Paper short abstract:

In the first decade of its independence, Vanuatu saw Britain, if not France, continue its withdrawal from the Pacific region only to re-emerge in the Thatcherite policies applied by the aid donors and international agencies that made neoliberal structural adjustment a condition of continued support.

Paper long abstract:

Maggie Thatcher came to power just as the new nation state of Vanuatu was emerging from its colonial past as the New Hebrides. In the first decade of its Independence, Vanuatu saw Britain, if not France, continue its withdrawal from the Pacific region only to reemerge in the Thatcherite policies applied by the aid donors and international agencies that made neoliberal structural adjustment a condition of continued support.

This paper explores the application of these policies and local reactions to them. Aid donors like Australia and the US with a declared interest in regional stability and now security, use concepts like 'good governance' and sound economic management rhetorically as moral carrots and sticks for the continuance of Aid while corruption and increasing inequalities between urban and rural communities are seen as indices of state failure. I argue that the measurement by aid donors of 'good governance' and 'civil society' as guides to state health limits an examination of the premises on which these moral models rest and inhibits an understanding of the way in which neo-liberal economic policies both reinforce and destabilize local assumptions about success, value and worth and their consequences.