ABSTRACT
The Regional Assistance Mission to the Solomon Islands (RAMSI) has generated much discussion about 'state failure' in the Pacific. The claim that the Solomon Islands was a 'failed state' played a key role in Canberra's 2003 justification for intervention in the Solomon Islands. The notion of state 'failure' in the Pacific is far from original. The colonisation of the Pacific in the last quarter of the 19th century has often been viewed as a response to the collapse of indigenous efforts at self-government. Once Fiji had become a crown colony, Samoa's Apia became the new 'hell of the Pacific', attracting some of the unruly 'beach' community of Fiji who were eager to escape the clutches of British law. Fiji's 2000 political crisis arose due to a breakdown in the popular legitimacy of the compact agreed in 1997. The coup deeply split the population, and resulted in a new 1990 constitution aimed at institutionalising Fijian paramountcy.
