Police-Building in Weak States: Australian Approaches in Papua New Guinea and Solomon Islands

Regulatory Regionalism and the Dynamics of Territorial Politics: The Case of the Asia-Pacific Region

“…For example, Hameiri (2009b, p. 569) argues that the Australian government's Enhanced Cooperation Package (ECP) in Papua New Guinea (PNG), which was designed to ‘regionalise’ the scope of Australian administrative power into PNG, created overlapping jurisdictional regimes that were not easily accommodated within the national boundaries of the PNG state, thereby setting the stage for political conflict that in the event was played out in the PNG Supreme Court. Morobe province Governor Luther Wenge issued a constitutional challenge to the legal immunity provisions granted by PNG parliamentary legislation to the ECP's sizeable police contingent, which the Court upheld, leading to the police's quick withdrawal in May 2005 (Dinnen et al ., 2006). This seemingly ‘international’ conflict, in which the position advanced by Wenge and others was framed in terms of protecting PNG's sovereignty, in fact reflected a more fundamental conflict over the relationship between territory and legality, as well as over the nature of controls on the use of executive power, which was fought by coalitions that sought to frame the territorial scope of conflict.…”

Managing risk within international society: hierarchical governance in the Asia-Pacific

“…Importantly, at the time of RAMSI's intervention there was no substantial evidence of a direct threat to Australian security posed by the situation in the Solomon Islands, nor was there any credible evidence to suggest the presence of terrorists or transnational criminal groups within the Solomon Islands (Greener- Barcham and Barcham 2006). Rather, the new-found concern for the deteriorating situation in the Solomon Islands arose from the possibility that if left unchecked, the Solomon Islands state might totally collapse, possibly inviting terrorists and transnational criminals to use the Solomon Islands as a launching pad for activities in the region (Dinnen et al 2006). RAMSI is an exercise aimed at preventing a weak state from failing through the building of liberal political and economic institutions in order to manage risks to Australian security (Barbara 2008: 141;Hameiri 2008).…”

‘Cowboy’ Policing versus ‘the Softer Stuff’

“…Research from a range of policing and peacebuilding missions has shown that there is more of a chance of police officers encouraging others to cooperate if the police involved have an understanding of the local context (Dinnen et al 2006;Goldsmith and Dinnen 2007;Goldsmith and Harris 2009;McLeod 2009;Greener et al 2011). NZPOL Six argued that an understanding of the domestic context comes from police officers spending time getting used to the local situation by listening and observing.…”