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NEW POLITICS IN THE SOUTH PACIFIC. Edited by Werner Vom Busch, et aL Suva (Fiji): Institute of Pacific Studies, University of the South Pacific. 1994. vii, 354 pp. (Maps, photographs, tables.) US$12.00, paper ISBN 982-02-0115-2.
MOST OF THE PAPERS in this wide-ranging collection came out of a Pacific Islands Political Studies Association conference at Rarotonga in 1993 where the themes subsequently highlighted by the editors were more implicit. Standards are predictably a little uneven (as is my coverage of the individual chapters) but there are enough timely and well-researched contributions here to merit a readership, especially at the modest price charged by IPS.
Peter Larmour opens the volume with an attempt to define what the "new" politics might be. Here (as elsewhere) his work performs the valuable service of linking often parochial concerns to broader conceptions of theory and policy making. The Pacific mirrors other parts of the world in the growing prominence of identity politics (based on gender, ethnicity and culture), threats to state sovereignty and the rise of alternate forms of organization, including...