ABSTRACT
A number of issues in the development of public service policies in Papua and New Guinea indicate the sensitivity of public employment in dependent territories in a phase of ‘preparation’: viz, moving through institutional changes towards self government, transfer of power and independence. Public employment in underdeveloped and changing societies is not only a function of its instrumentality, that is of its manifest programmes, important as those programmes, the expenditures and the costs and the whole public sector tend to be. The importance of the public sector in processes of preparation and development, and the domination of public employment for a youthful population, for education and for emerging elites, both demand the working out of new rules for instrumentality and political rights in the public service. The relationships between political development, development administration and an improved public service are very difficult indeed.
