Julien Barbara

Rethinking neo-liberal state building: building post-conflict development states

In attempting to rebuild post-conflict failed states, the international community has drawn heavily on neo-liberal development paradigms. However, neo-liberal state building has proved ineffectual in stimulating economic development in post-conflict states, thus undermining prospects for state consolidation. This article offers the developmental state as an alternative model for international state building, better suited to overcoming the developmental challenges that face post-conflict states. Drawing on the East Asian experience, developmental state building would seek to build state capacity to intervene in the economy to guide development, compensating for the failure of growth led by the private sector to materialise in many post-conflict states. The article concludes that such an approach would, in the first instance, require the international community to accept more honestly its developmental responsibilities when it decides to intervene to rebuild failed states.

Antipodean Statebuilding: The Regional Assistance Mission to Solomon Islands and Australian Intervention in the South Pacific

Abstract This essay analyses Australian-led statebuilding efforts in Solomon Islands, through the Regional Assistance Mission to Solomon Islands (RAMSI). RAMSI has often been offered as a successful example of statebuilding worthy of international consideration. Here, some of the limitations of the RAMSI mission and its progress in rebuilding the ‘failed’ South Pacific state will be carefully assessed. Despite significant short-term statebuilding successes in restoring security and stabilizing the economy, RAMSI faces long-term challenges centred on the complex politics of political community-building. As an example of ‘best practice’ statebuilding, RAMSI highlights the complexities involved with the two-level game of international intervention: the (conflicting) challenge of reconciling the need to respect sovereign sensitivities with the need to undertake robust political engagement.

Nation building and the role of the private sector as a political peace-builder

The international development community (national governments, international development bodies such as the World Bank and UN, and civil society organisations such as Oxfam) has acknowledged for some time the need to engage the private sector more fulsomely in pursuit of its human security objectives. With the bridging of the security-development nexus in the wake of the Cold War, policy-makers came to recognise the importance of working with the private sector as an influential international actor. Where once the international development community was highly sceptical of what was considered the essentially exploitative role of the (multinational) private sector in developing countries, it now widely accepts that the private sector has an important development role in support of sustainable growth and the promotion of peace. Leading international development agencies such as the World Bank and UN now work closely with the private sector in pursuit of development goals, such as through the UN’s Global Compact, to promote human rights standards and sustainable development. It is within this context that some academics, policy-makers and NGOs have advocated the need to engage the private sector as peace-builder in zones of violent conflict. A small but growing literature now exists outlining how the private sector can promote peace in the conflict-afflicted societies in which they operate. According to this literature, the

Governance and Political Adaptation: Constituency Development Funds in Solomon Islands and the Construction of a Melanesian State

Solomon Islands has since 2003 been the object of intensive neo-liberal state-building by the Regional Assistance Mission to Solomon Islands (RAMSI). RAMSI’s state-building programme (until 2013) included sustained efforts to support the consolidation of liberal political institutions including parliamentary democracy and a Westminster state system. Despite efforts to regularise formal politics through a comprehensive democratic governance programme, one of the most notable developments in post-tensions Solomon Islands has been the way political elites have worked to adapt formal political institutions to align with local political economies and power dynamics. Such efforts have been most apparent with the rise of Constituency Development Funds (CDFs)—state sanctioned, discretionary development funds provided to Members of Parliament (MPs) on an electorate basis to support local-level development. Such funds have grown exponentially since the mid-2000s and are now of a scale that they are redefining the structure of the formal state, the nature of state-society relations, and the type of social contract constituted in Solomon Islands. Drawing on case study and field research conducted since 2010, this chapter examines the growth of CDFs as a form of reverse political adaption. It explores how externally supported liberal governance institutions have provided opportunities for local elites to develop new Melanesian state forms. It will be argued that CDFs have helped underwrite a distinct form of political order in post-conflict Solomon Islands that is nominally liberal but in practice has had the effect of consolidating illiberal political and development dynamics.

Realising the potential of universities as significant development actors in post-conflict societies: A case study of the Solomon Islands National University

Abstract Interest in the transformational potential of education has seen development partners prioritise support for basic education. Tertiary education has tended to be considered in narrow and instrumental terms focused on supporting economic growth through vocational education and training. Development partners have largely overlooked the much broader potential of the sector to engage with a wide range of development challenges. This article focuses on the role of national universities as significant development actors. With their broad institutional mandates, national universities have an institutional capacity to engage with complex processes of nation, state and peace-building. These processes are important in explaining the emergence and persistence of conflict in fragile developing country environments, and are particularly challenging for development partners to engage with. Realising the potential of universities as significant national development institutions will require development partners to broaden how they approach tertiary education and provide different forms of institutional support. Drawing on an empirical case study of the establishment of the Solomon Islands National University (SINU) in Solomon Islands, a small island post-conflict fragile state in the south-west Pacific, this article considers: (i) the practical challenges faced in building a national university and realising its potential as a significant development institution; and (ii) the challenges and opportunities for development partner engagement in helping national universities realise such potential.