When brokers fail, brokers proliferate! Generational change and the failure of development in remote Papua New Guinea

Abstract

Abstract Recent efforts to secure development by Febi and Kubo people in Papua New Guinea's Western Province reveal a patterned history of failing brokers, incomplete projects and wasted money. Within this longer trajectory, three overlapping waves of brokerage can be discerned, each emerging in response to the limitations of its predecessors. These waves differ in brokers' social positioning, the bases on which they claim representative legitimacy, and the forms of capital—material, social or symbolic—they seek to accumulate. Shifts in brokerage practice reflect generational change and increasing engagement with governance, financial management and service‐delivery systems previously experienced as remote. Our analysis centres on the second wave, situating it between earlier and nascent formations. Taken cumulatively, these waves of brokerage mediate structural gaps and facilitate Febi and Kubo incorporation into provincial, national and global regimes that promise future advancement, even as they deepen entanglement in clientelistic relations.