'Legitimacy Work' and Transnational Policing: interpreting the Regional Assistance Mission to Solomon Islands (2003-2017)

Abstract

This thesis aims to explore how transnational policing and statebuilding interventions work to construct legitimacy for themselves and for the states within which they intervene. To address this aim, my research focuses on a case study of transnational policing as the major component of the Regional Assistance Mission to Solomon Islands (RAMSI) (2003-2017). I use the concept of 'legitimacy work' to examine the construction of legitimacy through the discourses, narratives and practices of a transnational policing and statebuilding intervention in Solomon Islands. Adopting an interpretive lens for my research, I first examine how RAMSI worked to construct and sustain its own legitimacy for the purpose of consolidating its own power and authority. I then examine how the intervention, in partnership with local actors, worked to construct and confer legitimacy on local institutions, such as the Royal Solomon Islands Police Force (RSIPF). I use discourse analysis and apply an ethnographic sensibility to analyse RAMSI's public communications, speeches and images targeting external and internal audiences. Key informant interviews and reflection on my own experience provide additional perspective from which to critique official external and internal narratives of RAMSI. I find that the concept of 'legitimacy work' provides a powerful approach to unpack the claims made for the legitimacy of RAMSI's transnational policing and statebuilding activities. It also provides a useful lens for identifying how these claims evolve and focus increasingly on the legitimacy of local policing institutions as the intervention matured. This thesis contributes a new perspective on how legitimacy is engendered in the context of intervention and addresses a gap in the literature by providing empirical details of how interventions deploy strategic narratives to build legitimacy for themselves and the institutions within which they intervene. Show more