A Progressive Authoritarianism? The case of post-2006 Fiji

Post-development has matured well beyond the romanticism and celebration of the local of its early proponents. The new ‘conditions of possibility’ that embody the latest contributions to the field are studies in governmentality. This paper explores the heterogeneous postcolonial spaces of post-2006 Fiji by deploying a Foucauldian analysis of Bainimarama's government, particularly focusing on the formation of identities and the attributes of a ‘normalised citizenry’. The analysis aims to help explain why the implementation of a liberal rationality, in the form of racial equality for socio-political change in the country, calls for citizens to be subjected to various arts of government—surveillance, physical and psychological violence and, in some cases, incarceration and torture. An understanding of this brutal and puzzling irony is found in Fiji's colonial legacies and the ongoing contestation over what constitutes a ‘normalised citizenry’ in the country. I propose that Fiji's present contestations and anomalous coalescence of liberal rationalities and non-liberal means are best explained with reference to the paradoxical notion of progressive authoritarian governmentality.