Beyond Life Support? Reflections on Solomon Islands after the Regional Assistance Mission

Abstract

The Australian-led Regional Assistance Mission to Solomon Islands was conceived in the 'state-building moment' that informed Western responses to 'state failure' over the past two decades. That moment has Now passed with renewed fiscal austerity, growing scepticism with interventionism, and shifts in Australia's regional policy priorities. The decade-long mission, which has recently begun to drawdown, was successful in restoring security to Solomons but less so in its more ambitious state-building efforts. Among the key constraints has been the mission's inability to influence a more inclusive political settlement. We highlight inherent tensions between instrumentalised approaches to state building and more organic processes of state formation. Looking forward, we consider how external assistance can contribute to state formation while retaining a focus on the 'life support' objectives of state building. We sketch some possibilities for hybrid forms of institutional development that might combine strengths from both local and liberal orders.

The Spatial Dimension of Police Legitimacy: An Exploration of Two Pacific Island States

“…Its ethnically diverse population of over half a million people is concentrated on the six largest islands (of over 1000), predominantly in rural or remote areas (Allen & Dinnen, 2010;Dinnen & Allen, 2015). Colonisation by the British in the late 1800s provided the conditions for a hybridised system of governance that established a village constable and local traditional courts system (Allen & Dinnen, 2016). Following independence in 1978, these structures were retained, and politics was dominated by competition between strong regional ethnic identities and desires to centralise government resources in the national capital Honiara (Allen & Dinnen, 2016).…”

Long live RAMSI? Peace‐building, anti‐corruption and political will in Solomon Islands

“…Future research should seek to better understand the contradiction between financial and legislative support for anti-corruption reform and concerns about rising opportunities for corruption. Building on previous analysis (e.g., Allen & Dinnen, 2016;Craig & Porter, 2013), this could involve projects aimed at better understanding the political economy of political corruption and anti-corruption reform.…”

“…Indeed, corruption in the logging sector has contributed to armed violence (Braithwaite et al., 2010). Despite these concerns, some (e.g., Allen & Dinnen, 2016; Walton, 2020) suggest anti‐corruption reforms have failed to adequately address these more complex causes of corruption.…”

“…Others, including Solomon Islanders themselves, have been more critical in assessing the governmentʼs role in addressing corruption during the RAMSI period (United Nations, 2018). Allen and Dinnen (2016) note that RAMSI was unable to influence the countryʼs political economy, especially the nexus of politics and logging, growing constituency funds and money politics—key sources of corruption.…”

Power distortions, marginalised youth and the impact of natural resource led development: the case of the Solomon Islands

“…The Australian-led Regional Assistance Mission to Solomon Islands was conceived in the 'state-building moment' that informed Western responses to 'state failure' over the past two decades (Allen and Dinnen, 2016).The aggregated numbers when divided by a small population size tend to make the Solomon Islanders appear aid reliant with respect to nation accounts figures. This is in actuality false in terms of in country realities.…”