While it is true that missionary families came from New England (bringing heavy dresses and suits, airless houses, and other unsuitable parts of their “habitus”), this was a century ago and most such families have been long reduced to a simple desire to protect wealth (not exactly a missionary position, as it were) or land, not to run the place.

“Re-creation by the New York elite in Oregon of east-coast intellectual elitism in all its viciousness, megalomania and insularity”. I take it you have not been to NY in a few decades. In NY, it’s more often how good you are, not who you know. Such meritocracy is not usually described at vicious and megalomania. Insularity? Most of the eastern elite now seems to come from North Dakota, Pennsylvania, Canada, and even Montana! Before that it was the Irish and the Jews and so on.

I’d suggest, and others have hinted at it in previous comments, that Hawaii’s problem is that it is not a meritocracy. Meritocracies are rarely or never perfect and are inefficient (besides immoral) when they exclude groups. Given that, they are more likely to recognize and reward hard work and excellence. In Hawaii, rewards seem to be based more on who you know, not how well you do things. So why work hard? Why innovate? Why bring in novel ideas?

First, are the two state bureaucracies really that different?

My sense is that they are both pretty average on the whole in that way. The grass is always greener on the other side.

Second, how are the two states really that different from one another in terms of their economic and political history?

My own impression is that Oregon has historically been just as much or even more of an economic and cultural colony than Hawaii has been, shipping out its timber and agricultural products and shipping in just about everything else (with the exception of beer). The people of Oregon seem very aware of that.

Anecdotally, I once heard a story about a newly hired professor at Reed College in Portland who, in his first days on the job in the 1960s, was introduced to some wealthy Portland socialite who, with her peers, heavily funded the college. As he entered the room where she was waiting for him, he nervously thought of something to say, and blurted out the question “Madam, is there something that I should know about Oregon?” She immediately straightened up her back and thrust up her chin imperiously and said without hesitation “You should know that we are all from New York.” She did not mean the people of Oregon, who are generally from Oregon and the Pacific Northwest (and increasingly from California). She meant the people who OWN and RUN Oregon. She did not hide it; she actually asserted it. To some extent, Reed College itself is a kind of bansai-like micro recreation by the New York elite in Oregon of east-coast intellectual elitism in all its viciousness, megalomania and insularity.

The kicker is that this very professor decades later visited Hawaii. He was himself from Boston and went to Harvard. When he visited Kawaiahao Church and Punahou School he was shocked. The names on the gravestones and the buildings were those of the elite families of Boston. In some respects, Punahou, like Reed College, is a recreation of the kind of hyper-competitive elite institutions that Boston is famous for (although Punahou men have always tended to prefer Yale). But where that implantation is done out in the open in Oregon, it’s more disguised in Hawaii. (Think of the old, low-key houses of the elite in Kahala that seemed to sprout organically from the earth like mushrooms, in stark contrast to the gross McMansions that are replacing them).

Oregon and Hawaii differ in other ways that might be relevant. The weather, obviously. Related to the weather, the Pacific Northwest has the highest book readership rate, coffee consumption and depression in the US. Oregon is remarkably similar in population size (and climate) to Sweden, New Zealand, Finland and Ireland, countries that rank high in terms of creativity, democracy and education; ~4 million citizens might be a sweet spot for having a manageable population that is not too parochial.

Importantly, Oregon and Hawaii differ in the way their similar radical labor history played out. Union radicals kept the mafia out of the Pacific Northwest; ironically, this helped to foster an better business climate. In contrast, Noel Kent points out at the end of “Islands Under the Influence” that as soon as unions ascended into power in Hawaii, they morphed into feudal fiefdoms. (Kent does not explain why this happened.)

This leads us to Ian Lind’s efforts to “come up with a theory that explains why this part of governing in Hawaii seems impossible to get onto the right track.”

Early histories of modern Hawaii like Lawrence Fuch’s “Hawaii Pono” were liberal celebrations of justice achieved through social integration in Hawaii coupled with societal integration of Hawaii with the American economy and political system. Later, Kent took a more critical neo-Marxist look at the underlying economic processes that would undermine the earlier optimism (‘dependent development’).

But the notion that cultures and attitudes tend to recreate the institutions that originally fostered those values and perspectives is a more recent development in the social sciences.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Habitus_(sociology)

Habitus refers to lifestyle, the values, the dispositions and expectation of particular social groups that are acquired through the activities and experiences of everyday life. Perhaps in more basic terms, the habitus could be understood as a structure of the mind characterized by a set of acquired schemata, sensibilities, dispositions and taste. The particular contents of the habitus are the result of the objectification of social structure at the level of individual subjectivity. The habitus can be seen as counterpoint to the notions of rationality that is prevalent within other disciplines of social science research. It is perhaps best understood in relation to the notion of the ‘habitus’ and ‘field’, which describes the relationship between individual agents and the contextual environment.

Bourdieu wrote habitus is composed of “Systems of durable, transposable dispositions, structured structures predisposed to function as structuring structures, that is, as principles which generate and organize practices and representations that can be objectively adapted to their outcomes without presupposing a conscious aiming at ends or an express mastery of the operations necessary in order to attain them.”

Along these lines, Bourdieu famously compares the habitus to a train that runs forward without tracks in front of itself — but which throws out tracks in front of itself. That is, cultures far from home recreate material structures and institutions (e.g., Punahou). (This was also the concept behind the TV show “Gilligan’s Island”, in which Americans on a tropical isle recreate Hollywood, Wall Street, Big Science, the US Navy, Main Street, etc.).

Bourdieu is perhaps the most cited social scientist today. This is now all very mainstream. Is that theory enough for you, Ian?

DEVELOPMENT!

THEN a pendulum-style over-reaction to develvopment.

and the fight will continue. for example, Kapolei was built, but you can tell some people think Kapolei absolutely can now be UNBUILT. lol. Kapolei is certainly not a booming city, but it is not Detroit.
address of the Department of Hawaiian Home Lands?????
91-5420 Kapolei Parkway
Kapolei, Hawaii, 96707