They also look sideways to each other. The disparity between their domestic feebleness and international recognition makes the smaller ones good examples of what Jackson called, rather sourly, 'quasi states' , dependent on the good will of the international community, rather than their own resources, for survival. The end of the Cold War has made Western countries less reluctant to interfere with their domestic sovereignty. Governance in Melanesia Melanesian societies were famously stateless, maintaining order within themselves. The characteristic style of modern multicultural states, like Australia, by contrast is only occasionally face to face.
Many relationships are single stranded - between buyer and seller, or bureaucrat and client.
Diversity of norms and values is expected or celebrated. The style is secular. District officers ruled by judiciously throwing their weight behind local configurations of power, and coordinated rather than controlled the flow of governing activity within their territory. Current debates about whether mining companies are or should carrying out functions that should, in some ideal order, belong to government are continuous with older colonial traditions of negotiated, indirect and parcelled-out governance. At independence there was widespread popular participation in discussions about the form of the future state, but not about the need for one.