Political consequences of Pacific island electoral laws

Abstract

"This working paper surveys the range of electoral system types and party structures across the Pacific Islands and considers the viability of contemporary electoral reforms aimed at strengthening party systems. For each region, the paper surveys in brief all countries, but focuses in detail on one or two countries in which particularly topical electoral issues arise. As an antidote to the approach of setting up the familiar party-based model, and then examining the extent to which Pacific politics achieves that style of organisation, we examine first the western and northern independent Pacific states where political parties are of least significance and then look at those Polynesian countries where political parties have assumed greater significance before focussing on the most strongly party-centred ethnically bipolar states of Fiji and New Caledonia." - page 3-4