White Paper Series · Island Security Policy Institute · 2026
Small island states sign agreements they cannot fully evaluate because they lack the institutional analytical capacity to independently assess complex bilateral security and economic arrangements. This is not a leadership failure — it is a governance capacity gap that external actors exploit.
Documents the governance capacity gap in Pacific Island nations that makes them structurally susceptible to external security and economic arrangements, with case studies from Solomon Islands, Tonga, and Kiribati. Provides institutional capacity investment framework. This research is produced under the ISPI Research Methodology Guide v4.0 — five pillars: government agency sources, regional organizations, OSINT/Bellingcat two-source verification, the ISPI Global Expert Panel of 78 members across 14 disciplines, and AI synthesis under practitioner review. All ISPI research is free under Creative Commons Attribution 4.0.
The 2022 China-Solomon Islands security agreement was signed by a government that lacked the institutional capacity to independently evaluate its full implications — not because leadership was reckless but because governance capacity was insufficient
Solomon Islands PM Wale failed to cancel the agreement despite publicly opposing it before election — demonstrating that even leadership commitment is insufficient without institutional framework reform
GI-TOC March 2026 report confirmed Chinese policing engagement has shifted from technical training to operational embeddedness across more than a dozen Pacific nations
The governance capacity gap documented in this paper is present across the majority of Pacific SIDS and in many Caribbean SIDS. The Commonwealth Secretariat's small states program directly addresses institutional capacity building for SIDS governance.
Pulley, Warren. "Democratic Resilience in Pacific Island Nations." Island Security Policy Institute, 2026. https://ispiglobal.com/papers-landing/wp10-democratic-resilience.html