ABSTRACT
Establishing effective multi-stakeholder discourse on critical public policy issues is an increasingly important aspiration for democratic societies. Where a society has deep-rooted conflicts over land, race and power, as is the case in the Republic of the Fiji Islands, these challenges are great. In December 2006, the Commander of the Republic of Fiji Military Forces, Commodore Voreqe Bainimarama, removed the democratically elected government through a military coup. This fourth disruption3 to constitutional democracy in Fiji since independence from Britain in 1970 has prompted Fijians to ask what it is about their society and systems that has created a ‘coup culture’ and to explore how they can find a ‘way out’. Ironically, the rhetoric of the most recent coup proposes that it was conducted in the name of ‘good governance’ and through a desire to steer the country onto a truly democratic path. At the time of writing, the military regime is conducting an agenda-setting process that seeks to establish policy guidelines for future public policy in a range of contested areas,4 and has received tentative support from the international community for convening a dialogue process on solutions to the country’s political problems. Despite Fiji’s centrality to Pacific regional interests, political actors within
the country have been unable to settle their differences in accordance with the rule of law, and the intervention of international partners has not made a significant difference. If mediation is to succeed in Fiji, what should it entail? I seek to answer this question by, first, reviewing the historic factors that are commonly held to have generated significant conflict in the country and, second, by drawing on Habermas’ theory of communicative action and aspirations for deliberative democracy and ‘ideal speech acts’ to provide a vantage point from which to note eight ‘dialogue paths’. These have been used in public life in Fiji since 1970 to address conflict. Finally, I refer to a ‘Peace, Stability and Development Analysis’ undertaken in Fiji in 2006 to map stakeholder dialogue practices in the period prior to the 2006 coup, in an effort to determine the forms of ‘communicative action’ most likely to succeed in transforming public policy dispute resolution.
