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Clientelism is a central feature of politics in Solomon Islands and Papua New Guinea. Most voters vote in search of personalized or localized benefit, and most politicians focus on delivering benefits to their supporters at the expense of national governance. In this article, I explain how clientelism impedes development in both countries. I then describe underdevelopment's role in causing clientelism. I also explain the resulting trap: clientelism causes underdevelopment, and underdevelopment causes clientelism. Because of the trap, clientelism will shape the two countries' politics for the foreseeable future. However, the history of other countries gives cause to believe it can be overcome in the long‐run. In the second half of the paper, I explain how change may occur. I also outline implications for aid policy, looking at how clientelism constrains the impact aid can have, and explaining how donors can act to maximize their impact in a difficult environment.

Donor country publics typically know little about how much aid their governments give. This paper reports on three experiments conducted in Australia designed to study whether providing accurate information on government giving changes people’s views about aid. Treating participants by showing them how little Australia gives or by showing declining generosity has little effect. However, contrasting Australian aid cuts with increases in the United Kingdom raises support for aid substantially. Motivated reasoning likely explains the broad absence of findings in the first two treatments. Concern with international norms and perceptions likely explains the efficacy of the third treatment.

This book contains a record of Solomon Islands’ electoral history from 1967 to 2013. The first section provides background and some basic analysis of the results of elections for Solomon Islands’ national parliament. The second section contains election results, by year and electorate, for every general election from 2010 to 1967. The third section covers election results, by year and electorate, for every by‐election for which election results still exist (some by‐election results have been lost). An appendix at the end of the book provides details on current electorates and a map of Solomon Islands electorates. Please note that the data in the results tables are not official election results. Sometimes they have come from newspaper reports and other reporting as well as the Solomon Islands Gazette (the country’s official parliament gazette). You can find (most) official election results in the Solomon Islands Gazette. Results presented in this book have been checked back to source data but we cannot guarantee the original sources were accurate in every instance.