Transitions Without Transformation? Masculinities, Power, and the Politics of Democratic Change in Fiji

Fiji’s 2022 election marked a historic milestone, the country’s first peaceful transfer of power since independence, breaking a half-century cycle of coups and military-backed regimes. Yet beneath this moment of democratic renewal lay enduring gendered logics of power. This paper interrogates Fiji’s political transition through the lens of political masculinities, asking how masculine authority was renegotiated, sustained, or challenged in this unprecedented moment of political change. Drawing on political ethnography conducted across parliamentary proceedings, party meetings, and campaign events, the paper examines how male political elites mobilised narratives of redemption, forgiveness, and unity to reassert legitimacy within a gendered moral economy of leadership. It argues that the transition was less a rupture than a recalibration of masculinist orders, where military, chiefly, and populist masculinities adapted to a shifting political terrain while continuing to shape democratic discourse and institutional culture. By analysing performative and affective registers of masculinity within parties and coalition negotiations, the paper highlights how gendered performances underpinned continuity and contestation in Fiji’s post-authoritarian governance. In doing so, it situates Fiji’s experience within broader debates on decolonial and feminist analyses of political transitions in the Global South, challenging assumptions that peace or democratic turnover necessarily disrupt entrenched patriarchal power.