Nematullah Bizhan
Papua New Guinea flag. Picture: SUPPLIED
NEMATULLAH BIZHAN and EMMANUEL GOREA
In 2018, then Shadow Minister for Treasury and Finance and current Treasurer Ian Ling-Stuckey stated that Papua New Guinea was a fragile state because of the government’s failing economic policies.
However, then Prime Minister Peter O’Neill refuted the idea, saying that PNG was not fragile.
Is PNG a fragile state? This is the question we try to answer in our new Devpolicy Discussion Paper available at devpolicy.org.
State fragility can be assessed across three distinct, but interdependent dimensions: state legitimacy, capacity and authority, as well as economy and resilience.