Ironies of Organization: Landowners, Land Registration, and Papua New Guinea's Mining and Petroleum Industry

Abstract

Contemporary policy work in Papua New Guinea portrays the country either in terms of an inflexible tradition to be remedied by liberalization, or a weak state whose disintegrating social institutions must be strengthened by regional neighbors. As an analysis of land registration issues surrounding resource developments shows, rural Papua New Guineans demonstrate a willingness to innovate on past practice that is strikingly modern in its outlook, and the politics of land registration cannot be explained by liberalization or disintegration approaches. At the same time, the fluidity of land tenure makes it difficult to study land in Papua New Guinea as if it were common property, as is done in new institutional economics.