Can Law Manufacture a Party System? The Papua New Guinea and Solomon Islands Experience with Party-Strengthening Legislation

Two western Pacific states — the Solomon Islands and Papua New Guinea (PNG) — experimented with unusual and ambitious reforms aimed at strengthening political parties in the new millennium. In this paper, we look at what those laws entailed and how they worked in practice. In both cases, we find that unforeseen repercussions dominated. In PNG, the new laws encouraged candidates who formerly contested as independents to now nominate as members of microscopic one- or two-member parties whereas in the Solomon Islands many formerly party-affiliated candidates adjusted by contesting as independents. In PNG, the law was one of a range of devices aimed at strengthening incumbent governments, but money politics and manipulation of parliamentary procedure proved more significant. Core anti-defection provisions in the new law were ruled unconstitutional in 2010, but other still valid clauses preserved an advantage for the “largest party” in government formation. In the Solomon Islands, the law created a shadow world of free-floating individuals able to switch at liberty between formally constrained hermit crab shell parties. In neither country did these laws succeed in strengthening party systems.