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This article analyzes the power and legitimacy of the Regional Assistance Mission to Solomon Islands (RAMSI), explaining why local actors chose to comply and cooperate with the operation in its crucial first year. It argues that, to be effective, peace operations require the compliance of local populations, and finds that RAMSI's ability to shape the attitudes, incentives and interests of local actors was determined by the relationship between its three currencies of power: coercion, inducement and legitimacy. Focused on the exercise of power by RAMSI, this article enables much-needed analysis of the local dimensions of peace operations and affords serious consideration to processes of local legitimation. Within the local realm, the case of Solomon Islands provides three important insights on the power and legitimacy of peace operations. First, the design and implementation of RAMSI's communications strategies were central to its ability to exercise coercive and inducive power and, crucially, to legitimize its power relationship with local populations. Second, the manner in which RAMSI exercised authority affected local perceptions about its legitimacy, independent of the operation's outcomes. Third, the quality of treatment people received from RAMSI was influential in their decisions to comply and cooperate with the operation. This suggests that carefully examining the way that peace operations and local people interact can help to identify the determinants of an operation's effectiveness.

AbstractMelanesia is becoming a region of many partners, expanding diplomatic options and a new sense of independence. The wider context of the new Melanesian assertiveness is one in which China is a rising power and Indonesia is forging closer links with the western Pacific. The impetus to Fiji's new assertiveness arose from the diplomatic isolation imposed upon it by Australia and New Zealand after the 2006 military coup. Papua New Guinea's new confidence is founded upon its liquefied natural gas boom. Even Solomon Islands is expanding diplomatic connections. Regionally, the change can be seen in the Melanesian Spearhead Group, which now counts Indonesia among its members, and in Fiji's push for its own vision of Pacific regionalism. Australia and New Zealand nevertheless remain the indispensable countries in the region. Australia's commitment to Melanesia remains constant but without the bold initiatives and interventionist enthusiasm of the early RAMSI years.

Helpem Fren, Michael Wesley's diplomatic history of the Regional Assistance Mission to Solomon Islands (RAMSI), the Australian-led multilateral intervention in Solomon Islands from 2003–2017, is a near definitive study of the intervention from an Australian perspective. As such, it shares some of the failures of RAMSI itself, such as overconfidence in its success. The reviewer, based on his experience of living in the Solomons during many years of the RAMSI intervention, examines both the strengths and weaknesses of RAMSI and this volume, its semi-official history. These include RAMSI's early success in peacemaking and its more problematic long-term exercise in state building, including its inflexible entrenchment in law and justice, finance, and governance sectors to the exclusion of support for sustainable human development. The reviewer notes areas not dealt with in the book, including RAMSI's cost and its relations with the Solomon Islands Truth and Reconciliation Commission and the churches. While Helpem Fren is an essential study for understanding the Australian role in RAMSI, its strictly Australian perspective calls for further critical study of RAMSI.