In the mid-1970s Solomon Islands, a western breakaway movement emerged on the island of New Georgia. Neighbouring Bougainville, which obtained a devolved autonomous government 15 years ago after a decade of low intensity civil war, is scheduled to hold a referendum on independence in late 2019. Only later, as international discourses concerning ‘federalism’ loomed larger, did alternative models of devolved statehood become major issues of political contestation. Upon independence in the 1970s, both struggled with issues of local autonomy and relationships with central government. Both Solomon Islands and PNG are among the most heterogeneous polities on the planet. It became a central battleground in the Pacific War, when American forces battled those of Japan on the island of Guadalcanal and, to the west of the Solomons, in Bougainville (Papua New Guinea ). This was one of the remotest outposts of the British empire, where the influence of colonial rule was at its most slender. The Solomon Islands, situated in the south-west Pacific, has struggled with nationhood ever since the end of the British protectorate in 1978. T he Solomon Islands has become a state that repeatedly disavows its unitary form of government but so far without enacting any of the many iterations of its draft federal constitution. Aspirations for ‘state government’ were complicated by the arrival of an Australian-led intervention mission over 2003-17, but a federal model also poses acute dilemmas for the country’s political elite. The Solomon Islands has struggled with issues of decentralisation and devolution ever since independence, but so far steered clear of embracing a federal constitution. This author does not have any more posts.
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