political analyses of PNG have focused on the need for reform of national institutions. The main exception has been research on Bougainville and on post-conflict peacebuilding in that province.
This paper shifts the focus to electoral and non-electoral dynamics that affect governing stability in the island province of New Ireland, PNG. The recent death of PNG's founding father and former Prime Minister, Sir Julius Chan, opened up a contest for the governorship of New Ireland. Events surrounding this contest reveal that formal and informal rules have operated concurrently, not as competing systems but as a single governing order sustained by close alignment between customary governance and parliamentary leadership. These dynamics have played out in the recent contestation over the governorship of New Ireland. As such, New Ireland presents a case in which assumptions about an underlying tension between Western and traditional governance principles may not apply. The durability of the so-called “New Ireland Way” warrants analysis on its own terms rather than through assumptions about the inherent clash between custom and Western norms that characterises much of the hybridity literature.
in collaboration with New Ireland local, this paper develops a theoretical framework for mapping the stability of the “New Ireland Way” and explores the fault lines opened by the by-election for the position of Governor. While the case study focuses on a single province, there may be broader implications for the 2027 election in Papua New Guinea.
