In recent years, OECD (Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development), WB (World Bank), IMF (International Monetary Fund), EU (European Union) and other international and regional organizations have come to
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recognise Small island development states (SIDS); however, there are slight differences in definition. UN defines SIDS as low-lying coastal countries which share similar sustainable development challenges such as: small but growing populations, limited resources, remoteness from main trade routes, susceptibility to natural disasters, disproportionately expensive public administration and infrastructure due to little to no opportunity to create economies of scale and dependent on high communication, energy and transportation costs (UN, 2004). Additionally, SIDS are vulnerable to external shocks such as: excessive dependence on international trade, fragile environments, and irregular international transport volumes (ibid.). It is increasingly being recognised that SIDS go beyond the common perception of ‘heavenly tropical paradise’.25
Currently 51 countries are classified by the UN as SIDS. Annex 4 also includes data on their population size, active number of military personnel and military expenditure where applicable and if they have experienced coups. It highlights the varied nature of countries that make up SIDS, ranging from some of the smallest states in the world, such as Niue, to larger countries such as Cuba, Haiti, PNG (Papua New Guinea), etc. It is difficult to arrive at a general pattern of conflict in all SIDS. However, if some of the larger states are not taken into account, and Timor- Leste is excluded, it can be argued that many of the SIDS are prone to structural and ethnic conflicts. For instance, countries like Guyana, Surinam, Mauritius, and Fiji all have a history of ethnic conflict, which is linked to tension between the local indigenous population and the ‘immigrant’ population introduced during the
25
In 1960s and 1970s, UN had passed resolutions on small developing countries, but it was during the 1992 United Nations Conference on Environment and Development (UNCED), SIDS was finally recognised as a distinctive group of countries, This led to the UN sponsored conference titled ‘Global Conference on the Sustainable Development of Small Island Developing States (SIDS) in 1994, which cemented this concept.
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colonial era. PNG and Solomon Islands have also experienced ethnic conflicts, relating to tribal factions. Some of the states are susceptible to money laundering and drug trade, such as Saint Kitts and Nevis and Jamaica. In many of these SIDS, there is no need for a military as there is rarely any external threat, and even if a perceived threat did occur, the military is too small to be effective for external defence. However, the military continue to wield considerable influence as it is the only armed force within the country.
SIDS are largely neglected in most mainstream development and political discourse, including conflict. However, to address conflicts in SIDS, it is important to understand their unique challenges as their conflicts do not usually reach the same level and intensity as in many countries with larger populations. Apart from a few countries such as East Timor, Haiti, PNG, etc “small societies seldom generate the scale of violence that exceeds the threshold definition of civil war as they suffer from more modest levels of violence” (Chauvet, Collier & Hoeffler,
2010: 975). However, in SIDS, even the lower intensity of conflict is damaging as the population is small and the negative impacts are felt more tangibly by the population. Seminal research by Chauvet, Collier & Hoeffler (2010) highlights this concern, but the study is limited to Pacific island countries. In the absence of similar work for all SIDS, we will discuss the issues raised by this study.
‘Globally, state failure inflicts very large costs on their neighbours and this justifies
and requires regional intervention in decision processes that would normally be the sovereign domain of nation states’ (Chauvet, Collier & Hoeffler, 2010: 976). However, because small island countries are not landlocked, the ‘neighbourhood spillovers that normally generate these costs do not apply’ to SIDS (ibid.).
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Additionally, SIDS conflict is generally neither prolonged nor violent, and concern for populations affected by violent and prolonged conflicts in other parts of the world takes precedence in the conflict discourse. However, “although neighbours
are not affected by state failure, the failing states themselves suffer considerably in terms of income losses if they are islands, due to flight of capital and skilled labour (Chauvet, Collier & Hoeffler, 2010: 977). Finally, we have attempted to put a cost on state failure in the Pacific,...our estimate of a present value of around
$36bn is so large that the implication is clear: state failure in the Pacific should be a major policy concern” (ibid.).
CONCLUSION
This section will establish the theoretical framework for three main issues; the coups d’état, the concept of structural conflict and the issue of Small Island Developing States (SIDS). The section on coups d’état analysed the various coup
theories and their application to Fiji. Six different theories for military coups were analysed, which were: the political development theory; the military centrality theory; the ethnic antagonisms theories which comprises of the modernization theory, the ethnic competition and ethnic dominance theories (Jenkins & Kposowa, 1990); as well as the economic dependency theory (ibid.); the agency theory (Galetovic & Sanhueza, 1997), and the centralization/decentralization theory (Jia & Liang, 2010).
The political development theory is based on the concept that coups are more prone to happen when political institutions are weak and have failed to effectively regulate political competition, political demands and political participation. Some of these elements are applicable to explain the occurrence of coups in Fiji. However, the concept within this approach that traditional authorities were weakened during
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colonial period is not applicable to Fiji as the traditional ethnic Fijian structures were actually strengthened during the colonial era and due to that process, some of these institutions have links to the coup occurrence in Fiji; chapters 1 and 8 will discuss this in more detail.
The military centrality theory argues that in many developing countries, post- independence the military are most professionalized in comparison with other state institutions and may harbour political aspirations, thus increasing their likelihood to intervene in politics through coups d’état (Nordlinger, 1977; Finer,
1988; Jenkins & Kposowa, 1990: 862). Some elements of this theory are applicable for coups in Fiji as the military is more organized and professional in comparison with other state bodies, and RFMF was created to suppress internal disturbances during the colonial period. However, RFMF has never had much economic power or attempted coups in order to maintain its corporate interest. However, a few years before the 2006 coup, the Qarase government was attempting to downsize the military.
Ethnic antagonistic theories focuses on how ethnic tensions can be politicized by the military, the broader political institutions and its link with coups d’état (Jenkins
& Kposowa, 1990: 863). Three subsets of the ethnicity approach are the modernization theory, the ethnic competition theory and the ethnic dominance theory. The 1987 coup in Fiji had many elements of the ethnic antagonistic theories as the Rabuka group that came to power wanted an exclusive ethnic Fijian government and it carried out a second coup in September 1987, to maintain their position when negotiations were taking place to form a government of national unity with the Labour Coalition (Alley, 2001).
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The economic dependency theory focuses on uneven development as the main cause of military coups. It argues that countries that are dependent on a limited number of export commodities and are unable to distribute the benefits of development equally are more likely to have a stronger military, which can be manipulated by the political elites to carry out coups (Jenkins & Kposiwa, 1990: 864). To some extent this can be applied to all four coups d’état occurrences in
Fiji, as the Fiji Labour Party was formed in 1986 due to a wage freeze by the government (Ratuva, 2002); the supporters of the 2000 coups were largely rural villagers and village landowners who were frustrated by the mahogany harvest scheme (Pirie, 2010); and some causes of the military 2006 coup can be linked to the various Bills tabled by the Qarase government; one of which was to restrict access to sea and coastal area resources solely to Fijians, and thereby barring Indo-Fijian and other ethnic groups from the fruits of economic industries such as tourism, fisheries, and so on (Khan, 2007).
Proponents of the agency theory argue that there is an agency relation between the rulers and citizens, and a coup is more likely to occur when this relationship is manipulated by autocrats and/or military, particularly when there is low economic performance and widespread discontent with the incumbent (Galetovic & Sanhueza, 1997: 18). Elements of this theory can be applied to various coups in Fiji as the members of the losing political parties, the high profile chiefs and the military have all manipulated the circumstances to create distrust towards sitting government for their own benefit. For instance, many of the losing Alliance Party members supported the military in the 1987 coup and were openly against the Bavadra government. Similarly, after the loss of SVT in the 1999 elections, a
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number of political and chiefly persons began agitating against the Chaudhry government using demagogic propaganda. Prior to 2006, the military also utilised the media to fragment the nation for and against the Qarase government (Firth, Fraenkel, & Lal, 2009).
Lastly, the centralization/decentralization theorists argue that centralized governments are more susceptible to coups particularly when economic downturn is strong and government institutions are weak (Jia & Liang, 2010). It assumes that decentralized governments are stronger. Some aspects of this theory can be related to the greed and grievance approach by Collier & Hoeffler (2005), which states that in countries with rent-seeking culture and weak institutions, the military, may overthrow the government to access resource rent.
However, no single explanation is widely accepted as coups d’état occur in a wide
variety of countries and are caused by complex and varied events. More likely, a synthesis of various factors such as lack of political development and participation, colonial legacy, ethnic competition, economic dependency, economic decline, weak state institutions, military grievances, and regime vulnerability can all be utilised to explain why military coups occur. All the above coup theories had some relevance to the Fiji situation. Conflict analysts also state that a coup occurrence increases the risk of further coups (Collier & Hoeffler, (2007). Statistics on coups are useful to understand this complex phenomenon.
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