Explaining sender–receiver gaps in signalling: Australia’s ‘Pacific Step-up’ and Solomon Islands’ multi-alignment

Abstract

Amid growing strategic competition, regional powers have intensified their engagement with Pacific Island Countries. This article examines Australia’s ‘Pacific Step-up’, a signature foreign policy initiative of the Scott Morrison government (2018–2022), from a signalling perspective. Through the Step-up, Australia sought to affirm its resolve to be partner of choice for Pacific Island Countries. This was not cheap talk but led Canberra to invest substantially in its ties with the region. Despite this and significant prior Australian engagement leading to a bilateral security pact, Solomon Islands’ government signed an additional security agreement with China in 2022. How can we explain this sender–receiver gap? I argue that close attention to the agency of domestic actors on the receiver side and the context in which such agency occurs – in this case, an extended history of insecurity in the Pacific country – provides us with analytical leverage when examining concrete instances of signalling.