'Snow lands on top': Power, Patronage and Political drift Honiara

The most disturbing thing about The Hunger Games is not the spectacle of violence or the Capitol’s grotesque luxury.

It’s the recognition that President Snow doesn’t belong in a distant dystopia. He fits uncomfortably into the governance dynamics we already see - from Washington to Honiara.

And from a Solomon Islands lens, it feels heavier. Because the parallels with our own political economy are no longer abstract.

Snow’s rise is not a story about monsters.

It’s a case study in how ordinary people, inside a fragile democracy, slide into complicity without ever noticing the precise moment they crossed the line.

From Panem to Honiara: why this matters here

We like to imagine we’d never sit in the Capitol’s golden seats. We tell ourselves we would be the rebels, not the spectators. Yet, from the “Tensions” of 1998–2003 to post-conflict politics, the record in Solomon Islands shows something harder to swallow: most citizens do not openly resist systems that reward loyalty and punish dissent. They adapt to them. 

Political scientists Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt, in How Democracies Die, show that modern authoritarianism rarely arrives via a dramatic coup. It emerges through a gradual weakening of institutions - parliaments, courts, media - while citizens convince themselves that each step is “temporary” or “necessary.”  Snow’s career is almost a textbook of that trajectory.

In The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes, Coriolanus Snow begins not as a tyrant but as a hungry, anxious teenager. His mantra, “Snow lands on top,” is less an expression of arrogance than of scarcity-induced panic. Psychologists would call this a survival script - a trauma-shaped belief that silently drives future decisions. Hannah Arendt captured this drift when she argued that the worst evil is committed by people who never clearly decide to be evil; they simply follow routines.

Snow never wakes up one day and suddenly chooses darkness. He just keeps choosing self-protection.

The Solomon Islands version of “Snow lands on top”

Now plug that logic into Solomon Islands’ political realities.

Since independence, the country has experienced:

• A brutal internal conflict (the Tensions) driven by land, migration and perceived inequality, especially on Guadalcanal. 

• A decade-long regional intervention (RAMSI) that restored order but left deeply political questions - how power, land and resources are shared - only partially resolved. 

• An economy heavily dependent on logging and now shifting to mining, where resource flows are large but benefits are very uneven. 

Research by Matthew and Dinnen (2015); and separately, Dr. Tarcisius Tara Kabutaulaka shows that logging politics are structured by networks of obligation: MPs, “big men,” officials and landowners are locked into systems of reciprocity and patronage. This incentivises short-term extraction and side-payments over long-term stewardship or accountable governance. 

That’s the real-world version of Snow’s motto. Not “Snow lands on top,” but “my tribe, my supporters, my network must land on top” - even if the forests don’t.

None of the individual decisions look monstrous on their own:

• Approving “just one more” logging licence because the constituency needs cash.

• Channeling constituency development funds (CDFs) to supporters because “that’s how politics works.”

• Staying quiet about procurement deals because your relative works for the contractor.

Peer-reviewed work on Solomon Islands and PNG by Terence Wood describes this as a “clientelism trap”: voters expect personalised benefits, politicians deliver them, and the system as a whole under-invests in impartial services and institutions. 

Each choice is rational in isolation. Together, they reshape the political culture until protecting your position almost requires betraying the public interest. That’s exactly how Snow slides.

Manufactured scarcity in a resource-rich country

Panem is rich but keeps the districts hungry. The aim is not efficiency; it is control.

Solomon Islands is not Panem. But the pattern of manufactured scarcity is painfully familiar.

• Large-scale logging has, for decades, delivered around 70% of exports, 15% of GDP and significant government revenue. Yet rural communities in logging areas frequently report poor services, degraded land and limited alternative livelihoods. 

• Youth unemployment particularly in Honiara is chronically high - one World Bank assessment estimated that around 80% of youth lacked formal jobs in the capital, with urban growth outpacing job creation and basic services. 

• Climate-driven shocks are already eroding food security. Regional studies show Pacific food systems, including in Solomon Islands, are highly vulnerable to climate change and increasingly reliant on imported processed foods, with negative health and resilience impacts. 

The issue isn’t an absolute lack of resources. It’s that access is structured through political and economic choices - who gets CDFs, where roads go, which schools get teachers, and whose islands get sea walls. If at all.

A 2023 UNDP-supported political economy analysis of accountability in Solomon Islands describes how fragmented institutions and highly personalised politics constrain oversight of public funds, allowing elites to benefit while many citizens still struggle with basic services. 

Scarcity, in that context, becomes a governance tool. When people are competing for handouts and project promises, they are less likely to challenge the system that keeps them dependent. That’s Snow’s playbook.

Spectacle and distraction in a small media market

Neil Postman warned decades ago that democracies can “amuse themselves to death,” turning politics into entertainment and stripping serious issues of context. 

Panem does this with the Games; the Capitol converts trauma into a show.

In Solomon Islands, the spectacle is obviously smaller - no arena, no fire dresses. But the underlying mechanics are recognisable:

• Highly visible infrastructure gifts, stadiums and delegations that dominate headlines, while more technical but crucial reforms (public finance management, land administration, education quality) get less attention. 

• Social media storms on Facebook and TikTok that reduce complex questions - security pacts, foreign policy alignments, domestic unrest - into memes, rumours and personality fights. Government and police have already had to publicly warn about online misinformation and the risks it poses to stability. 

The UK-funded study on social media, human rights and democracy in the Pacific (including Solomon Islands) finds that digital platforms both empower citizens and amplify harassment, polarisation and disinformation that erode trust in institutions. 

That’s Snow’s first principle - control through spectacle - just running on 3G instead of holograms.

Divide and rule, Melanesian edition

Snow survives by keeping districts angry at each other, not at the Capitol.

Our country has its own fractures: island, province, language, religion, clan, urban vs rural. Academic work on the Tensions and their aftermath shows how narratives of “outsiders,” especially Malaitans on Guadalcanal, fed grievance and violence. 

Today, peer-reviewed research on clientelism and service delivery in Solomon Islands shows:

• Voters often evaluate MPs based on how much they deliver directly to their supporters, not on national policy performance.

• CDFs - discretionary funds controlled by MPs - have become central to political competition, reinforcing personalised, zero-sum politics. 

When every constituency is told, “Your survival depends on your member extracting as much as possible,” then solidarity becomes harder to maintain. A fragmented society is easier to manage. Snow would recognise the architecture immediately.

Normalising corruption as “just how things are”

Zygmunt Bauman described modern evil as something produced by routine bureaucratic work, not cartoon villains. That line could be printed on the front page of every anti-corruption strategy.

According to Transparency International’s Corruption Perceptions Index, the Solomon Islands currently sits in the mid-range globally, ranked in the 70s out of 180 countries, with a score in the low-40s out of 100, signalling serious perceived public-sector corruption. 

Local commentary on the 2025 CPI ranking bluntly notes that the country is now seen as “amongst the most corrupt nations.” 

That does not mean “everyone is corrupt.” It does mean the system has normalised practices that, in aggregate, undermine trust and fairness:

• Vote-buying framed as “help for supporters.”

• Logging deals are framed as “the only way to bring development.”

• Intimidation or harassment of journalists and activists dismissed as “controlling misinformation.” 

Every individual actor can claim necessity. Snow does exactly this: he insists that the Games preserve order. Dictators, in fiction and in political science literature, almost never describe themselves as villains. They see themselves as guardians of stability.

The Solomons is not Panem - and that’s precisely the opportunity

Here’s the uncomfortable dual truth in the research:

1. Solomon Islands' democracy is fragile.

   Studies show that clientelism and weak accountability have kept governance outcomes poor and contributed to conflict and economic underperformance. 

1. Solomon Islands' democracy is also remarkably resilient.

   Despite the Tensions, governments have changed through elections, not coups, since independence in 1978, and there is a vibrant civil society, churches and local leadership pushing for reform. 

That mix of risk plus resilience is exactly where governance can still pivot away from a Snow-style drift.

If you strip away the Hollywood costumes, Snow’s strategy reduces to three operating principles that every policymaker, voter, and development partner in Solomon Islands should treat as anti-KPIs:

Control through spectacle

• Governance red flag: politics as show, mega-projects as distraction, social media outrage cycles instead of deliberation.

• Governance antidote: boring, rules-based investment in institutions - courts, oversight bodies, independent media, local government - backed by transparent data and citizen engagement.

Divide and conquer

• Governance red flag: policies and funding that deepen constituency, clan, provincial and partisan fragmentation.

• Governance antidote: re-designing transfer systems (including CDFs) to reward inclusive, performance-based service delivery rather than personalised handouts, as multiple studies and evaluations now recommend. 

Normalise cruelty through necessity

• Governance red flag: “we have no choice” narratives around unsustainable logging, abusive labour practices, or neglect of outer islands and informal settlements.

• Governance antidote: investing in alternative livelihoods, climate-resilient food systems, and youth opportunities that reduce the political leverage of scarcity. 

The question we don’t like to ask - now, in Solomon Islands terms

We are not living in Panem. But we are operating inside the same human vulnerabilities that made Panem possible: the desire for comfort, the pull of loyalty networks, the fatigue of constant crisis, the temptation to look away.

Snow’s most accurate insight about human nature is depressingly simple: most people will tolerate almost anything if it arrives slowly enough, wrapped in good stories, and kept just far enough from their own front door.

So the question for Solomon Islands is not, “Are we the Capitol?” That’s too easy to dismiss.

The sharper questions are:

• How many times can we shrug at vote-buying before it becomes the only viable campaign model? 

• How many “one-off” logging deals can we accept before sustainable forests, and the communities that depend on them, are written off as collateral damage? 

• How many social-media hate storms, misinformation spikes and quiet erosions of media independence can we tolerate before honest public debate is no longer the norm, but the exception? 

At some point, a society realises that the “small concessions” were the main event all along.

The Snow question, translated into our context, is this:

How far can Solomon Islands drift - through routine, clientelism, and distraction - before we wake up and realise we have already become the political system we keep insisting we are nothing like?

That’s not a cinematic question. It’s a governance design problem. And the research is clear: trajectories like ours are hard to change, but they are not inevitable. We can still change the course. I still deeply believe that.

References:

ALLEN, M. G., & DINNEN, S. (2015). Solomon Islands in Transition? The Journal of Pacific History, 50(4), 381–397. http://www.jstor.org/stable/24644600

Kabutaulaka T, in 'Globalisation and Governance in Solomon Islands'. Retrieved on 6 November 2025 from https://press-files.anu.edu.au/downloads/press/p55871/pdf/ch125.pdf

Levitsky, S., & Ziblatt, D. (2018). How democracies die. Crown.