The ‘Fluid’ Party System of Papua New Guinea.

Papua New Guinea is often seen as a curious exception in the literature on political parties. This paper investigates the operation of the PNG party system, using insights from Scott Mainwaring's research on weak party systems in developing democracies. It highlights (i) absence of labour movement linkages, (ii) rapid shift to self-government in the 1970s, (iii) the role of the ‘wantok’ system, (iv) lack of well-defined issue-based politics at the national level and (v) local splintering encouraged by electoral institutions as the factors responsible for the weak institutionalisation of PNG's party system. The paper also reviews the progress of contemporary reforms aimed at strengthening political parties in PNG and emphasises the importance of special sets of theoretical tools for analysing the politics of third wave democracies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]