Beyond the thrall of the state: Governance as a relational-affective effect in Solomon Islands
| Published date | 01 June 2018 |
| DOI | 10.1177/0010836718769096 |
| Date | 01 June 2018 |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
https://doi.org/10.1177/0010836718769096
Cooperation and Conflict
2018, Vol. 53(2) 154 –172
© The Author(s) 2018
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DOI: 10.1177/0010836718769096
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Beyond the thrall of the
state: Governance as a
relational-affective effect in
Solomon Islands
Morgan Brigg
Abstract
Although the idea of the state pervades the scholarship and practice of international interventions,
developing adequate knowledge of intervention contexts such as Solomon Islands requires
decentring dominant perceptions about possible sources of socio-political order. In response, this
article demonstrates the value of ‘relationality’ and ‘affect’ for analysing the diverse ways in which
governance arises as an effect of social practice, without assuming that the state is unimportant or
romanticizing statelessness. Giving conceptual priority to relations over entities while considering
hitherto neglected affective forms of human interaction enables the identification of diverse
micro-political forms of socio-political order and peace governance effects. An autoethnographic
examination of relational-affective peace governance in post-conflict Solomon Islands shows
that circulations of affect, feeling and emotion attach more strongly to customary and church
institutions than they do to the state or to international interveners. This demonstrates the need
to engage with unexpected sources of governance while the requirement to analyse findings
within a broader historical frame signals the need to also engage with the state. A relational-
affective approach, which has the potential for wider application, thus provides a way of analysing
and engaging with diverse forms of political order in international interventions beyond the
predilections of Northern scholarship.
Keywords
Affect, conflict resolution, governance, intervention, peacebuilding, relationality
Introduction
Contemporary international interventions feature the state, explicitly so in state-building
efforts, and only slightly less overtly so in assistance conducted in the name of peace,
security, governance, democracy or development. The state is taken to be the pre-dominant
and overarching agent of political order, and the key institution for facilitating political,
Corresponding author:
Morgan Brigg, School of Political Science and International Studies, The University of Queensland,
Brisbane, QLD 4072, Australia.
Email: m.brigg@uq.edu.au
769096CAC0010.1177/0010836718769096Cooperation and ConflictBrigg
research-article2018
Article
Brigg 155
economic and social ventures. The recently ended 14-year Regional Assistance Mission
to Solomon Islands (RAMSI), of immediate interest from an Australian vantage and
contemporaneous with the high-profile intervention attempts to shape the states of Iraq
and Afghanistan, is no exception. Initiated in 2003 to quell ongoing civic strife following
a low-level war that was partially concluded through the flawed Townville Peace
Agreement in 2000, the Australian-led yet regionally auspiced mission sought, amidst
somewhat mixed messaging and political constraints, to bring about long-term transfor-
mation of the Solomon Islands state. RAMSI’s state-building focus resonated with
locally informed analysis that identified a weak state as a serious problem for peace
(Kabutaulaka, 2002). However, the same analyst also noted that ‘even prior to the civil
unrest [which caused the state to largely cease to function], the state, while important,
was often not the most influential institution in people’s everyday lives, or the basis for
organizing the community’ (2004: 5). Change in Solomon Islands, as in many other con-
texts, also ‘def[ies] the teleological tropes of modernisation’ (Allen and Dinnen, 2015: 4)
and is not easily engineered. It is now widely accepted that RAMSI has not achieved –
despite the assertions of some proponents in recent 2017 exit celebrations – transforma-
tive state-building or addressed the underlying causes of the original conflict.
Questions about the relevance of the state and the efficacy of state-building in
Solomon Islands resonate with experiences in more well-known contemporaneous cases
of attempted state-building, such as Iraq and Afghanistan. These challenges suggest the
need to seriously query the focus on the state in international interventions, with the idea
of the state a natural starting point. This is a formidable task because an underappreciated
corollary of state dominance in international political architecture is that political imagi-
nations – especially in the social sciences – are frequently tied to the idea of the state, and
often very deeply so. Pierre Bourdieu explains that ‘one of the major powers of the state
is to produce and impose… categories of thought that we spontaneously apply to all
things of the social world – including the state itself’ (1999: 53). Meanwhile, Jens
Bartelson demonstrates that the ‘presupposed presence of the state’ has constituted dis-
course about modern political life, with the state imagined as the site and vehicle for
pursuing freedom and to recognize our full potential as social beings (2001: ix). As
Bartelson notes, ‘it is virtually impossible to envisage constellations of authority and
community beyond the state without ceasing to be either political or scientific’ (2001:
185). These patterns are particularly pronounced in International Relations (IR), where
the state is a central and singularly powerful presence that is strongly correlated with the
very possibility of socio-political order.
The idea of the state is also contested, of course, and this is so both broadly and in
relation to international interventions in particular. Recent decades have seen the cri-
tique of state-centric approaches to interventions, calls to recognize and engage ‘the
local’ and moves to embrace ‘hybrid’, ‘polycentric’ or ‘good enough’ approaches to
peace and governance. Yet, the state remains a stubborn presence in scholarship and
practice, including in peacebuilding and development efforts that are not explicitly
focused on the state. The tenacity of the state persists through critique of the state and
the alternatives that are arrayed in relation to it. The former paradoxically gives the
idea of the state life (Bartelson, 2001), and the latter occurs as discussions about alter-
native forms of socio-political order reference the state through the designation of
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