Most Pacific island states are democracies , characterised by weak political organisations formed around strong personalities. There is often little to choose between their broad statements of economic and social goals, but there are frequently bitter struggles for the power to allocate the costs and benefits of the development process. Politicians and their supporters are mainly interested in winning office and keeping it. Repaying political debts may take precedence over building productive capacity. Investment tends to lose out to consumption.
Budget deficits blow out before elections.
Economic management and politics are thus closely intertwined, and politicians and economists spend a lot of time manoeuvring around each other, looking for common ground on which to build policy that is both technically and politically feasible. Each Pacific island state is seeking ways to mobilise a bigger and more efficient combination of local brains and muscles, natural resources of land sea, technology and money. The aim is to produce more and better goods and services, and sell these to itself and other economies in competition with other producers. They need transparent and predictable public policies, domestic peace, fair and reliable legal and judicial systems. They need to compete successfully on an international playing-field that often seems to be tilted against them, and where small players, however agile they may be, are in constant danger of being squashed.