State, Society and Governance in Melanesia Project: review 1995-1998

Abstract

The State, Society and Governance in Melanesia Project is an outstanding example of collaboration between university and government sectors. The Project was conceived in December 1994 when Pacific Islands specialists in the Research School of Pacific and Asian Studies (RSPAS) of the Australian National University (ANU) agreed that there was an urgent need to address issues of governance and state-society relationships in the Melanesian region. Accordingly, a detailed proposal was made by the School to the University’s Strategic Development Fund. In September 1995, in University-wide competition, this bid won a major commitment of $275,000 per annum from the University to provide for the appointment of three fellows to the State, Society and Governance in Melanesia (SSGM) Project. In the meantime an approach had been made by the Director of the RSPAS, Professor Merle Riklefs, to the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade (DFAT). DFAT agreed to finance the secondment of a senior officer, Mr David Ambrose, to the RSPAS for three years to liaise at a senior level with the Australian and foreign governments, with other universities and with the corporate sector in developing and coordinating research activities on the perceived crises of governance, state and society in Melanesia, and to seek outside funding for this work. Simultaneously, AusAID made the generous provision of $40,400 per annum for three years towards the administrative costs of the Project, a contribution matched by the University. The SSGM Project was formally inaugurated on 1 January 1996 in the RSPAS, building on the Research School’s longstanding status as the world’s leading centre for scholarly and practical research on the southwest Pacific. In May three full-time fellows were appointed to work on specific, but related aspects of the nexus between state and society in Melanesia: Dr Sinclair Dinnen began work on the Project in September 1996, and Dr Bronwen Douglas and Mr Anthony Regan in January 1997. The SSGM Project is administered by a Steering Committee drawn from all areas of the RSPAS and with Library representation, chaired by Professor Ron Duncan, Executive Director of the National Centre for Development Studies (NCDS). Mr David Ambrose served as convenor of the Project until his return to full-time duties in DFAT in December 1997. The major research activities of the Project had to await the arrival of the fellows, but a seminar program was under way from the middle of 1996, drawing on expertise available from within the ANU, from other Australian and overseas institutions, and from the region. Since that time the growing capacity of the Project to harness and focus the dispersed energies and expertise of Melanesian specialists within and outside the ANU has been a signal virtue.