Women's Representation and Electoral System Reform in Papua New Guinea: The Limitations of Limited Preferential Voting

Kerryn Baker

Asia and the Pacific Policy Studies from Crawford School of Public Policy, The Australian National University

Abstract: Papua New Guinea moved to a limited preferential voting (LPV) system prior to the 2007 national election. The shift from first†past†the†post to preferential voting was intended to encourage the election of candidates with broader mandates from constituents; to reverse the trend of increasing election†related violence; and to lead to more cooperation between candidates and voting blocs. It was also anticipated that instituting a preferential system would increase the electoral chances of female candidates. This article looks at the impact of the LPV system on women's participation and performances as candidates in Papua New Guinean elections since 2002, focusing in particular on the three general elections in 2007, 2012 and 2017. It argues that the benefits of LPV have not outweighed its costs, at least in terms of women's participation and representation. This demonstrates the limits of institutional reform of this nature in tackling deep†seated issues relating to political culture.

Keywords: Papua New Guinea; electoral reform; women's representation; elections; political participation (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 12 pages
Date: 2018-05-21
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-cdm and nep-pol
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Published in Asia & the Pacific Policy Studies, May 2018, pages 208-219

Downloads: (external link)
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1002/app5.235 (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:een:appswp:201816

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Asia and the Pacific Policy Studies from Crawford School of Public Policy, The Australian National University Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sung Lee ( this e-mail address is bad, please contact ).