Charles Hawksley

Australia's aid diplomacy and the Pacific Islands: change and continuity in middle power foreign policy

Great powers seek to influence world affairs; middle powers seek to influence their regions. Australias ‘near abroad’ includes Indonesia and the South Pacific, especially Melanesia. Elected Prime Minister in November 2007, Kevin Rudd has indicated a new direction for Australian policy in the Pacific and the previous image of a pushy or bullying Australia has to some extent been laid to rest. Yet the key differences between Rudds policies and those of the former government of John Howard appear to be of style rather than substance. Despite the new rhetoric of greater engagement, the emphasis on market forces creating development shows an essential continuity of Australian foreign aid policy in the South Pacific

Papua New Guinea at thirty: late decolonisation and the politcal economy of nation-building

Abstract In September 2005 Papua New Guinea (PNG) celebrated 30 years of independence from Australia. Despite greater Australian control over foreign aid spending in its former colony since the late 1980s, the Australian government still fears ‘state collapse’ in PNG. Framing its concerns in such a fashion assumes that there was a time when the state in PNG ‘worked’ in the same way as developed states. Australia practised paternalistic colonial policies before 1975, and independence was thrust upon PNG rather than achieved as the result of the efforts of an organised nationalist movement. Nation-building in PNG has been problematic from the outset, with a linguistically diverse population and no significant nationalist sentiment or structures on which to build. In the past decade neoliberal economic policies promoted by Australian policy makers and international lending agencies have tried to force the government and economy to be more efficient. Slowing growth, increased unemployment, rising crime rates and the apparent inability of the PNG state to reverse these trends led Canberra to force the PNG government to accept an ‘Enhanced Cooperation Program’ (ecp) to shore up the PNG state and reverse its predicted demise. The ecp raises questions over the success of nation- and state-building in PNG, as well as the degree of actual sovereignty enjoyed today by PNG.

Tino rangatiratanga and mana motuhake: Nation, state and self-determination in Aotearoa New Zealand

This article brings perspectives from three Māori activists, each promoting issues of self-determination in different ways. It centres on tino rangatiratanga and mana motuhake, two concepts that inform modern Māori activism and life and practice, and more recently conceptions of Māoridom as “nation”. Using a Gramscian framework we argue that the New Zealand state has over time created a notion of one people within one state, and has in the past incorporated challenges to its legitimacy within a framework of popular consent. The desire by some Māori activists for self-determination promotes a separateness that to some extent challenges this idea of nation–state unity. An examination of these modern Māori activist politics allows us to observe the operations of hegemony as it forms and reforms in modern New Zealand.

Constucting hegemony: colonial rule and colonial legitimacy in the highlands of Papua New Guinea

Europeans first entered the highlands of Papua New Guinea during the 1930s, but only rudimentary attempts were made by the Australian state to pacify and develop the area. In the postwar years, the administration provided health, education, and agricultural services to highlands New Guineans as part of the colonial trade-off: acceptance of centralized administration for peace and economic development. From a Gramscian perspective, the induction of New Guineans into modernity involved both coercion at the hands of the colonial state and a popular acceptance of new ways. Peace and expanded economic opportunity transformed the lives of the peoples of the eastern highlands, and similar processes in other districts positioned the colonial state as a central actor in creating the new capitalist economy. Securing hegemony meant the population became active in the construction of the new good sense, and this laid the foundations for the future independent state to rule with a degree of legitimacy and to engage with the world capitalist market.

Transitional Justice as Police-Building in Solomon Islands: Tensions of State-Building and Implications for Gender

Modern interventions focused on state building usually incorporate some mechanisms for transitional justice. The 2003 intervention of the Regional Assistance Mission to Solomon Islands (RAMSI) initially favoured criminal trials to achieve transitional justice, while local initiatives promoted community healing. RAMSI adopted a security paradigm that viewed the conflict as a matter of law and order, rather than as a complex historical and social issue. A central aim of RAMSI has been to rebuild trust in the state’s police force; however, this has been a particularly complex process as during the conflict from 1998 to 2003 many members of the Royal Solomon Islands Police Force (RSIPF) were implicated in serious crimes. RAMSI has pushed for a generational renewal of the RSIPF, but its emphasis on institutional mechanisms of state control and legal processes has resulted in a lack of coordination with local preferences for restorative justice. This chapter uses a gender lens to unpack the tensions and implications of the RAMSI intervention for women, arguing that the security-first paradigm, along with the exclusion of women from the initial Peace Agreement, has entrenched existing patriarchal social relations and has been counterproductive to later gender-mainstreaming initiatives in peace-building.