Pacific Ways: Government and Politics in the Pacific Islands

thanks.

Introduction

Stephen Levine

The South Pacific Forum held its first meeting in 1971 with only seven member states participating – New Zealand, Australia, Fiji, Samoa (then known as Western Samoa), Tonga, Nauru and the Cook Islands. In the 21st century, this organisation, now known as the Pacific Islands Forum and no longer confined to the ‘South Pacific’, includes 16 member states as well as a handful of associate member and observer member countries and organisations. The Forum’s annual conference now provides not only an opportunity for Pacific leaders to meet with one another to discuss regional issues and matters of common concern and opportunity, but also an occasion for representatives from nations from beyond the islands themselves to meet with island leaders to discuss political, security, trade, cultural, environmental and economic issues. These developments are a reflection of a growing interest in the Pacific Islands among policy-makers, business groups, non-governmental organisations, scholars, the media and the general public.

At the same time, the literature on the politics of the Pacific Islands remains much slimmer than for other regions. The number of island states and territories, and their distance not only from one another but also from Europe, Asia and the Americas, are obstacles to an ongoing fami-liarity with political developments or a basic knowledge of government institutions. It is perhaps not flattering to Australian and New Zealand sensibilities to note, furthermore, that ignorance about the politics of these two countries is not much less widespread than for other Pacific Island countries.

This book aims to redress this balance by providing the kind of information for the Pacific that is readily available for nations in other parts of the globe. This volume provides expert chapters examining the politics of each Pacific Island state and territory, discussing its historical background and colonial experience, its constitutional framework, political institutions, political parties, elections and electoral systems, and problems and prospects. The book is comprehensive, covering all regions – Polynesia, Melanesia and Micronesia – and all countries, irrespective of their size or political status. The states and territories covered range in size from Australia and Papua New Guinea on the one hand, to Tokelau, Rapa Nui/Easter Island and Pitcairn on the other. The book includes a specially produced map of the entire Pacific Islands region, providing a visual reference point for each of the states and territories. The map, which also illustrates the dimensions of states’ exclusive economic zones, is reproduced in colour on the inside front and back covers.

The region comprises 16 independent states, each a full member of the Pacific Islands Forum. These countries include: Australia and New Zealand; Papua New Guinea, Solomon Islands, Vanuatu and Fiji – members, as well, of the Melanesian Spearhead Group; Tonga, Samoa and Tuvalu; Niue and the Cook Islands, self-governing ‘in free association’ with New Zealand; the Federated States of Micronesia, the Marshall Islands and Palau (Belau), independent ‘in free association’ with the United States; and Kiribati and Nauru.

To these may be added three island groups considered to be part of ‘metropolitan’ France but evolving, steadily, towards greater degrees of political autonomy consistent with their geographic, demographic and cultural distinctiveness. In 2006, French Polynesia, New Caledonia, and Wallis and Futuna were given the opportunity by the Government of France to participate in the affairs of the Pacific Islands Forum. The first two were admitted to the Forum as ‘associate members’, while Wallis and Futuna was admitted as an ‘observer member’. While each has subsequently sought to upgrade their status, their positions have remained unchanged (as at 2015), a matter for further consideration in due course.

The Pacific Islands region also includes a further group of territories affiliated to the United States but not fully incorporated into the union (in the manner of Hawaii, admitted in 1959 as the 50th state). These include Guam, the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands, and American Samoa. In each case, full participation in Pacific affairs (through Forum membership) is precluded by their political status and the stance taken by the US Government, but they nevertheless participate more broadly in the cultural, economic, security and political life of the Pacific region.

A further three territories are also part of the Pacific Islands region, each distinctive and memorable in its own right. Pitcairn is, of course, renowned for its history, the Bounty mutiny the subject of literature and film. The statues of Rapa Nui/Easter Island, unique and extraordinary, are sufficiently well known to have become part of the heritage of humanity, as well as of those who live on that island. As for Tokelau, less well known, it remains a distinctive and in some ways inconvenient challenge, as a territory that continues to resist formal ‘decolonisation’, maintaining links to New Zealand while preserving valued indigenous traditions and lifestyles.

Finally, a further two polities are also included in this volume: Timor-Leste/East Timor, a country which became independent from Portugal in 1975 and then had to regain its independence following Indonesia’s annexation of the territory in 1976; and West Papua, likewise incorporated into Indonesia, a Pacific territory in which indigenous groups continue to strive for recognition and independence. Both Timor-Leste/East Timor and West Papua represent entities aspiring to a full sense of ‘belonging’ to the Pacific Islands region and the relationships taking place among its various nations and governments.

The purpose and ambition of this book was to have a chapter about the politics and the institutions of government of each of these states and territories, and this has been achieved. The authors are well qualified to describe, discuss and analyse the government and politics of each of these countries. Each has had extensive experience with their subject matter, either personally or professionally. Most of the authors are scholars, from a range of disciplines including political science, law, history and anthropology. Not all of the authors are academics; the group includes diplomats, politicians, public servants (and part-time advisors), and a journalist. Some were born in the Pacific; others have lived or worked in the region for considerable periods.

Scholars teaching about the Pacific and its politics have not had the benefit of a comprehensive work encompassing all of the political entities in this diverse region. This work closes this gap and in doing so it bridges some other rifts, both academic and political. The focus in Pacific politics sometimes depends on language; the French-speaking territories have not always been as accessible, for English-speaking students and scholars, as territories previously governed by Australia, New Zealand, Britain or the United States. The chapters on the French-affiliated territories are intended to make their systems, their politics, more accessible and familiar than they have previously been.

Application as text: This book will be of value in undergraduate and graduate courses dealing with the Pacific region – its politics and international relations. The information about each island entity provides a backdrop against which subsequent developments can readily be understood. The political, governmental and institutional information, territory by territory, state by state, also lends itself to comparative study, particularly as each potential Pacific ‘case’ is contained within a single volume.

The information on the politics and political institutions of the Pacific will also be useful to Pacific policy-makers and to others with professional interests in the island states and territories of the Pacific. This work makes an important contribution by providing readers with a means of understanding developments in societies which generally receive little sustained attention from the media. The book includes a map of the region, and each chapter includes a brief guide to further reading. The overall objective has been to provide a lucid, thoughtful account of political life in a region normally overlooked by political scientists and international relations specialists.

Some of the chapters discuss small, single-island territories – Niue and Nauru, for example. Others describe multi-island states, their oceanic territory far exceeding their land mass – as in Kiribati, the Cook Islands and French Polynesia. The book includes analyses of what might be described as ‘ethnocracies’ – countries whose population essentially comprises one ethnic group (as in Tonga). Others are multi-ethnic – Papua New Guinea, Vanuatu and the Federated States of Micronesia, for instance. Some have post-colonial histories characterised by considerable political stability – Samoa, for example – while others have experienced crisis and upheaval – Fiji and the Solomon Islands among them.

The ‘case studies’ in this book, in other words, though situated in one region – the Pacific Islands – reflect a diversity of experience just as great as, and perhaps greater than, any of the other regions on this planet. While interacting with each other in international forums (such as the United Nations) and in regional institutions, and taking part in often significant encounters with other states (as in island states’ somewhat competitive relations with China and Taiwan, for instance, as well as with the United States, France and Japan, among others), each island state and territory has its own distinctiveness, its own integrity. It is the complexity and diversity of the Pacific, as well as its interconnectedness, that makes an in-depth examination of each state and territory both meaningful and difficult.

Pacific Island nations are often overlooked by larger states except for self-interested purposes, such as seeking their votes at the UN or other international bodies. One goal of this book is to remove the Pacific Island political experience from out of the shadows of the ‘exotic’ and into the more prosaic world of comparative political analysis and commentary. It may be argued – indeed, it has been – that the politics and political institutions of Pacific states and territories are irrelevant not only because the islands lack power, numbers and resources, but because Western-derived values, forms and procedures have an artificiality in island settings that make them meaningless for all practical purposes. This view does not seem to be shared by Pacific peoples as a whole, however; they take part in elections, participate in rallies and demonstrations, join governments (and protest against them), form political parties (and dissolve them), develop attachments and antagonisms towards leaders and those who put themselves forward for leadership. There is, as noted, considerable diversity in the Pacific region, but in our time the organising framework for this region, as in the rest of the world, continues to be built upon the existence of nation-states and organised political communities. Providing a sense of the overall pattern by which these are organised in Pacific Island nations, states and territories, and why this is so, has been the principal aim of the 27 chapters brought together in this book.

The result is an informative and useful set of analyses of Pacific political experience – political institutions, constitutional processes and electoral systems – providing a basis for evaluating the quality of governance, and the durability of commitments to constitutionalism and democratic values. There may once have been a singular ‘Pacific way’ – or at least the ideal of one. As the chapters in this book demonstrate, however, the details of governance around the Pacific are perhaps now better described as ‘Pacific ways’, diverse approaches to the fundamental problems, common to all nations, of how a society is to be organised for the purposes of responsive, representative government.

Further reading

Corbett, Jack, Being Political: Leadership and Democracy in the Pacific Islands, Honolulu, University of Hawai‘i Press, 2015.

Fraenkel, Jon and Bernard Grofman (eds), ‘Special Issue: Political Culture, Representation and Electoral Systems in the Pacific Islands’, Commonwealth & Comparative Politics, vol. 43, no. 3, November 2005.

Fraenkel, Jon and Bernard Grofman, ‘Introduction – Political Culture, Representation and Electoral Systems in the Pacific Islands’, in Fraenkel and Grofman (eds), ‘Special Issue: Political Culture, Representation and Electoral Systems in the Pacific Islands’, Commonwealth & Comparative Politics, vol. 43, no. 3, November 2005, pp. 261–275.

Levine, Stephen and Nigel S. Roberts, ‘The Constitutional Structures and Electoral Systems of Pacific Island States’, in Fraenkel and Grofman (eds), ‘Special Issue: Political Culture, Representation and Electoral Systems in the Pacific Islands’, Commonwealth & Comparative Politics, vol. 43, no. 3, November 2005, pp. 276–295.

Levine, Stephen, ‘The experience of sovereignty in the Pacific: island states and political autonomy in the twenty-first century’, Commonwealth & Comparative Politics, vol. 50, no. 4, November 2012, pp. 439–455.

Mara, Ratu Sir Kamisese, The Pacific Way: A Memoir, Honolulu, University of Hawai‘i Press, 1997.

Powles, Michael (ed.), Pacific Futures, Canberra, Pandanus books, with the assistance of the Pacific Cooperation Foundation, 2006.

Powles, Michael (ed.), China and the Pacific: The View from Oceania, Wellington, Victoria University Press for the New Zealand Contemporary China Research Centre, 2016.

Revue Juridique Polynesienne, http://www.upf.pf/IRIDIP/RJP/RJP.htm

The Contemporary Pacific, http://www.uhpress.hawaii.edu/journals/cp/

The Journal of Pacific History, http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/cjph20

Melanesian Spearhead Group Secretariat, http://www.msgsec.info/

Pacific Community [formerly South Pacific Commission], http://www.spc.int/

Pacific Islands Forum Secretariat, http://www.forumsec.org/

Pacific Islands Report, http://pidp.eastwestcenter.org/pireport/

American Samoa

J. Robert Shaffer and Cheryl Hunter

J. Robert Shaffer has been a longtime resident of American Samoa, where he served as an assistant to four of the territory’s governors. Cheryl Hunter, former newspaper editor and feature writer, has for the past 25 years been a student of Samoan history and culture as collaborator with Mr Shaffer on writings about the Pacific Islands.

Welcoming palms and white sandy beaches are common sights for sea-weary mariners navigating South Pacific waters. The Samoan Islands are no exception when it comes to providing this type of inviting scenery. From prehistory to present day, Samoa’s palm-lined shores have welcomed sea-faring adventurers – the first arriving from Fiji, 1,200 kilometres to the west, about 3,500 years ago.

As the ancient mariners’ double-hulled sailing vessels glided into a wide and deep harbour sheltered by deep green, steeply rising, densely vegetated mountains, little did they suspect they were seeing what would eventually come to be known as the South Pacific’s largest and best natural harbour; or that possession of it in the late 1800s would become a sharp point of contention, leading to a political parting of ways for their descendants.

Today this harbour is a focal point of activity and commerce for the territory known as American Samoa. Formed over millions of years by volcanic activity, followed by thousands of years of refinement by nature before being inhabited, Pago Pago harbour cuts a 3-kilometre-long, 120-metre-deep, L-shaped swath out of the mid-section of Tutuila, the largest island and seat of government for the territory. Flanked on the east by steeply rising Mount Pioa (523 metres) and Mount Alava (491 metres) and to the west by Matafao Peak (653 metres), it is naturally well-protected from harsh winds and potentially hostile visitors alike.

Mount Pioa, more commonly known as ‘Rainmaker Mountain’, functions as its name implies, attracting heavy rainclouds carried along by southeasterly flowing trade winds, which unload an average of 4.6 metres of rain annually.

Tutuila is home to 96 per cent of the territory’s population. Within its mountainous 142 square kilometres, 56,000 persons reside (as of 2014). The village of Fagatogo has the distinction of being the official seat of government, with the territorial legislature – the Fono – located here. Nearby Utulei village houses the governor’s office and executive branch offices. Tafuna, 16 kilometres west of the harbour, is home to Pago Pago International Airport, where one major airline and one commuter airline handle all flights into and out of the territory.

American Samoa’s additional 57 square kilometres of land include Aunu‘u island, the three islands of the Manu‘a group, and two coral atolls. Aunu‘u is a small islet positioned 0.4 kilometres off the southeast tip of Tutuila. Its population averaged 511 in 2014. The islands of Ta‘u, Ofu and Olosega make up the Manu‘a group, located about 100 kilometres east of Tutuila. All three of Manu‘a’s islands rise steeply from the ocean and are densely vegetated. Ta‘u, largest of the three, boasts the highest peak in American Samoa, Mount Lata, rising 5,102 metres above sea level. Ten kilometres west of Ta‘u are the twin islands of Ofu and Olosega, separated by a narrow strait of about 90 metres. Manu‘a once housed about 6 per cent of American Samoa’s population, but numbers have been dwindling in recent years due to lack of educational and employment opportunities.

Swains Island, one of the two coral atolls, lies about 320 kilometres northeast of Tutuila. Geographically part of the Tokelau group, govern-mentally it is within American Samoa’s jurisdiction. Swains consists of 461 acres on a flat piece of coral that includes a central lagoon. Historically, its population has varied between 30 and 40 inhabitants of Tokelauan descent. More recently the island has been periodically uninhabited.

Uninhabited Rose Atoll is a designated National Marine Preserve, situated at the easternmost point in the territory, about 100 kilometres east of Ta‘u. It is monitored and protected by the US National Park Service.

History

Initial settlement in Samoa is believed to have occurred between 1500 and 800 BCE. Lapita pottery discovered at Mulifanua on the western tip of Upolu is indicative of pottery originating in the Lau Island Group in Fiji which dates from that period. The sites of To‘aga (Ofu) and ‘Aoa (Tutuila) appear to have been inhabited in the same general time period as Mulifanua.

The first known sightings of the islands by Europeans were by Dutchman Jacob Roggeveen in 1722 and French explorer Louis-Antoine de Bougainville in 1768. Bougainville named the archipelago the Navigator Islands. On 11 December 1787, another French explorer, Jean-François de La Pérouse, sent a landing party ashore at A‘asu village to collect fresh water. A short battle ensued, resulting in the death of a number of French sailors, giving Tutuila a reputation of ferocity that lasted for decades.

In 1829, John Williams of the London Missionary Society (LMS), who had been teaching Christianity in Tahiti and Rarotonga, turned his attention to the Navigator Islands. Not having access to any ships capable of getting him there, he used his previous training as an ironmonger, fashioned some tools with scraps of metal and wood, and built a 60-foot brigantine by himself in three months. Accompanied by another English minister, a group of Tahitian teachers and their families, and a Samoan they met in Tonga on the way, they dropped anchor in Sapapali‘i, Savai‘i, in 1830.¹ Williams’ party was well-received by the most powerful chief of the day, Malietoa, who readily facilitated Christian instruction throughout the islands. Williams spent 17 more years spreading Christianity throughout Polynesia. The LMS Church, as well as most other Christian denominations, thrives in the Samoas today.

Samoa during the latter half of the 19th century was wracked by civil war, due to commercial and military rivalry on the part of Germany, Britain and the United States. Germany and Britain were looking to expand their colonies and influence in the South Pacific. The United States had become focused on Pago Pago harbour as a potential coaling station.

Tension grew between the countries, with Samoan chiefs and villagers taking sides as well. In March 1889, British and American warships faced off against a German naval fleet in Apia harbour. Before the first cannons were fired, however, the most devastating hurricane in 100 years swept ashore, sinking every ship in the harbour except a British frigate. The Samoans, regardless of which country they sided with, worked tirelessly to rescue as many people as possible.

The international rivalry over Samoa was settled in 1899 with the Treaty of Berlin, which established two separate Samoas. Germany desired, and was granted, control over Savai‘i, Upolu and their neighboring islets. They had established coffee and coconut plantations on the gradually sloping, fertile acres of those islands, and were shipping those products (and by-products) throughout Europe. The US achieved the rights it sought over Tutuila and Pago Pago harbour, along with the eastern islands and atolls. Britain relinquished all claims in Samoa, opting to focus attention on Tonga.

In 1900 the US Navy began to formally occupy Tutuila and Aunu‘u on behalf of the United States, and the existing coaling station in the harbour was expanded into a full naval station under Benjamin Franklin Tilly, appointed Commandant of the United States Naval Station Tutuila. In April of that year a deed of cession was signed, and the American flag was officially raised on Tutuila on 17 April 1900. A deed of cession for Manu‘a was signed in 1904. On 17 July 1911 the US Naval Station, Tutuila, was officially renamed American Samoa.

During World War II, both US Navy and Marine Corps units occupied American Samoa. Roads and housing for the troops were built to accommodate the influx of military personnel and to move equipment around the island. These roads and many of the structures are still in use today.

Military administration of the territory ended in 1950. On 1 July 1951, administration of American Samoa was formally transferred to the US Department of the Interior (DOI), and in 1956 DOI appointed American Samoa-born Peter Coleman as the territory’s first Samoan governor. Coleman served in that capacity until 1961. He was followed by a series of governors appointed by DOI. In 1977, 17 years after leaving office, Coleman became the first locally elected governor in the territory. He was re-elected twice more, serving a total of 11 years as the popularly elected chief executive.

Politics

American Samoa’s politics include three categories that often intertwine. The executive and legislative branches make up the first category within a framework of representative democracy. Executive power is placed with the governor, who heads up a non-partisan system. Legislative power is vested in two chambers, an upper (Senate) and a lower (House of Representatives). US political parties (Republican and Democrat) exist in the territory, but few local politicians are aligned with either one.

The second category involves traditional village politics. This level of political interaction centers around two Samoan cultural institutions – fa‘a matai (chiefly system and protocol) and fa‘a Samoa (the Samoan way of life, language, customs). The fa‘a matai includes all levels of the Samoan body politic: from family, to village, to fono, to district, and finally to national matters.

The third category centers on the village matai (chiefs). Matai are elected by a consensus in a fono (gathering, meeting) of the ‘aiga, the key unit of social organisation in Samoan culture. The ‘aiga refers to the ‘extended family’ or ‘clan’, a group of people related by blood, marriage or adoption. The head of an ‘aiga, or a branch thereof, is the matai. Depending upon the traditional nature of a chiefly title, a matai can be either an Ali‘i (chief) or a Tulafale (orator). The matai and fono (which is itself made up of matai) decide the distribution of family exchanges and tenancy of communal lands. A matai can represent a small family group or a much larger extended family reaching across islands in American Samoa and independent Samoa.

Government

American Samoa’s government consists of three branches modelled after the US Constitution: Executive, Legislative and Judiciary. The territorial government is defined under the Constitution of American Samoa, which was drafted under the direction of Governor Coleman in 1961. The final draft of this constitution took effect on 1 July 1967. As an ‘unincorporated’ and ‘unorganised’ territory, American Samoa is administered by the Office of Insular Affairs, Department of the Interior, based in Washington, DC.

In order for American Samoa to be considered an ‘organised’ territory, the US Congress must pass an Organic Act. It has yet to do so. This means that American Samoans born in the territory are considered US ‘nationals’, the only such designation among all US possessions and territories. However, if one parent is a US citizen, a child born in American Samoa is also a US citizen. Under the ‘national’ designation, American Samoans are issued US passports and can freely travel to, or establish residence in, the United States, with only their birth certificates (i.e., passports and visas are not required). American Samoans have all the rights and privileges of US citizens except the right to vote in state or national elections. Should they choose to become US citizens, the process is less burdensome than it is for foreigners.²

The governor and lieutenant governor are elected on the same ticket by popular vote for four-year terms. They are limited to two terms of office. Gubernatorial elections coincide with US presidential elections, held on the Tuesday following the first Monday in November.

The document establishing the Fono of American Samoa was drafted in 1948, primarily by the attorney general of the territory, John D. Maroney. In drafting the original document, Maroney consulted very closely with territorial Chief Justice Arthur A. Morrow and orator matai Tuiasosopo Mariota, considered the primary Samoan ‘founder’ of the modern American Samoa legislature.

Because the matai system of government is so deeply ingrained in Samoan culture, drafters of the Samoan bicameral legislature set up a Fono that is sensitive to, and in keeping with, this system. It is made up of an upper and a lower house.

The Fono’s upper house, the House of Ali‘i (Senate), consists of 18 members, elected for four-year terms by matai of each district as designated by traditional Samoan custom. The House of Representatives consists of 20 members, one from each district, elected for two-year terms. One additional non-voting member is elected from Swains Island in a public meeting. Candidates for House seats are not required to hold a matai title and all registered voters can vote for them in their districts, thereby following the traditional democratic principles of a representative democracy.

The judiciary branch, like the US model, is independent. Its High Court is the highest court below the US Supreme Court in American Samoa, with district courts below it. The High Court is located in Fagatogo, and consists of a chief justice and an associate justice, appointed by the Secretary of the Interior.

One of the uniquely Samoan aspects of politics in American Samoa is that not all elected officials, including the governor and lieutenant governor, are required to hold a matai title. However, because the importance and relevance of matai titles remains paramount in the territory on all political levels, the chances of an individual being elected governor without holding a matai title are slim. Government officials, including the chief justice, also are not required to hold a matai title in order to serve.

Administrative Divisions

For traditional governance, American Samoa is divided into three major districts – Eastern, Western and Manu‘a. Each is administered by a district governor who is appointed by the territorial governor. To be qualified as a district governor, an individual must hold a matai title within the district to which he/she is to be appointed.

Delegate to the US House of Representatives

Delegates to the US House of Representatives are elected by registered voters of the territory. American Samoa does not have the right to elect a United States senator, but elects a single, non-voting delegate to the House. The right to elect this delegate was granted on 31 October 1978. The first delegate, Fofó Iosefa Fiti Sunia, was elected in November 1980 and took office in January 1981.

Delegates serve two-year terms (as do all members of the House) and can participate and vote in committee, but not on the House floor. The delegate may also serve as a committee chair, if they have earned the necessary seniority to hold that position, and may also make amendments to proposed legislation during discussion on the House floor. Since 1993, rules governing the rights of non-voting delegates from US territories have changed several times – either limiting or increasing voting rights of the delegate.

Amata Coleman Radewagen (daughter of the first appointed and elected Samoan governor, Peter Coleman) defeated incumbent Faleomavaega Eni Hunkin on 4 November 2014, becoming the first woman to represent American Samoa in the House of Representatives. She was sworn into office on 6 January 2015. (Hunkin was American Samoa’s second delegate, serving since January 1989.)

Amata also became the first Republican to be elected as American Samoa’s delegate. Traditionally, Samoan candidates do not campaign as members of either of the major political parties, or as ‘liberal’ or ‘conservative’. Campaign issues for candidates in the territory are ‘local’, with little attachment to national parties in Washington, DC. However, it is recognised that if a delegate’s alignment is with the party in control of the House of Representatives – the majority party – then that delegate may have more political influence than if they were a member of the minority party.

The fact that Amata is a longstanding member of the Republican National Committee (RNC), and that Republicans gained control of the House in 2012 and increased that majority in 2014, means that she finds herself in the unique position of having more influence as a member of the House majority. With that influence there is the potential to accomplish more for the territory and its residents.

Amata has been an RNC committeewoman since 1986 and ranks number one in seniority within that 168-member committee. Along with her other committee assignments she has been named vice chairperson of the Subcommittee on Indian and Native Alaskan Affairs, which has legislative jurisdiction over US-affiliated areas.

Both the Republican and Democratic parties are now officially organised in the territory. American Samoan members in each party are allowed to send delegates to national party-nominating conventions to vote for presidential nominees.

Toa o Samoa (Warriors of Samoa)

American Samoans have been serving in the United States military since 1900. The very first enlisted in the navy or as marine guards for the US Naval Station Tutuila in a special programme proposed by Commander Tilley and approved by the Secretary of the Navy. This local military unit was known as the Fita Fita Guard.³ Their function was to provide security for naval equipment and facilities.

The first Samoan battalion of Marine Corps reserves was organised in July 1941 and served for nearly ten years. After transitioning to civilian administration in 1951, the Navy Department offered Samoan marines and navy personnel who had served during World War II an opportunity to join regular branches of each service. Those who joined were sent to military bases on Oahu (in Hawaii) for further training. Shortly thereafter, spouses and dependents were sent to join them, thus beginning the first major out-migration of American Samoans to the United States.

Many of these young Samoans, within just a couple of years, found themselves fighting in Korea. Within ten years, many returned to Asia as the war in Vietnam began to significantly expand. By the mid-1960s, young American Samoans had started looking to the US military as an opportunity to learn skills that would increase career opportunities; hundreds left the islands to enlist. By 1972, more American Samoans per capita had been killed or wounded in action than service members from any other American community. One soldier from Tutuila was a prisoner-of-war in North Vietnam for four years, returning home when American POWs were released in 1973.

A US Army Reserve unit was established on Tutuila in 1980. Deployed to Iraq in 2004, the unit returned home minus one member, killed in a battle with insurgents. This unit remains an important, active component of the US Army’s Pacific Command. As of 23 March 2009, ten American Samoans had died in Iraq and two in Afghanistan.

Fa‘a Samoa in the 21st century

Necessity may have guided those first voyagers to seek a new home – escape from drought, perhaps, or invasion of their homeland by brutal enemies. But recognition of something extraordinary most likely met the sun-and-wind-burned eyes of those first mariners to see the Samoan archipelago. Potential for sustaining lives within a great and noble civilisation captured them irrevocably. Over millennia, seeds of a refined culture were sown, out of which the fa‘a Samoa grew and spread throughout the island chain. The Samoan way established order and standards of living for all those under its influence.

Fast forward to the beginning of the 20th century: it is commonly believed that the matai who signed the deed of cession for Tutuila and islands to the east were, remarkably, able to integrate the tried and true principles of fa‘a Samoa and fa‘a matai into the American democratic system of government. In doing so they were able to provide citizenship options and expand educational and career choices for American Samoans.

That ancient volcanic caldera, Pago Pago harbour, has proven to be the valuable asset to US military strategists that those first naval commanders sought out. Add to that the thousands of strong, loyal, courageous men and women of American Samoa who have served and are serving in various branches of the military or who contribute to commercial enterprises beneficial to both sides of the partnership, and a pattern of symbiosis emerges that continues to be woven into the distinctive fabrics of both societies.

Further reading

Gray, J. A. C., Amerika Samoa: A History of American Samoa and its United States Naval Administration, Annapolis, Maryland, US Naval Institute, 1960.

Shaffer, J. Robert, American Samoa: 100 Years Under the United States Flag, Waipahu, Hawaii, Island Heritage, 2000 (first edition).

Shaffer, J. Robert, Samoa: A Historical Novel, New York, Ithaca Press, 2011.

Faleomavaega, Eni F. H., ‘American Samoa’, in Stephen Levine (ed.), Pacific Ways: Government and Politics in the Pacific Islands, first edition, Wellington, Victoria University Press, 2009, pp. 17–25.

United States Congresswoman Aumua Amata, ‘Aumua Amata Coleman Radewagen, Proudly Representing American Samoa’, https://radewagen.house.gov/

Samoa News, www.samoanews.com

Notes

1. Savai‘i is one of the two main islands in what is now the independent state of Samoa [ed.].

2. Beginning in 2012 and continuing through 2015 a court challenge was made to current practice, asserting that the citizenship clause of the 14th amendment to the US Constitution – ‘All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside’ – should be interpreted to mean that persons born in American Samoa (a US territory) should automatically be citizens. The opposing argument, thus far upheld by the courts, is that granting citizenship (from birth) to persons born in American Samoa is a matter for the US Congress, which has thus far not legislated for this to occur. Representatives of American Samoa’s government have also argued that a change in policy, extending US citizenship to all those born in American Samoa, should be a matter for American Samoans (and their government) to request, and not a choice to be made by individual litigants and the courts. (See Tuaua v United States [ed.].)

3. Fitafita is Samoan for ‘soldier’ [ed.].

Australia

Nigel S. Roberts

Nigel S. Roberts is an Emeritus Professor of Political Science at Victoria University of Wellington. His areas of specialisation include comparative politics and electoral systems. He has lived in Australia (his undergraduate education was at the University of Tasmania) and visits the country frequently.

Australia is the giant of the South Pacific: the island continent has a far larger land mass and a much bigger population than all the other states in the Pacific Islands Forum added together. The country’s area (7,686,850 square kilometres) is almost ten times that of the other 15 states in the Pacific Islands Forum; and with a population in excess of 21 million – almost twice that of the rest of the Pacific Islands Forum countries – Australia is unique in the region.

Background: old and stable

Inhabited only by its indigenous aboriginal population for more than 40,000 years, Australia’s isolation was briefly interrupted by seafaring explorers such as Abel Janszoon Tasman (in 1642 and 1644) and James Cook (in 1770, when he claimed the east coast of Australia for the British Crown), and then permanently breached when a British fleet arrived in Botany Bay on Australia’s east coast in January 1788 to establish a penal settlement.

Over the course of the following century, European settlement (which, at that stage, was predominantly British settlement) saw six colonies established on the continent: New South Wales (where civil government was established in 1823), Tasmania (1825), South Australia (1834), Victoria (1850), Queensland (1859) and Western Australia (1889). The facts that the six colonies shared what Professor L. F. Crisp has called ‘common British origins, language, and social institutions’ and that – in comparison with Americans or Canadians – ‘the people’s homogeneity was extraordinary’ (to quote Crisp again) led inevitably to calls for political amalgamation. Constitutional conventions were held in 1891 and 1897–98. A federal constitution was drafted, then redrafted on several occasions, and eventually approved by voters in each of the six separate colonies in a series of referendums held in 1899 and 1900. In July 1900, the British Parliament passed the Commonwealth of Australia Constitution Act, and on 1 January 1901 the six colonies became a single independent federal state.

The system of government established by the Australian Constitution more than a century ago is still in existence. No new states have been created or admitted to the federation (known, more formally, as the Commonwealth); the country is still a monarchy in which the Crown is represented on a day-to-day basis by a governor-general; and Australia’s bicameral federal Parliament, consisting of a House of Representatives and a Senate, still looks like and functions very much along the lines of the Parliaments that were initially elected in the first years of the 20th century. Geologically, Australia is an old and stable country; politically and constitutionally, it is too.

The head of state

Australia’s head of state is the British monarch. In a small but significant move dating from the mid-1970s, one of Queen Elizabeth II’s formal titles is now Queen of Australia (just as she is also Queen of Canada and Queen of New Zealand). She does not live in Australia and is thus represented there by a governor-general. From 1901 until 1965, all but two of the governors-general were British; since 1965 all have been Australian. However, while Canada has had three and New Zealand has had two female governors-general, Australia’s first female governor-general, Quentin Bryce (formerly a law lecturer and, later, governor of Queensland), took office only as recently as 2008.

While the Australian head of state’s role is primarily ceremonial and symbolic, it also contains ‘reserved powers’ – such as the power to appoint and dismiss prime ministers, and the power to refuse a prime minister’s request to dissolve Parliament. The first of these powers was dramatically exercised in November 1975 by the then governor-general, Sir John Kerr, when – as a result of an impasse between the House of Representatives and the Senate – he dismissed the Labor prime minister, Gough Whitlam, and appointed Liberal leader Malcolm Fraser prime minister instead.

Sir John Kerr’s actions, as well as the fact that Australia is now an extraordinarily multi-cultural country – peopled during the second half of the 20th century by waves of immigrants from places such as Italy, Greece, the Middle East, China and Southeast Asia – have contributed to a heightened degree of anti-monarchical sentiment in Australia. Nevertheless, proposals to amend the Australian Constitution and for the country to become a republic were soundly defeated in a referendum in late 1999, and the issue is no longer as prominent or as divisive as was the case in the last quarter of the 20th century. Looking ahead, however, even the conservative prime minister, John Howard, noted that while he did not believe Australia would become a republic while Queen Elizabeth II was on the throne, ‘Beyond that, I don’t know’. His successor’s view of the future was slightly clearer. In 2008 Kevin Rudd affirmed, ‘I’m a life-long republican. It’s absolutely clear in the Australian Labor Party platform that’s where we intend to go … [although] it is not a top order question.’ In 2014, in a move that surprised many Australians, Liberal Party prime minister Tony Abbott reintroduced dames and knights into the Australian honours system, and his subsequent decision in January 2015 to appoint the Queen’s husband, Prince Philip, as an Australian knight was widely criticised and ridiculed.

The federal Parliament

The Australian federal government and the governments of the six Australian states, as well as the governments of Australia’s two main territories (the Australian Capital Territory [the ACT] and the Northern Territory), are all parliamentary democracies – that is, their governments must not only come from but must also have the confidence of their legislatures.

The House of Representatives

The federal Parliament is bicameral. The House of Representatives (like the US House of Representatives) consists of members elected from single-member districts with roughly equal-sized populations. The distribution of seats in the Australian House of Representatives is slightly distorted by the fact that the smallest state, the island state of Tasmania, is entitled to five seats in the lower house of the federal Parliament, but the remaining 145 seats in the 150-member House of Representatives are distributed reasonably fairly across the five states and two territories on the ‘mainland’ on the basis of their populations. At the time of the 2013 federal elections, New South Wales had 48 seats in the House of Representatives, Victoria 37, Queensland 30, Western Australia 15 and South Australia 11, while the ACT and the Northern Territory had two seats apiece.

Australia has a long history of democratic innovation. For example, universal adult suffrage in Australia dates back to 1902 (compared with 1920 in America and 1928 in Britain), and internationally the secret ballot is still sometimes referred to as ‘the Australian ballot’. The voting system used for the Australian House of Representatives – known as ‘preferential voting’ in Australia (it is also known as ‘alternative voting’ in much of the political science literature about electoral systems and as ‘instant run-off voting’ in the United States) – is another instance of Australian innovation. So too is the fact that voting in Australia is compulsory. At both the federal and state levels, citizens can be fined for not voting.

Preferential voting has been used in Australia for House of Representatives elections since 1918. As in the system it replaced (namely, the first-past-the-post or the ‘winner takes all’ system), voters elect only one member per House district, but electors have to give their rank-ordered preferences for all the candidates on their ballot paper. In order to win a seat, a candidate must have an absolute majority (i.e., at least 50 per cent plus 1) of the valid votes cast in his or her district. If on the first count no candidate has won more than half the votes in a district, then the second preferences of the lowest polling candidate are distributed to the remaining candidates. This process is repeated until a candidate has the support of a majority of the voters. In the September 2013 federal elections, candidates in only 53 seats in the House of Representatives were elected with an absolute majority of the votes on the first count, while preferences had to be distributed in order to determine the eventual winner in the remaining 97 (namely, 65 per cent of the seats). Other than Australia, Fiji and Papua New Guinea are two of the very few countries in the world ever to have used preferential (or alternative) voting for parliamentary elections.

Australian federal governments must have the confidence of the House of Representatives. This invariably means that Australian federal governments command the support of a majority of the members of the lower house. When in power, the Australian Labor Party (the ALP) usually manages to govern on its own, whereas Labor’s rivals on the opposite side of the political spectrum – the Liberal Party and the National (formerly the Country) Party – have governed as a coalition on almost every occasion since 1922 that the right has been in power.

The term of the Australian House of Representatives is three years, which is short by international standards. Nevertheless, governments have not gone full term and early elections have been held on eight different occasions since the end of World War II (early elections were held in 1951, 1955, 1963, 1974, 1975, 1977, 1984 and 1998). Compare this with New Zealand, which also has a three-year parliamentary term, but where only one election – the 1951 election – was held a year or more early during the same period of time.

The Senate

The Australian Constitution stipulates that the House of Representatives should have ‘as nearly as practicable, twice the number of senators’. As a result, the Australian Senate currently has 76 members (which makes it almost exactly half the size of the House). Again as is the case in the United States, each state – regardless of