In this article, I examine the nature of political practice in the Pacific Islands against two dominant measures of professionalization: incentive and institutionalist. Drawing from a range of qualitative data-interviews with politicians, published life histories, and observation-from across the region, I find that professionalization is largely unapparent against these measures. However, despite the likelihood that this absence will continue, the professional politician continues to be a standard against which political leadership in the Pacific is assessed, and thus poses a significant problem for would-be-reformers. In response to this dilemma, I find that the older idea of self-regulating professional ethics, usually disregarded by proponents of these newer and more managerial measures, has more to offer than might first appear.