Matthew Allen - Statebuilding and State Formation in the Western Pacific: Solomon Islands in Transition?

This book provides a rigorous and cross-disciplinary analysis of this Melanesian nation at a critical juncture in its post-colonial and post-conflict history, with contributions from leading scholars of Solomon Islands. The notion of transition as used to describe the recent drawdown of the decade-long Regional Assistance Mission to Solomon Islands (RAMSI) provides a departure point for considering other transformations social, political and economic under way in the archipelagic nation. Organised around a central tension between change and continuity, two of the books key themes are the contested narratives of changing statesociety relations and the changing social relations around land and natural resources engendered by ongoing processes of globalisation and urbanisation. Drawing heuristically on RAMSIs genesis in the state- building moment that dominated international relations during the first decade of this century, the book also examines the critical distinction between state-building and state formation in the Solomon Islands context. It engages with global scholarly and policy debates on issues such as peacebuilding, state-building, legal pluralism, hybrid governance, globalisation, urbanisation and the governance of natural resources. These themes resonate well beyond Solomon Islands and Melanesia, and the book will be of interest to a wide range of students, scholars and development practitioners. This book was previously published as a special issue of The Journal of Pacific History.