Governance and Pacific Islands Policy Networks

Abstract

This chapter focuses on the governance arrangements that evolved in response to conditions in the Pacific Islands region, as well as to the public policy processes that were emerging across public sector organizations more broadly. There are multiple strands to the UN’s concern for governance: the first flows from a concern to ensure that member countries develop sufficient capabilities to run their “machinery of government” and implement development plans, including those implemented in partnership with UN agencies; a second flows from the need for UN agencies to engage effectively with development dialogue at regional level; while a third flows from the need for UN agencies to themselves model the governance capabilities that they aspire to instilling in these national and regional development partners. The settings for governance interactions include frequent bi-lateral and multi-lateral exchanges. However, policy practice is much easier to theorize about than to implement, and such fundamental phases of the policy cycle as planning and decision-making, implementing and evaluating, together with the multi-party dialogue processes that each of these stages requires, have required considerable attention from governments, development partners, and civil society.