The Regional Assistance Mission to Solomon Islands and the Politics of State Transformation

Abstract

The Australian-led Regional Assistance Mission to Solomon Islands (RAMSI) has attracted considerable attention in policymaking and academic circles worldwide since its July 2003 inception. Despite the Solomons’ relative marginalisation in world affairs, the Australian government’s comprehensive response to the country’s perceived descent to state failure was on several occasions lauded by the Development Assistance Committee (DAC) of the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) as a model of ‘good practice’. For this reason, RAMSI has significance that extends beyond the South Pacific. RAMSI has had its share of critics too, but much of this criticism has centred on whether it was building a viable state and paying sufficient attention to the Melanesian social and cultural context. Such critiques fail to recognise, however, that to understand what RAMSI does and therefore its effects on conflict and politics, it has to be viewed as a multilevel regime that seeks to transform the state by shifting the purpose of state power, its location, and the actors exercising state power in Solomon Islands.