State-building and Evading Governance: Effects of Kiaps in Papua New Guinea

• In Event: The Dynamics of State-Building Across Time and Space

Abstract

A fundamental problem for the state from the pre-modern era to modern times is how to build governance capacity that provides citizens with security and order, which should then incentivize economic productivity and long-run growth. Comparative studies of such state-building efforts in Africa, Europe, and Asia provide varied perspectives on the challenges confronting emerging states on this front, but they all invariably highlight a common problem: how can coercive and administrative power be developed in the geographic periphery, and how can a common national identity be forged among people who are culturally or ethnically diverse? I study foreign powers’ efforts to solve these problems in pre-independence Papua New Guinea through the use of “kiaps”, or government officers, to patrol and administer territory and population. These officers were the embodiment of the state, endowed with extraordinary authority on its behalf. On their patrols across the vast and rugged expanse of territory, kiaps attempted to extend the coercive and administrative capacity of the state beyond government posts and towns and into the rural hinterlands populated by hundreds of different ethnolinguistic groups – a daunting task. Kiaps acted as census taker, cadastral surveyor, police officer, magistrate, medic, and agricultural consultant. Their charge was to provide order and certain public goods and services far from district centers, tangibly connecting people of different tribes with “the state” and beginning the formation of a national identity that transcends language, culture, and region. Using data on patrol routes and activities from the universe of officers’ hand-written patrol reports between 1912-1975, I examine the effects of these state-building efforts on contemporary individual-level outcomes, such as voting, communal violence, socio-economic status, and strength of self-identification with national vs. tribal identity. The paper provides comparative lessons in state-building for settings in which geography and culture present considerable challenges for the provision of order.

Author

• Luke N. Condra, University of Pittsburgh