A COLUMN WRITTEN BY KALIOPATE TAVOLA, PUBLISHED IN ISLANDS BUSINESS, FEB 2023
Work on the Pacific Islands Forum (PIF) Strategy’s ‘Implementation and Monitoring Plan’ and a ‘Regional Architecture’ would have started after the Strategy was launched at the 51st Pacific Islands Forum Leaders meeting, held in Suva on 11-14 July 2022. The political economists amongst the region’s brains trust, collaborating with this important task, would have started their undertaking with gusto and with their usual regional flair and conviviality. Given the high levels of PIF ‘Leaders’ Vision for 2050’, ‘Our Values’, ‘Leaders’ Commitments to 2050’ and ‘Thematic Areas’, regional political economists need further to up their game – their levels of political analyses, to render the Strategy and its tools a better handle for Pacific regionalism to meet the demands of the 21st century.
The general scope of work by political economists, in the context of regionalism as a whole, has indeed been looking up since the 1990s. Their ‘first generation’ work, according to Messrs David Hudson and Adrian Leftwich (From Political Economy to Political Analysis), addressed issues of governance and especially the reasons for the absence of good governance.
Whilst such work still continues, a ‘second generation’ work has emerged. This brought politics into the analyses ‘with a greater emphasis on historical, structural, institutional and political elements that shaped the context within which actors worked.’
A ‘third generation’, recently emerged, combining elements from the previous two. It ‘has come to be strongly influenced by assumptions, concepts and methods drawn from economics. It emphasizes the way in which institutional incentives shape behaviour to produce positive or dysfunctional development outcomes. In short, political economy has come to be the economics of politics, and less about political analysis.’
Notwithstanding such elaboration, political economy work still has a number of limitations. Admittedly, key analytical concepts like institutions, structure, agency, ideas, contingency and, above all, power, need to be applied more systematically. Current usage tends to provide for lumpy, one-dimensional analysis. It does not allow analysts or policy makers ‘to reach the detailed inner politics that shapes or frustrates change.’
A more in-depth political analysis approach would tend to take politics, power and agency much more seriously. This ‘enables one to dig down to the level of messy everyday politics.’ With such orientation, political economists can help craft the 2050 Strategy’s Implementation and Monitoring Plan and the Regional Architecture with dexterity and foresight.
As regards the former and specifically when ‘ensuring effective delivery of the Strategy’ or ‘achieving the Leaders Vision’ and any other of the 16 delegated equally-important tasks under the Plan, political economists have to be aware of competing ideas and interests, values and preferences of PIF members. There is contrasting diversity within PIF membership of equals. Diplomacy of the highest order will be in great demand.
When it comes to the Pacific Labour Scheme, for example, political economists and others have to be aware of the specificity of contrasting views and demands of members – suppliers of the labour resources as against the demanders of these resources. The interests of all parties, including the intermediary service providers, have to be met. Furthermore, reported exploitation of the system has to be nipped in the bud. This applies also when it comes to consideration of the region’s tuna fishery resources.
All 16 tasks to populate the Plan are of equal value and are to be treated with care. One cannot risk anyone of them being trivialized.
Conflicts can arise when it comes to ‘identifying the interlinkages across all thematic areas’ under the Plan, or their ‘bases for monitoring and measuring progress’ or ‘ensuring coordination with timelines’. These conflicts have to be negotiated with tact and equity. There may be pressure for bargains to be struck. Conformity, for example, with existing formal and informal political settlements, alliances and coalitions, e.g. Vuvale, Step -Up or Pacific Reset with Resilience or even newer versions, may be in question and thus in jeopardy.
It becomes critical, therefore, to take stock of the original ideas that gave rise to these alliances and coalitions. Ask the questions: whose ideas and interests are being promoted? Have the Pacific Island Countries (PICs) assumed full agency in the conceptualization and determination of these alliances and coalitions? What are the subtle undercurrents behind building and sustaining these coalitions?
We need to be aware always that there are other ideas waiting in the wings to be raised for consideration – sometimes when you least expect them. In 2017, for example, Greg Colton suggested for Australia “to forge free compact agreements in the Pacific.” In 2019, former Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd suggested a sovereignty for exclusive economic zone swap between Australia and the Pacific through entering into a formal constitutional condominium agreement. Under such an agreement, Pacific peoples would get Australian citizenship while Australia “would become responsible for their territorial seas, their vast Exclusive Economic Zones, including the preservation of their precious fisheries reserves.”
These ideas are not made in jest. There is sincerity behind them. Australian journalist Bruce Hill suggested that such a deal makes sense because “You can’t eat sovereignty, you can’t drink independence, and you can’t build a house on a flag floating in the middle of the ocean.” Then in 2020, ANU academic John Blaxland reinforced both Colton and Rudd’s proposals calling a ‘grand compact’ between Australia and the Pacific “the Fix”.
There is obviously power disparity in our regional relations. There is de facto power with Australia and New Zealand (ANZ) when it comes to their relative status as regards Official Development Assistance (ODA). In the minutiae of our bilateral and regional relations, it is imperative to be aware of the extent of humanitarianism as against geostrategy in the composition of ODA packages received. Of the former, it is also critical to be conscious of the extent such ODA contributes to contingency and climate change under the Boe Declaration and even under the relevant prevailing Conference of the Parties (COP) of the United Nations Framework Agreement Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). As regards geostrategy, we must be aware of the undercurrents directed at keeping China at bay in the context of the prevailing US-China bipolarity. We must also be aware of the undercurrents emanating from other global bodies such as the G7 and the G20.
When it comes to coalitions, be aware also that ANZ are members of other coalitions, like the QUAD, Indo-Pacific, AUKUS, and the Partners in the Blue Pacific (PBP). Don’t allow PICs’ agency to be usurped by these coalitions. For too long, PICs have been treated as pawns in these geostrategic machinations by these coalitions and respective members.
The task facing the regional brains trust is not easy. That I admit. This is especially so when it comes to formulating a regional architecture with clear mandate from PIF Leaders ‘that PIF be at its apex and that works closely with regional, multilateral and global partners.’
Therein, methinks, lies the real test. However, with political economy work surpassing its third generational innovation and focussing more on ‘political analysis’, one can only anticipate that out of the depth of messy everyday politics, elucidation will ensue that can be the magic bullet that will effectively and systematically propel the 2050 Strategy and Pacific regionalism for the next two to three decades to come.
© Kaliopate Tavola and kaidravuni.com, 2025. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Kaliopate Tavola, kaidravuni.com and Islands Business with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.
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