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This article discusses a special issue of the Development Policy Review journal that aims to elevate the voices and perspectives of Pacific scholars on foreign aid and development issues in the region. The special issue was prompted by the low publication rates for authors from the global South in development journals. The articles in the special issue cover a range of topics, including power asymmetries in aid relationships, the importance of adapting aid to diverse contexts, the need for donors to listen to local voices, and the resilience of Pacific communities. The authors hope that this collection of articles will provide valuable insights and promote a better understanding of aid in the Pacific. [Extracted from the article]

This paper focuses on the 2022 general elections in Papua New Guinea, covering both electoral quality and election outcomes. Overall, the 2022 elections were very troubled. In parts of the country, serious violence and electoral fraud were major issues. In other parts of the country, polling was less fraught. However, some problems, such as the roll, were serious almost everywhere. In terms of election outcomes, one outcome – only two women won seats – was predictable. However, the election brought puzzling results too: in particular, incumbents were re-elected at the highest rate ever. And the largest party won a larger share of seats than has been the case in any election since 1982. Neither of the latter two results appear to have been a direct product of electoral fraud. Rather, the party outcome stems from a turn-of-the-millennium rule change. High incumbent re-election rates remain a genuine puzzle. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Vaccine hesitancy is proving to be a significant impediment to COVID-19 vaccination campaigns in some developing countries. This study focuses on vaccine hesitancy and means of reducing it. Data come from a large, representative phone survey and online randomized survey experiment, both run in Papua New Guinea, a developing country with low vaccination rates. Less than 20% of relevant respondents to the phone survey were willing to be vaccinated, primarily because of fear of side effects and low trust in the vaccine. Although vaccine hesitancy was high in the online experiment, participants who received a message emphasizing that the vaccine was safe and COVID-19 dangerous were 68% more likely to state they planned to be vaccinated than those in the control group. A message appealing to social norms was also effective in reducing vaccine hesitancy, although its efficacy was limited to certain types of people. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This document is a correction notice for an article titled "Addressing vaccine hesitancy in developing countries: Survey and experimental evidence" published in the journal PLoS ONE. The correction states that there were errors in the Funding statement, and provides the correct information regarding the funding sources. It also mentions an error in the Survey experiment subsection of the Materials and methods, and provides the correct sentence. The document concludes by listing the authors of the article. [Extracted from the article]

Motivation: The Pacific is the world's most aid‐dependent region, yet available data suggest aid projects are less effective on average in the Pacific than elsewhere in the developing world. Purpose: This article examines the most likely explanations for lower aid project effectiveness in the Pacific. Explanations include poor governance, restricted levels of political freedom, poor economic performance, isolation, and small populations. Methods and approach: Three approaches to causal mediation analysis are used to identify which explanatory variables best explain why aid projects are less effective in the Pacific. Aid project effectiveness data come from a multi‐donor dataset of individual aid projects. Data on potential explanatory variables comes from a range of international datasets. Findings: All three causal mediation approaches point to the isolation of many Pacific countries, alongside comparatively small populations, as being the main impediments to project effectiveness. These findings hold even with a suite of project traits being controlled for and within an analysis in which all the key country variables of interest are controlled for. Policy implications: Project effectiveness in the Pacific appears to be primarily constrained by variables that cannot themselves be shifted (the region's countries cannot readily be made less remote or more populous). Improved project effectiveness in the Pacific will require donor practice to carefully adapt to the region's context. A structured process of donor learning will be needed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We test whether emphasizing foreign aid's ability to advance donor national interests increases public support for aid. We compare appeals to the national interest with other approaches, including highlighting aid's ability to help developing countries. Tests involved a nationally representative, randomized survey experiment in which the treatments were vignettes about a major real aid project. Central among our findings were asymmetric treatment effects. It was easier to reduce the view that too much aid is given than to increase the belief that too little is given. Only appeals to the national interest were reliably able to do the latter. The efficacy of the different treatments varied depending on participant ideology, although in unexpected ways. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

China's rise is ushering in a new era of geostrategic contestation involving foreign aid. In many traditional OECD donors, aid policy is changing as a result. We report on a survey experiment studying the impacts of rising Chinese aid on public opinion in traditional donors. We randomly treated people with vignettes emphasising China's rise as an aid donor in the Pacific, a region of substantial geostrategic competition. We used a large, nationally-representative sample of Australians (Australia is the largest donor to the Pacific). As expected, treating participants reduced hostility to aid and increased support for more aid focused on the Pacific. Counter to expectations, however, treatment reduced support for using aid to advance Australian interests. These findings were largely replicated in a separate experiment in New Zealand. Knowledge of Chinese competition changes support for aid, but it does not increase support for using aid as a tool of geostrategy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this article we comprehensively document aid volatility (short‐term changes in aid flows) and aid fragmentation in the Pacific. We study two types of fragmentation: fragmentation across countries and fragmentation across projects. Our research draws on a new dataset compiled by the Lowy Institute. The dataset includes aid flows to the Pacific from non‐traditional donors such as China. This allows us to undertake the first‐ever study of Pacific aid volatility and fragmentation factoring in non‐traditional donors. We contrast the Pacific with other regions, finding that while fragmentation across donors is less in the Pacific, project fragmentation is worse, as is aid volatility. We find fragmentation across donors is increasing in the Pacific. We find a similar trend for fragmentation across projects. We find no evidence that non‐traditional donors such as China are driving these trends. However, we find some evidence that non‐traditional donors give more volatile aid. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this article, we conduct the first‐ever systematic study of Australian aid project appraisals. Using a previously unstudied data set of appraisals, we study project and recipient country factors influencing Australian aid effectiveness. We find effectiveness varies more within recipient countries than between countries. We find larger projects are more likely to be successful. Humanitarian projects are more successful on average than development projects. We also find that Australian aid is less likely to succeed in the Pacific than elsewhere, a significant finding given Australia's increased focus on the region. Finally, we show that Australia does not appear to be an unusual donor: when we compare Australia with other donors in a global data set, we find similar variables are correlated with effectiveness for most donors, including Australia. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article focuses on Australia is not a generous international citizen in less than one cent of every dollar of federal spending is devoted to foreign aid. Topics include Australia's comparative affluence being taken into account Australia being an outlier by the standards of the OECD, the proximity ensure Australia dominates the aid landscape in the Pacific, and Australia gave nearly four times as much to the region as New Zealand, and nearly five times as much as China.

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. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: 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. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article studies the New Zealand government aid programme over the years of Murray McCully's tenure as New Zealand's foreign minister. The article uses quantitative and qualitative data to detail changes in New Zealand aid volume, sectoral and geographic foci, and quality. We argue that despite strong rhetoric from Minister McCully, change in some areas was surprisingly modest. Yet the minister had impacts in other areas, particularly on aid quality, foremost in the form of changes to the purpose of New Zealand aid. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: Since 2013, Australian aid has been reduced and increasingly focused on delivering benefits to Australia. Motivated by these changes, this paper fills three gaps in the existing literature on public opinion about aid. It provides the only recent detailed study of Australians' opinions about aid. It studies specific policy questions in addition to the broader questions typical of international research. And it studies views on the purpose of aid, an area not previously researched. Although Australians are generally supportive of aid, most backed major aid cuts in 2015. However, most Australians think the purpose of Australian aid should be helping people in poor countries, not bringing benefits to Australia. There is a clear left–right divide in responses to all questions; however, some variables correlated with support for aid fail to explain variation in views about aid's purpose. The paper concludes by discussing ramifications for those who seek to change aid policy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this article, we use data from the 2013 and 2015 Australian Aid Stakeholder Surveys to gauge the extent of the changes to the Australian Government Aid Program since the 2013 federal election. The two surveys targeted the same set of stakeholders of the aid program, and both gathered data on a wide range of aspects of its functioning. As we assess the findings that emerged from the surveys, we situate our work amongst recent academic studies that have looked at the post-2013 aid changes in Australia. Our key findings are that the post-2013 changes to Australian aid have had wide-ranging impacts and have led to deteriorating overall aid quality. However, changes have not affected all aspects of the aid program equally, and some changes are starting to be reversed. In discussion, we examine what these developments mean for the future of Australian aid. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article discusses the poor performance of women candidates in Solomon Islands elections and potential aid policy responses. The article outlines women candidates' performance, details challenges faced by women, examines existing aid work designed to help women candidates and provides policy suggestions. The article argues that existing aid policy focused on candidate training and voter education has achieved little because the main impediments women candidates face are access to finance and local gatekeepers, alongside more subtle normative constraints. These are barriers that are not easily shifted by training or education programs. Meanwhile, for reasons of political economy, another area of aid-supported engagement, a parliamentary gender quota, is unlikely to be enacted. Reflecting this, and the nature of the challenges women candidates face, the article recommends donors also undertake work to help prospective women candidates engage with communities over time, building ties and reputations as providers of assistance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Does foreign aid extended by one country improve that country's image among populations of recipient countries? Using a multinational survey, we show that a United States aid program targeted to address HIV and AIDS substantially improves perceptions of the U.S. Our identification strategy for causal inference is to use instrumental variables measuring the magnitude of the HIV/AIDS problem in aid recipient countries. Our finding implies that in addition to its potential humanitarian benefits, foreign aid that is targeted, sustained, effective, and visible can serve as an important strategic goal for those countries that give it: fostering positive perceptions among foreign publics. By doing good, a country can do well. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines the key attributes of members of parliament from Solomon Islands. Drawing on bio-data on MPs, interviews and election results, the authors’ findings show that politicians are getting older, have atypical education levels and are from an increasingly diverse range of occupational backgrounds. The authors also find that, while Solomon Islands MPs are a political elite of sorts, they remain tightly tied to their communities. They consider the implications of these findings for research on developmental leadership, political professionalisation and elite theory. They argue that none of these three literatures adequately captures the political trajectories of politicians in Solomon Islands but that this case study contributes to research in these areas. 本文探讨了所罗门群岛议会成员的一些重要属性。作者根据对议员们传记、访谈和选举结果等资料的研究，发现政治家年龄越来越大，教育水平不太典型，职业背景愈益多样。作者同时发现，所罗门群岛议员虽属政治精英，但与各自的社群都保持紧密的联系。作者讨论了这些发现对于发展型领导人、政治职业化及精英理论所具有的意义。作者指出，这三方方面的文献都未能捕捉到所罗门群岛政治家的政治轨迹，而本研究却对此有所贡献。 [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

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., (© 2018 The Author(s). Published by Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group.)

High Throughput Screening (HTS) is a successful strategy for finding hits and leads that have the opportunity to be converted into drugs. In this paper we highlight novel computational methods used to select compounds to build a new screening file at Pfizer and the analytical methods we used to assess their quality. We also introduce the novel concept of molecular redundancy to help decide on the density of compounds required in any region of chemical space in order to be confident of running successful HTS campaigns.