Governance in the Age of Globalisation: Caribbean Perspectives [1 ed.] 9789766378257, 9789766371630

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Caribbean Perspectives

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GOVERNANCE IN THE AGE OF GLOBALISATION

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GOVERNANCE IN THE AGE OF GLOBALISATION

Caribbean Perspectives Edited by Denis Benn and Kenneth O. Hall

Ian Randle Publishers Kingston

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ivFirst publishedGOVERNANCE IN THE in Jamaica, 2003 by AGE OF GLOBALISATION Ian Randle Publishers 11 Cunningham Avenue Box 686, Kingston 6 www.ianrandlepublishers.com Introduction and editorial material © 2003 Denis Benn Kenneth O. Hall ISBN 978-976-637-150-0 (pbk) ISBN 978-976-637-163-0 (hbk) Epub Edition @ September/2013 ISBN: 978-976-637-825-7 National Library of Jamaica Cataloguing in Publication Data Governance in the age of globalisation : Caribbean perspectives / edited by Kenneth O. Hall and Denis Benn p. ;

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Includes index. – Based on papers presented at the 2002 Mona Academic Conference ISBN 976-637-150-4 (paperback) ISBN 976-637-163-6 (hardback) I. Hall, Kenneth O.

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Benn, Denis

1. International economic relations 2. Globalisation 3. Caribbean Area – Economic conditions 327.101

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and in the United States by Ian Randle Publishers, Inc ISBN 0-9742155-2-X (paperback) ISBN 0-9742155-3-8 (hardback) Governance in the Age of Globalisation. Copyright © 2003 by Denis Benn and Kenneth O. Hall. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of Ian Randle Publishers. Book design by Shelly-Gail Cooper Cover design by Louis Matalon Printed and bound in the United States of America

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T A B L E

O F

C O N T E N T S

PREFACE . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

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INTRODUCTION . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

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ACRONYMS AND ABBREVIATIONS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

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PART 1: THE GOVERNANCE CHALLENGE: OVERARCHING PERSPECTIVES CHAPTER 1 New Conceptions of Governance in Small States . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Ralph Gonsalves

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CHAPTER 2 Governance and the New Imperium . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Shridath Ramphal

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PART 2: GLOBAL GOVERNANCE CHAPTER 3 Globalisation and the Caribbean in the Age of Neo-Mercantilist Imperialism . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Hilbourne Watson CHAPTER 4 Rethinking International Relations: A Caribbean Small State Perspective . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Jessica Byron CHAPTER 5 Global Governance in the Context of Globalisation: The Imperatives of Economic Change . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Maurice Odle CHAPTER 6 Governance in International Trade: The Misconduct of Transnational Corporations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Taimoon Stewart

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PART 3: GOVERNANCE: THEORETICAL ASPECTS CHAPTER 7 Designing and Implementing Development Policy: The Shift to Holistic Approaches and Development Policy Frameworks . . . . . . . . . Clive Thomas CHAPTER 8 Governance in the Context of Globalisation and Regionalisation . . . . Anthony Payne CHAPTER 9 Governance in Small Societies: The Importance of Strong Democracy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Neville Duncan CHAPTER 10 Majoritarian and Consociational Systems of Governance: Paradigms in Conflict . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Selwyn Ryan CHAPTER 11 Engendering Governance: Strategies for Promoting Gender Equality . . Barbara Bailey and Elsa Leo-Rhynie

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PART 4: GOVERNANCE SYSTEMS AND STRUCTURES CHAPTER 12 Caribbean Governance Systems: The Historical Legacy . . . . . . . . . . . . . Roy Augier

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CHAPTER 13 Institutional Design for Sub-national Governance . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Edwin Jones

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CHAPTER 14 ‘Nah Vote Again’ – Representations of Governance in Jamaican Popular Culture . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Carolyn Cooper CHAPTER 15 The Caribbean Diaspora/Caribbean Homeland Dialectic and the Global Caribbean . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Locksley Edmondson

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vii PART 5: STATE, ECONOMY AND SOCIETY CHAPTER 16 Civil Society, Governance and Conflict Resolution in the Caribbean . . . . . 291 Cedric Grant CHAPTER 17 Guyana: Governance and Patterns of Ethnic Conflict . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 317 Ralph Premdas CHAPTER 18 Multi-Ethnic Divisions and Governance: The Problem of Institutional Reform and Adaptation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 348 Ralph Premdas CHAPTER 19 Governance Under Threat: The Impact of Corruption and the Fight Against Corruption . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 369 Trevor Munroe CHAPTER 20 Caribbean Security in the Age of Terror: Challenge of Intrusion and Governance . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 383 Ivelaw Griffith CHAPTER 21 Governance, Public Sector Reform and ‘New Public Sector Management’: Thoughts on the Commonwealth Caribbean Experience . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 416 Paul Sutton CHAPTER 22 Governance and the Media: Promoting Transparency and Accountability. 434 Oliver Clarke CHAPTER 23 Governance, Social Protection and Employment in CARICOM: Is Labour Missing? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Orville Taylor

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CHAPTER 24 Promoting Good Governance: The Role of the Media . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 454 John Maxwell CHAPTER 25 Governance for Poverty Eradication and Sustainable Development: Issues in Development Cooperation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Naresh Singh

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PART 6: REGIONAL GOVERNANCE CHAPTER 26 CARICOM: From Community to Single Market and Economy . . . . . . . . Havelock Brewster CHAPTER 27 Regional Integration Institutional Arrangements: Underlying Assumptions and Contemporary Appropriateness . . . . . . . . Vaughan Lewis CHAPTER 28 Sub-Regional Governance: The OECS Experience . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . K. Dwight Venner CHAPTER 29 Regional Cooperation and Economic Governance: The Case of the Association of Caribbean States (ACS) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Norman Girvan CHAPTER 30 The Caribbean Court of Justice in Regional Economic Development . . . . Duke Pollard CHAPTER 31 The Caribbean Court of Justice: The Need for Confidence Building Measures . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Stephen Vasciannie

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PART 7: GOVERNANCE : THE WAY FORWARD CHAPTER 32 Governance in the Contemporary Caribbean: The Way Forward – Towards a Political Culture of Partnership . . . . . . . . . 586 Rex Nettleford

CONCLUSION . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 602 LIST OF CONTRIBUTORS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 608 INDEX . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 612

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P R E F A C E

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here is growing recognition that good governance is an important prerequisite for promoting economic development, human rights and a viable social and political order. However, a number of countries in the Caribbean face difficult challenges in promoting genuine democratic participation in the political process and in maintaining social and political stability as a result of deficiencies in their governance structures. In addition, the deepening of the regional integration process points to the need for fundamental changes to be effected in governance structures at the regional level. Moreover, the process of globalisation together with the significant changes that have occurred in the geo-political configuration of the international system has generated renewed interest in the establishment of an appropriate system of global governance. There is a clear need therefore to carry out an assessment of the critical issues involved in the establishment of effective systems of governance at the national, regional and global level. It was for this reason that the University of the West Indies, in cooperation with the Caribbean Development Bank, decided to focus on ‘The Governance Challenge: National, Regional and Global Dimensions’ as the topic to be addressed at the 2002 Mona Academic Conference which was held on the Mona Campus of the University from August 30 to September 1, 2002. The Conference brought together scholars from within and without the region as well as policy makers in government and regional institutions in the Caribbean to reflect on the various dimensions of governance and to identify practical proposals relevant to the needs of policy makers in the region. All but three of the papers contained in the volume were actually presented at the Conference or prepared for presentation at the Conference. Although the contributions focus mainly on the Caribbean they also address governance issues beyond the region. I am confident that the volume which covers a broad range of issues in governance will serve as an important reference for those interested in the subject. I take great pleasure in introducing the volume and commend it to policy makers in the region, the academic community as well as to members of the general public. Professor Kenneth O. Hall Pro Vice Chancellor and Principal University of the West Indies Mona Campus

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I N T R O D U C T I O N

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espite continuing debate on its ideological origins and the persistence of a variety of definitions regarding its specific content, there is increased recognition that the concept of good governance, broadly conceived, is an important prerequisite for the promotion of an optimal level of development, the guarantee of human rights and freedom, and the maintenance of social and political stability. As a result, there has been extensive theorisation on the subject in an attempt to further clarify its philosophical content and also to identify suitable strategies for its effective application in practical political contexts. In keeping with this thrust there has been a noticeable tendency in recent years to broaden the conception of governance beyond the theoretical focus on the role and functions of the state and to encompass instead the activities of both state and non-state actors within the polity as well as the impact of the dynamics of their inter-relationship in shaping the political culture. Moreover, its subject matter has been expanded to include not only traditional political concerns but also issues relating to economic management and social organisation. Consequently, governance is now generally defined as “the exercise of political, economic and administrative authority to manage a nation’s affairs”. It should be pointed out that the new emphasis on governance, as opposed to government, reflects a conscious ideological thrust which is informed by neo-liberal philosophical assumptions. In contrast to the previous focus on the functions of the state which was a central feature of traditional political science literature, neo-liberalism is premised on a minimalist conception of the role of the state in the economic sphere with a corresponding emphasis on the primacy of the private sector operating within the framework of a market-based economic system. This conception of governance is clearly reflected in contemporary economic and social policies sponsored by the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank and which, collectively, are embodied in the socalled “Washington Consensus”. This philosophical orientation has exercised a dominant influence on the overall conception of governance since the beginning of the 1980s. The new conception of governance, embodied in the neo-liberal paradigm, provided the philosophical rationale for the growing trend towards privatisation which has occurred in the developing countries in recent years. This resulted when governments sought to relinquish their ownership of economic enterprises which, prior to the 1980s, was quite a common feature of the economic model embraced by these countries.

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xi As part of the new dispensation, emphasis was also placed on the need to ensure an increased role for civil society in the development process. Consequently, with the support of bilateral donors and multilateral development institutions, non-governmental organisations were encouraged to play a larger role in the formulation and implementation of development strategies and programmes, thus further limiting the role of the state in the economic sphere. The neo-liberal theoretical framework also generated a number of related initiatives which in essence sought to apply private sector, market-based economic principles to the analysis of governmental systems and processes. This approach is reflected in various forms of public choice theory initially advanced by James Buchanan and Gordon Tullock1. Similarly, the concept of “entrepreneurial government” popularised by Gaebler and Osborne 2 represented a conscious attempt to apply private sector principles to the functioning of the state in an effort to achieve increased efficiency in its overall operation. Finally, new public management theories applied to public sector reform follow in this tradition. While the underlying principles of neo-liberalism continue to inform contemporary approaches to governance, a number of arguments have recently been advanced in support of a proactive role for the state in support of development objectives. In this regard, the 1997 World Development Report by the World Bank identified the importance of effective governance defined in terms of increased administrative efficiency in support of overall development goals. More recently, Joseph Stiglitz3, the well known Nobel Laureate in Economics, has pointed to the shortcomings of an unconditional reliance of market forces as a strategy for addressing the development problems faced by the developing countries, given the comparatively underdeveloped nature of the productive structures in these countries and the significant discontinuities in information flows within these economies. He therefore identified the need for a more active role for government with a view to ensuring more effective policy outcomes and also in guaranteeing social equity. Reliance on the private sector and the unerring logic of the market has also been shaken by the financial scandals surrounding the collapse of major corporate enterprises in the US such as Enron, World Com and Arthur Anderson, to name but a few, and has in fact led to renewed calls in some quarters for the reimposition of suitable regulatory controls aimed at limiting corporate excesses in the future. Against the background of this ongoing debate on the requirements for good governance, a number of specific issues at the national, regional and global level continue to preoccupy both academic analysts and policy makers, particularly in the context of the phenomenon of globalisation which has impinged on the exercise of national sovereignty and has further limited the capacity of the state.

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At the national level, a number of countries in the Caribbean region have experienced varying degrees of political crisis deriving in part from deficiencies in the functioning of the system of governance in these countries. Indeed there is an ongoing debate on the most appropriate constitutional arrangements to be put in place and, in particular, on the merits of consociational models of governance compared to the majoritarian ethic of the Westminster model based on the principle of ‘winner takes all’. Another issue which has attracted attention in the quest to improve national governance structures is the need to empower local communities through the increased devolution of central government functions to local authorities and community based organisations. A number of initiatives have been taken in this area in the form of public sector improvement programmes being carried out by some governments in the region but additional efforts are needed in order to arrive at an optimal level of devolution of central government functions. Similarly, in some countries the private sector and other elements of civil society have become active participants in the public debate on governance. Indeed, the private sector and civil society, separately or together, have in some cases played a leading role in brokering a dialogue between the government and the opposition aimed at solving fundamental political differences which threatened social stability. The fact that several decades after the formal grant of independence, some countries are still perceived as being trapped in a semi-colonial constitutional order in which allegiance is sworn to an external sovereign has also generated increasing debate regarding the need for such countries to repatriate their sovereignty by way of constitutional reform which would seek, both symbolically and substantively, to locate sovereignty ultimately in the people of the countries of the region. It is noteworthy that in some countries, the previous practice of swearing allegiance to the British sovereign has recently been changed by taking the oath of allegiance to the constitution. There is also growing consensus that the political culture of the region should be based on greater inclusiveness by involving opposition parties more meaningfully in the governance process at the parliamentary as well as at other levels. In most countries in the region, it is conventional for the opposition party to chair the Public Accounts Committee (PAC) of parliament which provides oversight of government expenditures. In order to achieve greater inclusiveness in the governance process, consideration could be given to assigning, where appropriate, the chairmanship of other key parliamentary committees to members of the opposition and to increasing their participation on the Boards of public sector agencies. At the regional level, the identification of an appropriate structure of governance in the context of regional integration arrangements presents a significant challenge, given the need to reconcile national sovereignty with

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xiii supranational arrangements established at the regional level. In recent years, there has been a proliferation of regional institutional structures at various levels of decision-making of the Community which would require significant rationalisation in order to establish an effective system of regional governance. This is likely to become even more urgent with the proposed establishment of additional regional institutions that will be required as part of the Caribbean Single Market and Economy (CSME). At the international level there is an ongoing preoccupation with both the political and economic aspects of global governance. At the political level, the various organs of the United Nations have been a special focus of attention and have in fact been subject to an ongoing process of reform designed to improve the overall effectiveness of the organisation. However, some issues have eluded consensus. In this context, a number of proposals have been advanced for the restructuring of the UN Security Council, including proposals for the creation of additional permanent members of the Council based on equitable geographical representation, particularly in respect of the developing countries, and the abolition of the veto power exercised by the so-called ‘Big Five’ countries, namely, the USA, UK, France, Russia and China, which many see as anachronistic and inconsistent with contemporary realities. But there is little prospect of an early resolution of the issue. At the economic level, proposals have also been advanced for the creation of an Economic Security Council as a central policy making body in respect of global economic issues which would give overall direction to development initiatives pursued at the international level. Moreover, based on the perceived inadequacy of the policies advanced by the international financial institutions, most notably the IMF and the World Bank, there has been an insistent demand on the part of the developing countries for the creation of a new international financial architecture which would allow greater participation of these countries in the decision-making process which, in the case of the IMF and the WorldBank, is determined by a system of weighted voting based on the quota allocations of individual member countries. However, not much progress has been made on this point. It should be noted of course, that within recent years, the prospects for an effective system of global governance have been significantly complicated by the challenge to multilateralism posed by the growing disposition towards unilateralism by the US as the sole surviving superpower exercising hegemonic dominance in the international system. This tendency has been accentuated by the recent declaration of the ‘war on terrorism’ in the wake of the September 11, 2001 attacks on the US. While focused on the perceived terrorist threat, the ‘war on terrorism’ has become inextricably linked to broader geo-political and geostrategic concerns which focus on the control of oil resources in the Gulf, Iraq and the Caspian Sea — areas which are perceived to be of strategic importance

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to the US and other countries in the West. Moreover, the foreign policy doctrines which are being shaped by these considerations are likely to exercise a determinant influence on the exercise of power in the international system and therefore on the overall conception of global governance. Many of the issues discussed above are dealt with in one way or another in this volume. It would be useful therefore to highlight some of the main issues raised by the various contributors. In Part 1 of the book which focuses on overarching perspectives on governance, Prime Minister Ralph Gonsalves and Sir Shridath Ramphal present broad overviews of the governance challenge at the national and global level, respectively. Prime Minister Gonsalves asserts that the impact of globalisation has had a significant impact on governance by limiting the capacity of governments to make vital decisions on critical issues in the political economy. He laments the fact nevertheless that an ‘insufficiency of virtue’ in Caribbean political culture and ‘laziness of thought’ on the part of many intellectuals and policy makers, coupled with what he refers to as a condition of ‘learned helplessness’ which have stifled creative thought and given way to a sterile pessimism, have undermined the creation of a durable system of governance. He believes that the formula for reforming governance must be based on the strengthening of the fundamental rights and freedoms of the individual; the deepening and decentralisation of political democracy, including enhanced popular participation in government; making government more honest; and the consolidation and extension of the independence and quality of the judiciary and related institutions. He also argues that a radically improved system of governance requires, among other things, an abandonment of statist or commandist approaches and an embrace of people-centred communitarian strategies lodged within the realities of a Caribbean civilisation. Moreover, he affirms that the quest for good governance in the Caribbean demands a virtuous people who live up to their wider social and political responsibilities and do not merely focus on individual entitlements. Shridath Ramphal also sees globalisation as the central issue defining current global realities. He believes however that, bearing in mind that, globalisation involves enlarged opportunities as well as heightened dangers, it should be accompanied by appropriate global governance structures, suitably animated by a commitment to multilateralism. He fears, however, that global governance, as a necessary complement to globalisation, is being relegated to a secondary position. Moreover, while the September 11, 2001 event was undoubtedly tragic in its impact, he expresses concern that it has provided an opportunity for the assertion of a new imperialism with ‘plumes of virtue and trumpets of righteousness’. For this reason, he laments the fact that in the face of the dangers inherent in a renewed unilateralism, the rest of the world considers silence the path of prudence. Yet he believes that the small countries of the Caribbean must

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xv not become so overwhelmed by their small size as to underestimate their capacity to become engaged in the debate on important global issues since it is in the global arena that the ultimate destiny of humanity will be determined. In Part 2, Hilbourne Watson, Jessica Byron, Maurice Odle and Taimoon Stewart deal with various aspects of global governance. Watson challenges the assumptions of neo-liberalism and, in particular, liberal globalisation which, in his view, has distorted our understanding of the true nature of the change taking place in the international system. He also argues that the neo-liberal framework which underpins the current system rationalises the subjugation of social interests to market determined individualist impulses. Moreover, a false dichotomy is constructed between market rationality and state irrationality and therefore economic crises are attributed to inappropriate government policies whereas capital is shielded from its historically contradictory nature and processes. The conception of governance in the current global system is therefore based on the legitimisation of the autocracy of corporate capital and an ascendant US militarism. In Watson’s view, these developments have significantly altered the geopolities of international relations in which there is also a tendency to equate non-white societies to a fictive state of nature which suggests that the post colonial state in the developing world is ill-equipped to embrace the culture of national civil laws. Watson argues therefore that terrorism is inseparable from the contradiction associated with neo-liberalism and mercantilist imperialism, given the dialectical contestations which exist within the system. He also asserts that global instability and US militarism have become the most prominent features of the neo-liberal order. For her part, Jessica Byron highlights the main theoretical developments that have occurred in international relations theory in recent years and describes their implications for governance processes at the national, regional and global level. She notes that since the September 11, 2001, event, the major powers, most notably the US, have again embraced a realist paradigm of international relations in which security, alliance concerns and the use of military power have taken precedence. In addition, she observes that the world is increasingly characterised by the potential for international conflict in the terms depicted in Huntington’s thesis regarding the clash of civilisations. Byron believes therefore that it is in the interest of small countries to defend the multilateral system and to lobby constantly for a focus on human development issues. In this regard, she calls upon Caribbean intellectuals to lead the way in developing an epistemic community based on the vulnerabilities as well as the developmental possibilities of small size. In addressing the issue of global governance in the context of globalisation, Maurice Odle argues that global governance has tended to become more centralised, corrupt and arbitrary than accommodating to the interests of the disadvantaged; financial crises are more systemic in nature; and there is less

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coherence, and more contradiction, in tackling the problem of underdevelopment. He points to the disadvantages faced by the developing countries under the rules of the international trading system and the ease with which the developed countries flout these rules, as was evidenced by the imposition by the US of increased tariffs on imported steel and also the increase in farm subsidies at a time when these same countries advocate a regime of free trade and liberalisation. He also points to the unilateral action by the OECD countries, in the context of the Financial Action Task Force (FATF), in blacklisting offshore financial centres in the Caribbean for having inadequate anti-money laundering regimes, despite the endorsement by the World Bank in 1996 of the strategy of the Caribbean countries in providing incentives to offshore financial sources and other emerging service activities to compensate for the decline in their traditional commodity sectors. He concludes therefore that it is important for global governance to be better structured and become more cognisant of differences in levels of development and more flexible in order to provide greater scope for the adoption of safeguard measures to deal with adverse economic changes and for policy makers in the developing countries to be placed in less of a management straightjacket in seeking to tackle the challenges of development. Taimoon Stewart examines the role of transnational corporations in international trade. She argues that by forming cartels, the activities of many of these corporations have had a negative impact on the economies of the developing countries. She therefore calls for a strengthened international regime to deal with the issue. In Part 3, which deals with the theoretical aspects of governance, Clive Thomas, Anthony Payne, Neville Duncan, Selwyn Ryan, Barbara Bailey and Elsa Leo-Rhynie focus on different aspects of the overall theme. Thomas examines the relevance of the formulation of holistic policy frameworks in order to enable governments to design and implement social policies and programmes in a more systematic manner. In this context he identifies a typology of social welfare regimes based on an extrapolation from the experiences of both developed and developing countries. He also distinguishes between different approaches to welfare optimisation, namely, the social and risk based approach; the capability or resources approach; and the rights based approach which currently inform the formulation of social policy. He asserts however that the application of these approaches should be guided by an awareness of the institutional capacity and overall level of development of the countries concerned. He also cautions that governments would need to respond quickly to these new developments since failure to do so would result in a situation in which external agencies, researchers and scholars will set the agenda for changing and implementing development policy, thus leaving the countries of the region in a purely reactive mode.

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xvii In exploring governance in the context of globalisation, Payne states that at the beginning of the 21st century, governance has become much more complex than in the past. He argues nevertheless that despite the role of globalisation in reshaping the environment in which the state functions, the state remains critical in contemporary governance. He believes therefore that one of the key research agendas at the present time should be a comparative analysis of the way states are being reorganised in different parts of the world in response to the impact of globalisation. In this context he mentions, for example, the emergence of a number of innovations in the form of multilevel governance structures, privatised government systems as well as the phenomenon of bureaucratism. In examining the challenges of governance in small societies, Duncan asserts that majority acquiescence, apathy and distraction, and little interest group domination of the political and economic process, represent the greatest threat to Caribbean democracy. He believes therefore that creativity and inventiveness are required in order to construct a new legitimate order of state relations. More specifically, in order to be truly responsive, the government would need to create a style of governance based on cooperation, trust and mutual understanding among the various social partners that make up the polity. He also sees the need for good governance to be based on a conception of strong democracy which envisages a continually significant role for the state acting in partnership with a new governance structure incorporating business, labour and other non-state actors. He acknowledges, however, that the new conception of governance would need to be based on increased political education in order to ensure grassroot responsiveness and preparation for participation in the system. He believes that good governance and strong democratic processes are both essential in order to achieve the successes needed to sustain the region in the face of a rapidly changing world order. In his analysis of majoritarian and consociational models of governance as two paradigms in conflict, Ryan argues that despite the fact that Caribbean politics has traditionally been dominated by the notion of ‘winner takes all’, power sharing arrangements, inspired by the consociational model of governance, may be more suited to the needs and circumstances of multi-ethnic societies such as Guyana and Trinidad and Tobago. This proposition is clearly worthy of further exploration, given the increasing political instability being experienced in Guyana which is not unrelated to the ethnic divisions within the society. In their analysis of strategies for promoting gender equality in the governance process, Barbara Bailey and Elsa Leo-Rhynie identify the factors which explain low levels of participation by women in the decision-making process and propose mechanisms for bringing about gender parity. They point to the significant differences between the ‘male world’ characterised by power, competition and

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manipulation, and the ‘female world’ which is seen as kinder, more rational and more constructive. They conclude that in order to put an end to the disadvantages suffered by women, it will be necessary to effect a fundamental transformation of the social structure of Caribbean societies by targeting strongly entrenched attitudes, values and behaviour embodied in the existing patriarchal system of male domination. In Part 4, which deals with governance systems and structures, Roy Augier assesses the historical legacy of systems of governance in the Caribbean. He asserts that, despite the hiatus of Crown Colony government, contemporary political norms in the Caribbean have been influenced by the conventions and practices which were developed in the colonial polity of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. In the same section, Edwin Jones examines institutional design for subnational governance. He observes that since the 1970s the character and form of public service delivery have extended beyond provision through central government towards sub-national or decentralised systems, with a central objective of ‘empowering communities’. This reality, he states, is consistent with the new conception of governance which is premised on the slimming of the state, improving efficiency in the delivery of public service and a broadening of public-private working relationships. Jones cautions, however, that despite the increased emphasis on market-oriented institutional regimes, based on a managerialist ethic as a means of improving efficiency gains, community governance constructed on these premises could encourage the dominance by the private sector and market forces and thus defeat the objective of community empowerment. Jones goes on to argue that institutional design and restructuring for local governance must embody flexibility in structure and administrative procedures. He concludes by arguing that the quality of institutional design, the clarity with which institutional rules of the game are specified and the sense of equity that guides the distribution of the policy products of community institutions are fundamental to the realisation of the objectives of good governance. In a departure from conventional political analysis, Carolyn Cooper examines attitudes towards political participation in Jamaica reflected in popular music which generally conveys a negative view of the political process. She cautions that if we do not listen to the dissonant voices of the youth as they ‘cry down’ damnation on a perceived exploitative political system, we will forever alienate them from full participation in the affairs of the state or worse, we will create the conditions for the emergence of a group bent on the total destruction of the state. Finally, in this section Locksley Edmondson explores the phenomenon of the Caribbean Diaspora with particular reference to the diasporic community in the United States. In the elaboration of his analysis, Edmondson makes an

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xix important distinction between the residential or locational diaspora and the transactional diaspora defined in terms of the degree of interaction between the particular diaporic community and its homeland. He links the activities of the transactional diaspora directly to the transfer of remittances which account for a significant part of the foreign exchange earnings of many Caribbean countries. He warns however that the tight regulation of trans-boundary money transfer being imposed by the US in the context of its anti-terrorism policy could serve to limit such transfers in the future. In contrast to Orlando Patterson and Richard Bernal, who in the past have pointed to the potential for the Caribbean diaspora to exercise increased influence on US policy towards the Caribbean, Edmondson argues that the realisation of such a potential would depend not only on organisational initiatives but on other factors, most notably the extent of the coincidence between Caribbean interests and the geostrategic goals of US foreign policy. Finally, he suggests that the mobilisation of Caribbean homeland/ diasporic connections designed to increase transnational flows could be facilitated by granting observer status in CARICOM to selected organisations from various parts of the Caribbean diasporic community. All in all, Edmondson’s analysis makes an important contribution to our understanding of the Caribbean diasporic phenomenon and the possibilities for increasing its transactional links with the homeland. In Part 5 which deals with the broad theme of State, Economy and Society, Cedric Grant addresses the issue of civil society, governance and conflict resolution. He notes the increased involvement of civil society at the global as well as the national and regional level. He also examines the linkage between civil society and democracy. More particularly, he documents a number of interventions by civil society aimed at conflict resolution in various countries in the Caribbean, most notably in Guyana and St Vincent and the Grenadines. He notes that the role of civil society as a key player in the management and resolution of conflicts is often contained or grudgingly acknowledged. He argues nevertheless that the need for democratic renewal and inclusiveness makes it imperative for civil society to be brought willingly into the decision-making process. At the same time, he feels that the involvement of civil society groups in St Vincent and the Grenadines was constructive. He asserts moreover, that the initiatives taken by CARICOM to increase the regional role of civil society and to expand civic participation in member states are necessary for the deepening of the integration process. In his two papers contributed to this volume, Ralph Premdas focuses on ‘governance and ethnic conflict in Guyana’ and ‘institutional reform and adaptation in the context of ethnic divisions’, respectively. In the first paper, Premdas argues that the bipolar demographic structure which characterises the state system in Guyana has produced a particularly virulent context of communal relations which in turn imposes its own peculiarities in crisis management.

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Premdas rejects Marxist explanations of ethnic conflict in Guyana in terms of a struggle for national rewards. He argues instead that irrationality is born out of the systematic cultivation of communal antipathies and animosities. Given the negative steps taken in Guyana which propelled the society towards ethnic conflict, Premdas believes Guyana represents an “anti-model” since it tells more about what should not be done instead of what should be done. He believes however, that the proper understanding of the ethno-cultural character of the society is the key to ethnic conflict resolution and inter-communal coexistence. In the second paper, Premdas points to the special challenges faced by governments in promoting good governance in multi-ethnic societies. He believes that the experience of countries such as Fiji, Mauritius and South Africa suggests that the introduction of power sharing systems can provide a solution to political conflict in multi-ethnic societies. He concludes that the reform of institutions of governance in deeply divided states, including those marked by ethno-cultural features, needs to be crafted to produce consensus systems involving all communities in regulated power sharing and with a stake in upholding the system. In examining the threat posed by corruption to governance systems, Munroe notes that while corruption is prevalent at the level of the state, it is equally common in the private sector and therefore the latter should be placed under increased scrutiny. He points to the financial scandals which have engulfed major US corporations such as Enron and World Com in support of his argument. He believes that new legislation is specifically required to regulate party finance and election campaign funding which he sees as major sources of corruption. He also feels that effective civil society involvement in the anti-corruption fight is perhaps the single most important factor in advancing the war against corruption. In examining the challenge of governance in relation to Caribbean security, Ivelaw Griffith points to the multifaceted nature of the problems facing the region which include drugs, national economic crises, poverty and HIV/AIDS which have a major impact on long term socioeconomic stability in the region. He notes that in recognition of the seriousness of the threat posed to the sovereignty of the countries of the region by the persistence of these problems, the CARICOM leaders established a Task Force on Crime and Security in July 2001 which was assigned responsibility to monitor the situation and identify measures to deal with the threat. Griffith believes nevertheless that the security challenges facing the region derive from external as well as internal factors. He suggests therefore that the Caribbean would need to adopt creative strategies for coping with the various dimensions of the threat. Paul Sutton’s contribution focuses on public sector reform with special reference to the so-called “new public sector management” philosophy canvassed by the donor community and a number of international organisations

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xxi as a solution to the public sector management problems faced by the Caribbean countries. He argues that the effectiveness of the strategy has not been supported by empirical evidence. In fact he points to a number of shortcomings of the model in terms of a weakening of the capacity of the public service through the outsourcing of services; increased fragmentation; the potential for increased corruption through the erosion of ethical standards and the introduction of “private for profit” public services; and the creation of increased dependence on externally driven reform models. He concludes therefore that there is an urgent need to revisit the assumptions of current public sector reform programmes in order to determine their relevance to the needs of the region. In his contribution, Oliver Clarke examines ways to ensure that the regional media plays a more effective role in promoting transparency and accountability as well as preventing corruption in the political system. He argues that a free press is an essential partner in the struggle to achieve these objectives. He believes however, that existing libel laws are onerous since they impose excessive rewards for character defamation which, in some cases, according to Clarke, exceed the compensation for accidental death. He argues therefore that a balance must be struck between the protection of human rights and the freedom of the press to publish and to create an informed citizenry. Orville Taylor’s analysis focuses on the issue of governance, social protection and employment in the Caribbean. He points to the imbalance between the treatment of capital and labour in the context of the World Trade Organisation (WTO) since, while the free movement of the former is facilitated, significant restrictions are placed on the movement of the latter by the developed countries. He also sees the need for increased protection of the rights of labour and calls for increased collaboration at the regional level among governments, the Caribbean Congress of Labour (CCL) and the regional employers organisation in establishing a framework within which labour and management could cooperate. In dealing with the issue of governance, poverty reduction and sustainable development, Naresh Singh advances the proposition that the concept of sustainable livelihood is the key to linking governance and sustainable development. In support of his thesis, he asserts that the sustainable livelihood (SL) approach emphasises greater reliance on local resources and strategies to cope with social and economic issues. More specifically, he argues that governance for SL involves delegation of powers and responsibilities and the institutionalisation of political pluralism. He therefore sees the ultimate goal of a Caribbean governance agenda as the building and maintenance of strong economies with sustainable livelihoods for all. In addressing the issue of the media and governance, John Maxwell raises a number of important issues which deal with topics such as freedom of the press, the role of national governments, the activities of transnational corporations, the policies of the IMF and the World Bank and the impact of globalisation. He

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strongly defends the proposition that the press (which is a word he prefers to use instead of the media) is the defender of the rights of the people against an oppressive government and other institutions which seek to diminish their freedom. However, he does not support the call for freedom of the press to be entrenched in the constitution given the fact that the media, both in the Caribbean and the US, benefit from protection under the law and the fact that in some instances it has damaged the reputation of innocent individuals. He laments the fact that the media no longer defends the interest of the people since it has been co-opted by transnational corporations which now own news agencies and other media houses. The press is now no longer able to take a principled position on important issues of the day. He also challenges the policy prescriptions advanced by the IMF and the World Bank which he feels have contributed to the immiseration of large segments of the population of the developing world. Equally important, he is critical of globalisation which he sees as having a highly negative impact on the developing countries, despite propaganda to the contrary which projects it as a boon to the developing countries. In this context he points to the strategy endorsed by the OECD to limit democratic participation in international negotiating forums such as the WTO on the ground that efficiency in decision-making is sometimes superior to democracy. In Part 6 which focuses on regional governance, Havelock Brewster reviews the evolution of CARICOM from the establishment of the Common Market to the Caribbean Single Market and Economy (CSME). Brewster highlights the fact that the CSME is premised on the retention of maximum national sovereignty and that it is apparently intended to be achieved through a mode of discretionary intergovernmental cooperation. He feels, however, that this approach to the creation of the CSME is contradictory and probably explains the failure to achieve significant progress in respect of the programmes of legislative harmonisation. Extrapolating from the experience of the European Union, Brewster proposes a system whereby the Heads of Government would adopt “directives” linked to specific areas of legislative harmonisation which would immediately have the status of community law with a corresponding obligation to automatically translate them into national law. In addition, he proposes the adoption of the principles of “subsidiarity” and “proportionality” which would prevent unnecessary interventions at the community level in cases where national legislation could suffice. Brewster’s main conclusion is that reduced instrumentalities, based on the adoption of framework legislation, minimum standards and recognition of existing standards of member states, when appropriate, would circumvent the excessively slow and tortuous path of community legislation. Brewster also proposes a number of novel arrangements for the financing of the CARICOM Secretariat by transforming its budget, wholly or partially, to

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xxiii an “own resources” arrangement based on a marginal addition to the CET within predetermined limits. The national appropriations thereby released could then be applied in a transition period towards the new institutions to be created under the proposed CSME. He also believes that the funding of the Caribbean Court of Justice (CCJ) under this arrangement instead of the proposed CDB loanbased trust fund would increase the independence of the Court and reduce the opportunity cost of its funding. In a vein similar to Brewster’s contribution, Vaughan Lewis also presents an insightful analysis of the institutional arrangements of the regional integration movement in the Caribbean. Like Brewster, he argues that the missing institutional ingredient in CARICOM is the application of the principle of “indirect effect” of community decisions within national states. In other words, the decisions, regulations and legislation approved by the Conference of Heads of Governments of the Caribbean Community would automatically have the force of law in member states. He concedes, however, that the acceptance of such an arrangement would imply a limitation of national sovereignty. At another level, Lewis also calls for closer integration between the single market institutional arrangements of the Community secretariat and the Regional Negotiating Machinery (RNM) as its negotiating arm — under the overall authority of the heads of government. He notes, however, that within CARICOM there still exists differential approaches among the member states towards external trade and economic issues and there is therefore an urgent need for the harmonisation of priorities if an integrated institutional framework is to be effective. Lewis also identifies a number of institutional formulas underpinning the functioning of the Community Council and its relationship to the external environment. In this regard, he believes that the establishment of an appropriate Consultative Framework is a prerequisite for effective policy preparation, decision-making and execution. Lewis concludes his analysis by noting that by holding tightly to the notion of state sovereignty as opposed to notions of sovereignty-sharing which are now more prevalent in other regional groups, the Caribbean has hesitated to make institutional adjustments in the direction of the latter. Dwight Venner describes the arrangements within the Organisation of Eastern Caribbean States (OECS) which exhibits a high level of integration, as is reflected in the integration of monetary policy. In fact, Venner states that the workings of the OECS, which functions under the overall authority of the OECS Authority, very much resemble that of a Confederation in practice. He observes, however, that the reordering of the international system has had a significant impact on the small vulnerable states which make up the membership of the OECS and that this will require a substantial redefinition of the role and functions of the state in these countries. In this regard, he believes that public sector

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management is critical since it would have a tremendous impact on development and, by extension, on good governance. More generally, Venner argues that the introduction of new political forms will be necessary if good governance and development are to be realised in the OECS. In assessing the role of the Caribbean Court of Justice (CCJ), Duke Pollard makes a persuasive case for seeing the justice sector on a whole as a key contributor to development rather than as a mere consumer of resources. He observes, for example, that the most critical actions in national economic activity are creatures of the law, as in the case of judicial entities such as corporations and limited liability companies and firms. Similarly, he emphasises the importance of legal instruments in the functioning of financial markets. He also asserts that effectively functioning institutions in the justice sector operate in support of good governance. In the specific case of the CCJ, he argues that the Court is expected to play a critical role in ensuring legal certainty in the Community in the absence of which there is unlikely to be stability of expectations which investors require as a basis for predicting likely outcomes in respect of economic decisions. Moreover, the Court would have a compulsory and exclusive jurisdiction in respect of issues relating to the interpretation and application of the revised Treaty of Chaguaramas. As a result there would be uniformity of applicable norms within the community. Stephen Vasciannie, on the other hand, while conceding the need, in principle, for the Caribbean to establish its own final appellate court consistent with the notion of sovereignty, argues nevertheless that given the inconclusive nature of the debate on the subject in a number of member countries of the community, the issue should be the subject of a referendum in each member state. He states, in passing, that to the extent that the CCJ represents the introduction of one component of federation in regional affairs, it sought not to be introduced through the backdoor. More generally, Vasciannie questions the need for the appellate functions of the Court to be combined with the original jurisdiction of the same Court in respect of inter-state disputes that are within the framework of the CSME, given the important differences between municipal and international law. He also expresses the view that perhaps an important motive in seeking to terminate appeals to the UK Privy Council stems from the desire of a number of governments in the Caribbean to introduce the death penalty and their sense of frustration with the Privy Council which has shown an increasing disinclination to sanction capital punishment. He feels that, given the claim in the past that there was political interference in the Eastern Caribbean Court, the proposed Regional Judicial Services Commission should be constituted in a manner that insulates it from political interference and guarantees its judicial independence.

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xxv In his summation in Part 7 which focuses on the way forward, Rex Nettleford identifies the elements which must inform the process of governance in the future. He concedes the flawed workings of government in the past and the need therefore for statism to give way to a free enterprise system in which the private sector would play a larger role. However, he asserts that the establishment of market economies and globalisation of production do not imply a shift to a laissez-faire practice. In fact, he warns against the pitfalls of swinging indiscriminately with the pendulum from one extreme to the other. In his view, privatisation, deregulation and liberalisation are mere means to an end and not ends in themselves. He also believes that we must eschew the concentration of oligarchic power which occurs when capital accumulation and production are left unregulated in the hands of private monopolies. In terms of the specific requirements of governance, he posits that increased reliance on the market does not necessarily imply less government but different and better government in which the role of government is that of facilitating, regulating and monitoring the overall development process among other things. Nettleford therefore advocates an approach to governance based on the establishment of a creative partnership involving government, the private sector and civil society, in which the government will constitute the nexus of a social partnership where there is shared responsibility for establishing the goals of the society, for identifying the problems to be solved and for tackling them. It is evident from the forgoing, that the book contains a rich array of ideas on the broad issues of governance at the national, regional and global level. As such, it could serve as a useful reference for those who wish to understand the multifaceted nature of the governance challenge in the era of globalisation.

Notes 1

James Buchanan and Gordon Tullock, The Calculus of Consent: Logical Foundations of Constitutional Democracy, (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1962). For an expanded version of these ideas, see James Buchanan and Geoffrey Brennan, The Reason of Rules: Constitutional Political Economy, (Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press, 1985).

2

T. Gaeble and D. Osborne, Reinventing Government, (Addison-Wesley Publishing Co. USA, 1992).

3

Joseph Stiglitz, ‘Whither Reform?’ Towards a New Agenda for Latin America, Second Prebisch Lecture delivered at the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean in Santiago, Chile, August 26, 2002. See also his book entitled Globalisation and Its Discontents, (New York, London: W.W. Norton & Company, 2000).

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A C R O N Y M S

A N D

A B B R E V I A T I O N S

ACAEOL ACP ACP-EU ACS APEC ASEAN BITS CACCI CAIC CALS CANA CAPAM

Association of Caribbean American Elected Officials and Leaders Africa, Caribbean and Pacific Africa, Caribbean, Pacific–European Union Association of Caribbean States Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation Association of South East Asian Nations Bilateral Investment Treaties Caribbean American Chamber of Commerce and Industry Caribbean Association of Industry and Commerce Caribbean American Leadership Summit Caribbean News Agency Commonwealth Association for Public Administration and Management CAREC Caribbean Epidemiological Centre CARICAD Caribbean Centre for Development Administration CARICOM Caribbean Community CARIFORUM Caribbean Forum CARIFTA Caribbean Free Trade Agreement CBO Community Based Organisation CBTPA Caribbean Basin Trade Promotion Act CCJ Caribbean Court of Justice CCL Caribbean Congress of Labour CCP Caribbean Community Parliamentarians CCS Caribbean Community Secretariat CDB Caribbean Development Bank CDF Comprehensive Development Framework CEC Caribbean Employers Confederation CEFTA Central European Free Trade Area CEO Chief Executive Officer CGCED Caribbean Group for Cooperation in Economic Development CIDA Canadian International Development Agency COFAP Council on Finance and Planning CPDC Caribbean Policy Development Centre CSEC Caribbean Secondary Education Certificate CSME Caribbean Single Market and Economy

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xxvii CXC DFID DWSR ECLAC ECOSOC ECTEL EU FATF FDI FPTP FSF FTAA G7 G8 G77 GATS GMS GSP HDI IAPA ICC IDB IDT ILO IMF INS ITT LAC LRIDA M&A MAI MDG MERCOSUR MTNs NAFTA NAM NAR NCC NCOCA NDP NEPAD NMCM

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Caribbean Examinations Council Department for International Development Dollar Wall Street Regime Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean Economic and Social Council Eastern Caribbean Telecommunications Authority European Union Financial Action Task Force Foreign Direct Investment First Past the Post Financial Stability Forum Free Trade Area of the Americas Group of 7 Group of 8 Group of 77 General Agreement on Trade in Services Gender Management System Generalised System of Preference Human Development Index Inter-American Press Association International Criminal Court Inter-American Development Bank Industrial Disputes Tribunal International Labour Organisation International Monetary Fund Immigration and Naturalisation Service International Telegraph and Telecommunications Latin America and the Caribbean Labour Relations and Industrial Disputes Act Mergers and Acquisitions Multilateral Agreement on Investment Millennium Development Goals Mercado Común del Sur (Southern Cone Common Market) Multilateral Trade Negotiations North American Free Trade Area Non Aligned Movement National Alliance for Reconstruction National Consultative Council National Coalition on Caribbean Affairs National Democratic Party New Economic Programme for African Development National Monitoring and Community Mechanism

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NPE NPM OAS ODA ODD OECD OECS PAC PCEB PDP PNC PNM PR PROMALCO

New Political Economy New Public Management Organisation of American States Official Development Assistance Organisation in Defence of Democracy Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development Organisation of Eastern Caribbean States Public Accounts Committee Pay and Conditions of Employment Branch Partners in Development Programme People’s National Congress People’s National Movement Proportional Representation Programme for the Promotion of Management – Labour Cooperation Public Sector Modernisation Programme Private Sector Organisation of Jamaica Regional Economic Partnership Agreement Regional Negotiating Machinery Structural Adjustment Programme Sexual Division of Labour Special and Differential Treatment Sustainable Human Development Sustainable Human Development Framework Sistema de la Integración Centro Americano (Central American Integration System) Small Island Developing States Sistema de la Integración Economica Centro Americano (Central American Economic Integration System) Sustainable Livelihood Social Policy Framework Sustainable Tourism Zone of the Caribbean Sector Wide Approach Trinidad and Tobago Transnational Corporations Trade Related Investment Measures Trade Related Intellectual Property Rights Trinidad and Tobago Industrial Relations Act Union Bank of Switzerland United Kingdom United Nations United National Congress

PSMP PSOJ REPA RNM SAP SDOL SDT SHD SHDF SIC SIDS SIECA SL SPF STZC SWAP T&T TNCs TRIMS TRIPS TTIRA UBS UK UN UNC

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xxix UNCED UNCLOS UNDP UNICEF UWI WCC WDF WFA WIC WSSD WTO

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United Nations Conference on Environment and Development United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea United Nations Development Programme UN Children’s Fund University of the West Indies World Council of Churches Women’s Development Federation World Financial Authority West Indian Commission World Summit on Social Development World Trade Organisation

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New Conceptions of Governance in Small States

PART 1 THE GOVERNANCE CHALLENGE: OVERARCHING PERSPECTIVES

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New CoNCepTioNs of GoverNaNCe iN small sTaTes RALPH GONSALVES

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he accepted composite measures of size internationally, based essentially on a country’s economy, population and territorial area, define every single Commonwealth Caribbean state as “small”, though the “larger” ones occasionally misconceive themselves otherwise, particularly in their relations with the member-countries of the Organisation of Eastern Caribbean States (OECS). I shall avoid that error and at the same time focus my discussion on new conceptions of governance in the Commonwealth Caribbean, rather than in relation to small states, which from time immemorial has attracted scholarly attention ranging from Plato’s Republic and Aristotle’s reflections on the Greek polis to Lloyd Best’s myriad discourses in the New World Group and thereafter. The international community has finally caught on to the debate under the broad rubric of “good governance”, sometimes with a Caribbean twist. Thus, the immodest formulation “new” conceptions of governance in small states is, in reality, mainly a discourse about old conceptions applied to new and challenging circumstances. The modern manifestations of globalisation, particularly the quest for universal trade liberalisation and the revolution in information technology have altered significantly the context of governance in all countries but more especially in small states in two significant ways at least. First, the individual nation-state has a considerably diminished capacity to make vital decisions by itself on critical issues in the political economy. Even an imperial United States of America, stuffed with triumphalism, cannot flap its eagled wings in isolation of the globalised architecture of international economic and political relations, as Joseph Nye has recently reminded us in The Paradox of American Power, much less the many governments littered over the landscape and seascape of the Caribbean. The very notion of the nation-state and its political adornment, sovereignty, have undergone transformation, save and except in their narrow juridical senses.

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Secondly, as Francis Fukuyama has persuasively argued in The Great Disruption: Human Nature and the Reconstruction of Social Order, the revolution in information technology has the profound social and political effect of breaking down hierarchies. The easy availability of information, particularly for a region like the Caribbean which is so heavily exposed to radio, television, newspapers, telecommunications, including increasingly the internet, has shaken the old commandist or gubernatorial ideas and structures of governance. Indeed, the governance context makes it impossible to rule in the old commandist ways. One problem is that too many leaders have not yet recognised this. Thus, the recurring problematic of the clash between an “ancien regime” and the imperatives of a new order which has not yet come into being. The shell of the old governance is crushed but the bird within is still to break free; it still cannot sing King Alpha’s song in a different land. These two new elements arising from the “runaway world” of globalisation, to use Anthony Gidden’s telling phrase, are combined with other factors which have moulded the governance milieu of the Caribbean: the intense struggle for democracy and freedom nationally, regionally and internationally; the massive growth in civil society and people-centred non-governmental organisations; and the rapid increase in the influence on domestic politics of the Caribbean diaspora scattered overseas. The decline in the popular attractiveness of the commandist path of governance has not yet caused our Caribbean populations to become virtuous for political purposes. Indeed, the Caribbean people in their quest to cast off non-participatory and commandist forms of governance, even in their formal democratic clothing, are still themselves encumbered by ideas and structures of the distant and recent past. Contradictions, as always, abound in the extant condition. The absence of a sufficiency of virtue, and its consequences, in the political system have an intimate connection with governance but, surprisingly, these questions have received scant attention. The Mexican Nobel Prize winner, Octavio Paz, in his fascinating book Itinerary: An Intellectual Journey addresses these issues aptly in the following terms: The meaning of this word virtue has been argued over many times —, but whatever meaning one may choose, the word always denotes self-mastery. When virtue weakens and we are dominated by passions – nearly always by inferior ones like envy, vanity, avarice, lust, laziness – the republics die out. When we can no longer control our appetites we are ready to be dominated by someone else. The market has undermined all the ancient beliefs – many of them, it is true, were nefarious – but only one passion has replaced them: that of buying things and consuming this or that object. Our hedonism is

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not a philosophy of pleasure but an abdication of free will and would have scandalised equally both the gentle Epicures and the frantic Marquis de Sade. Hedonism is not the sin of modern democracies: it is the sin of conformism, the vulgarity of its passions, the uniformity of tastes, ideas, and convictions. An insufficiency of virtue, that is to say the lack of a sufficiency of individual and collective self-mastery, in the political system of Caribbean countries undermines the efficacy of any desirable reformed structures of governance. Newer and more democratic forms of governance cannot thrive in a milieu where the lowest common denominator of the people’s instincts or inferior passions drive public discourse or public policy. Those who are untutored or unlearned in a core of tried and tested values grounded in the mores and ennobling ethos, spirit and being of our Caribbean civilisation cannot be permitted to delineate the contours and prescribe the specifics of new and better “good governance” structures. These issues touch and concern the conduct of every critical segment of our populations. A cursory bundle of examples will identify the problem and will put us in quest of solutions. First, what we as a people do to preserve freedom of speech and freedom of the press and at the same time prevent or restrain that freedom from becoming a tool for intellectual, moral, and political trivialisation, emerges from the culture, and increasingly the cult, of imperialism, and the misuse or abuse of the mass media, especially the electronic media, by those who possess insufficiently developed or cultured minds. We always seem to borrow the worst features of the American mass market in every thing! Secondly, you may recall that I listed “laziness” as an inferior passion. I was discussing this issue with my government’s outstanding Director of Planning, and she queried whether “laziness” was a passion at all. But I am satisfied that “laziness” is a condition which far too many of our people in the Caribbean joyously embrace. This phenomenon cuts across class and occupational lines: from the manager who plays solitaire for hours on end on the computer to the public servant who sits mindlessly at his or her desk listening to the latest gibberish from some untutored talk-show host and, further, to the agricultural worker who files his cutlass for an hour and then works three hours for a full day’s pay. I am aware that the capitalist mode of production ensures the appropriation of the surplus value of the worker’s labour power, but in a democracy appropriate redistributive correctives are possible to redress this matter. In any event, the economic system possesses enough real possibilities and incentives to encourage more productivity, and less laziness. But laziness in the region has reached cultural proportions in too many people. Since the sustainability of a deeper democracy or better governance demands, among

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other things, an appropriate material base, how can democracy thrive fulsomely or at all amidst extensive laziness and low productivity and their companions, mendicancy and unstable patron-client relationships? A reform of the economy and attitudes to work and production are not only economic questions, they are political ones of the first order which intimately affect governance. Leaders, too, are not immune from an increasing lack of virtue. The colonial inheritance, the gubernatorial pattern of governance, and the commandist political system itself provide a fertile breeding ground for authoritarian personalities, which often cloak insecure souls, to wield political authority unwisely. Too often, their lack of a virtuous self-mastery cause them to ignore the treasured maxim that the greatest exercise of power is the restraint in the use of that power. They equally miss the parallel truism that he who fears the loss of power tends to lose it swiftly; he who fears not, and acts reasonably, invariably holds it longer. The insufficiency of virtue in politics, in the sense of a lack of self-mastery individually or collectively, is a major problem in all countries, but its deleterious impact is more greatly felt in small societies, such as the Caribbean, because of the high level of social contact between and among the people, and the people and their leaders. A greater virtue resident in the people and their leaders in the Caribbean will be akin to the balm of Gilead. The impending general elections in Jamaica, particularly in “garrison constituencies”, can no doubt use a heavy dose of political virtue among all concerned to stem violence. Small countries, too, particularly relatively undeveloped ones as in the Caribbean, can ill-afford the enthronement of pessimism which permeates the debate among elites and which dulls or blunts the sunny disposition of our people. Daily you get from the newspapers, radio and television stations, the citadels of academia, the seminars of business barons and prelates, a diet of pessimism which bemoans the intractability of the problems, which defines every problem or difficulty as a crisis and which studiously avoids the advocacy of possible or probable solutions. There is in these small Caribbean states a condition of “learned helplessness”, to adopt the telling phrase of the British author, Charles Leadbeater, in his recent book, Up the Down Escalator: Why the Global Pessimists are Wrong. Too many of our Caribbean people, especially leaders, have become so accustomed to the idea that they are helpless that they believe it, even when it is patently not true. Indeed, there is a veritable industry devoted to the idea that we are helpless; this industry, based invariably on distorted scholarship, or no scholarship whatsoever, even sets out on a path to make us all learn to be helpless. Permit me to adopt the reasoning of Leadbeater on the fundamental reasons for resisting the appeal of chronic pessimism:

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The first is that chronic pessimism can all too easily become self-fulfilling. The pessimists’ argument is not just that we should be realistic. The argument is not that we face an uncertain and risky future, for which we should be prepared. The pessimist argument is more apocalyptic than that: we are in the grip of irreversible, chronic forces that are leading to degeneration. Psychological studies define pessimism as a realistic sense in which people feel helpless and out of control, so much so that they cannot take action to avoid or correct mistakes. Indeed, pessimism in the Caribbean has become solidified as a cultural force but with political consequences or manifestations. A particular strand of evangelism, particularly some American tele-evangelism, has struck a responsive chord among the dispossessed people of our region and among some of the elites who have a predisposition towards “learned helplessness”. They preach the gospel, social or religious, of the necessity and desirability of escaping the uncontrollable world of the earthly city into a presumably safer realm of nostalgia for allegedly better days of yesteryear, into the haven of domesticity and spirituality. This doctrine of escapism is as politically debilitating as it is theologically wrong-headed. This holier-than-thou pessimism looks at phantom enemies and causes and gazes askance at the dialectical, contradictory realities. Often the enemy is within the very hypocrite who extols the cult of pessimism, pronounces blame indiscriminately, and inflames the very inferior passions which are a hindrance to redemption now and in the hereafter. The optimism inherent in a philosophy of change in the Caribbean has been put on the defensive, indeed on a retreat, since the triumph of Thatcherism and Reaganism in the ideational sphere. This defensiveness or retreat has become even more entrenched consequent upon the collapse of centrally-planned regimes in the former Soviet Union and Eastern Europe and the demise of the Grenadian and Nicaraguan revolutions in our hemisphere. Creative thought promoted by early pioneers like Sir Arthur Lewis and subsequently by the New World Group and others in the region has given way to a sterile empiricism on the one hand and an abstract quantitativeness on the other, neither of which bears any relationship to creative ideas or problem-solving in the real world. Indeed, it is interesting that neither political science nor economics in the region encompasses within their analyses or reflections the political or economic impact of the cult of pessimism or learned helplessness. Sociology gropes towards these subjects but has proved inadequate to the task. It is not surprising therefore that young people are turning, increasingly in the region and elsewhere, to the field of psychology to grapple with the extant Caribbean condition. Even so, too many studies in psychology suffer from the modern aversion in the social sciences and elsewhere to creative ideas. But without these ideas to aid in both

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diagnosis and prescription, the region will continue to languish. Laziness of thought, among other things, has prompted too many of our small region’s intellectuals and policy-makers to accept the Washington Consensus as received, unalterable wisdom. New and more ennobling structures of governance cannot thrive in a soil which is not irrigated by the creativity of thought. I have so far addressed the relevance in our small societies of globalisation, the insufficiency of virtue, laziness, the cult of pessimism and the lack of creative thought to the fashioning of new and better structures of governance in the Caribbean. I turn to a sixth issue of real concern to the good governance project, that of “time”. Because real flesh-and-blood human beings are finite and mortal, time frames all that we do or do not do. Interestingly, this grand philosophical concept has received little or no treatment in much of the traditional social sciences. Recently, “time-management” has become a subject of much interest to the broad field of management studies. Without “time-management”, especially in the Caribbean which is notoriously abusive of time, no work programme can be satisfactorily implemented, no system of governance can function properly. But “time-management”, functionally useful as it is, is still too narrowly conceived to address the issue which I have in mind, especially regarding governance. So, what is time? Time is a relationship between two persons, two things, two sets of phenomena. There can, of course, be multiple relationships. Time is not minutes, hours, days, weeks, months or years. These are measurements of time but are not themselves “time”. Time is a relationship. It is a relationship which emerges in one respect as history — the connection between past, present and future. Time, which is linked to the achievement or non-achievement of things by human beings, is therefore contextual and conditioned by a parallelogram of forces, historically and contemporarily. Time sets limits but it also facilitates the transformation of limitations into possibilities. Time may contribute to or hinder the process of knowing ourselves. Time over the years is history. How we see ourselves and our history aids in the theory and practice of our governance. Daniel Williams, a lawyer and poet, now deceased, from St Vincent and the Grenadines, guides us on this matter in his majestic poem “We are the Cenotaphs”: We all time, Yet only the future is ours To desecrate. The present is the past, And the past Our father’s mischief.

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So our obligation, individually and collectively, in our time is not to desecrate our future in constructing a genuinely much-improved structure of good governance in our Caribbean. How do we now bring together all that I have said so far to fashion a much better governance and in the process avoid the building of “shining governments of the damned”, to use Albert Camus’ gripping phrase. First, we assert that our nations are founded on the belief in the supremacy of God and the freedom and dignity of man. The first limb of this assertion is not to foster religious intolerance; far from it. It is simply to establish that neither philosophy nor social science theory has been able to fathom the evil in mankind. Our best understanding comes from mature religious reflection, not from religious dogma or a pessimistic evangelism. The practice of good governance cannot be properly engendered unless and until evil is better understood. Secondly, we must desire that our societies be so ordered as to express their recognition of the principles of democracy, free institutions, social justice and equality before the law. Thirdly, that we realise that the maintenance of human dignity presupposes safeguarding the right of privacy of family life, of property and the fostering of the pursuit of just economic rewards for labour. These are bedrock principles, first principles as it were, which can be found in practically every constitution of the Commonwealth Caribbean and which we ought not to abandon. Indeed, we should restate them with confidence as guiding ideas for a relevant social democracy applied through the prism of our Caribbean civilisation. The twin pillars of applied social democracy and our Caribbean civilisation are the essentials upon which good governance are to rest. They are the context for the moulding and realisation of virtue, that is, self-mastery, the fashioning of an appropriate sense of time and history, the building of a solidarity against laziness and other inferior passions, the promoting of a realistic optimism against the debilitating cancer of learned helplessness and pessimism and the energising of creative thought and action. What is this conception of “our Caribbean civilisation” upon which so much hangs? I begin by asserting that we in the Caribbean are an independent, authentic, unique civilisation occupying a particular seascape and landscape. This occupation, nay legitimate possession and titled control, is permanent; it goes beyond mere energy and will. This geographic space of permanence is peopled almost entirely by migrants – forced, indentured and voluntary – from Africa, Asia and Europe. We are a magnificent people, of which there is a nonwhite majority, who have solved the historically-troubling question of building relatively harmonious, tolerant, democratic societies out of disparate peoples drawn from different lands and cultures. There is no society like us in the

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Caribbean anywhere else in the world! Metaphorically, we are the songs of the Caribs, Arawaks and Amerindians; we are the rhythm of Africa; we are the melody of Europe; we are the chords of Asia; and we are the home-grown lyrics of the Caribbean. This conceptual formulation is an echo of the voice of the late Errol Walton Barrow, former prime minister of Barbados, who, in November 1986 at the Miami Conference on the Caribbean, addressed generally the matter of our Caribbean civilisation in the following way: It is dehumanising and false to view the Caribbean as potential American problems. We are peoples with an identity and a culture and a history – the Parliament of Barbados will be 350 years old in 1989. We don’t need lessons in democracy from anyone. However severe the economic difficulties facing the Caribbean, we are viable, functioning societies with the intellectual and institutional resources to understand and grapple with our problems. Collectively, we have the resource potential necessary for our continued development and, of course, we have a heritage of exquisite natural beauty entrusted to us. The Caribbean is, after all, a civilisation.

The acceptance of, and profound belief in, all this constitute the fundamental cornerstones which contribute to the engendering of confidence in ourselves to enhance, among other things, the quality of governance in this Caribbean. The design of new structures of governance in our region ought not to proceed on the basis that what exists facilitates bad governance. To be sure there are weaknesses and limitations in the extant political systems; and these have been detailed time and again by scholars and political practitioners. But the English-speaking Caribbean has been able to sustain a fair measure of liberal democracy through the following: the protection of fundamental rights and freedoms; representative government through a House of Representatives/House of Assembly in which the representatives have been elected through regular and periodic competitive elections by way of secret ballots cast by voters over the age of 18 years; the existence of certain mechanisms to ensure the conduct of elections which satisfy the basic “free and fair” criteria; a degree of separation of powers between the legislature, the executive, and the judiciary; an independent judiciary; an independent office of the Director of Public Prosecutions; and, to some extent, a politically impartial public service. Still, the limitations in the extant constitutional formulae are glaring. These include: an insufficiently strong enforcement of the protective provisions regarding individuals’ fundamental rights and freedoms; a first-past-the post electoral system which does not provide a sufficiently fair and democratic

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representation of voters’ preferences; the absence of any or any proper mechanisms for the voters to bring their elected representatives to account during their term in office; the highly inadequate and ineffective controls which the legislature exercises over the executive; the excessive powers of the prime minister in the constitutional and political appartuses; the lack of structures or mechanisms for the voters and non-governmental organisations to participate actively on an ongoing basis in the governance of the country; the unacceptable interference by the executive into the practical workings of the judiciary; and the absence or inadequacy of constitutional provisions governing or regulating the “integrity” of members of the legislature, senior public servants and senior police officers. For each of these weaknesses or limitations in the existing constitutional arrangements, there is a package of reasonable proposals for its correction. These reform ideas have been well canvassed throughout the region and do not require repetition here. Suffice it to say that these reformed “good governance” formulae rest on four foundation stones: the strengthening of the individuals’ fundamental rights and freedoms; the deepening and decentralisation of political democracy, including enhanced popular participation in government; making government much more honest, accountable and effective; and the consolidation and extension of the independence and quality of the judiciary and related institutions. Increasingly, there is a loss of confidence in the political system by the people of the region. This loss of confidence manifests itself in a number of ways, including increased voter apathy at general elections; a growing sense that the state does not possess the capacity to ameliorate, much less solve, the extant problems in the polity, economy and society; the mounting public disdain for politicians, many of whom are perceived as being corrupt and untrustworthy; a gnawing scepticism with which the electorate greets almost every electoral promise made by the political parties; and the conduct of politics through the activism of hardcore “tribal” supporters while a huge number of mature, tolerant citizens of democratic temper stands askance at the debilitating divisiveness. A new and radically improved system of governance requires therefore, among other things, an abandonment of statist or commandist approaches and an embrace of people-centred or communitarian strategies lodged within the realities of our Caribbean civilisation. Indeed, our civilisation resonates with community consciousness which is made more immediate by our small size. The very structures of local government systems and their linkages with the governmental apparatus at the centre can easily take advantage of our countries’ small size in both the design and operation of those reformed systems. The democratic state, with a reformed constitutional apparatus, and communities must work together in relative harmony so as to achieve improved

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governance and an enhanced quality of life for the people, individually and as a whole. But at least four requisites are to be put in place for this harmonious relationship between the democratic state and communities to be engendered and achieved. First, the communities must be viable in terms of a core of shared values – an ennobling stock of social capital – and appropriately organised community systems. Secondly, the state structures must be profoundly democratised at the centre and a decentralised local government system must be fashioned which eschews divisive local elections and provides for a proportionate indirect representation of the parties in Parliament and ample involvement of organised civil society in the communities. Thirdly, an appropriate conceptual and functional demarcation should be drawn up to efficaciously manage the relationship between the reformed, democratic state and the viable communities. And fourthly, a requisite for this new partnership between the democratic state and viable communities, and in the new circumstances of our modern globalised life, is a new, different kind of leadership. This leadership must not only be possessed of an array of skills and an ability to inspire but it must be able to draw out – not merely instil – of the people that which is good, noble and virtuous in them and evince the goodness, nobility and virtue which the people sometimes do not know they possess. There is one additional issue to consider: Small size as a possible break on good governance. I have stressed heretofore the potential of small size to enhance democratic governance. But listen to the late Sir Arthur Lewis in his Agony of the Eight written in 1965: The maintenance of good government requires a federal structure. In a small island . . .dominated by a single party, it is very difficult to prevent political abuse. Everybody depends on the government for something, however small, so most are reluctant to offend it. The civil servants live in fear; the police avoid unpleasantness; the trade unions are tied to the party; the newspaper depends on government advertisements; and so on. This is true even if the political leaders are absolutely honest. In cases where they are also corrupt, and playing with the public funds, the situation becomes intolerable. Arguably, then, small size possesses elements which can impede or promote good governance. But the contradictions are not irreconcilable: One can strengthen democracy through appropriate national and community initiatives, on the one hand, and through a deeper political union regionally, on the other. Small size can be manipulated for good or ill depending on the governance structures which are fashioned and the context in which those structures operate. I conclude by reaffirming that good governance in the Caribbean demands

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a virtuous people who live up to their responsibilities and do not merely focus on their individual entitlements. The quest for good governance at one and the same time involves an effort to create a “social individual” of the highest quality whose obligation, singly and in conjunction with others, is to assist in the further development and ennoblement of our Caribbean civilisation.

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C H A P T E R

T W O

GoverNaNCe aNd The New imperium SHRIDATH RAMPHAL

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et me start, Mr Chairman, by apologising for my absence last evening at the Opening of the Conference. The Vice Chancellor has, I believe, explained how the imperatives of the closing stages of the Belize-Guatemala Facilitation Process under the auspices of the OAS in Washington made that absence unavoidable. I thank you all for your understanding. At 4 o’clock yesterday morning that process, in which I was the facilitator for Belize, reached its fulfilment: the resolution of the over a century and a half controversy about Belize’s borders with Guatemala – a controversy that once threatened Belize’s independence itself. The details of the settlement are embargoed for a few weeks while some technical annexures are being finalised; but yesterday morning in Washington the OAS secretary general received from the facilitators our work in fulfilment of our mandate – the resolution of the territorial dispute. It was a historic moment for peaceful conflict resolution in the hemisphere. It was a moment of monumental significance for our CARICOM member state, Belize. In allowing me to complete my role in it, the university, and this conference, shared in that fulfilment. We are meeting in this 2002 Mona Academic Conference committed to exploring ‘the governance challenge’. The segment of that challenge that is the focus of my remarks is the global dimension – the challenge of global governance. It is a dimension with many differences; not just the spatial one. Yet despite these differences, it is not wholly independent of the other challenges of governance at the national and regional levels and, in some important respects, it both impacts on them and is in turn impacted by them. As most of you know, I was co-chairman of the International Commission on Global Governance, a chairmanship I shared with the former prime minister of Sweden, Ingvar Carlsson, the Social Democratic leader who succeeded Olof Palme when he was so brutally assassinated in Stockholm – and who carried with him into the commission Sweden’s and Palme’s passionate commitment to internationalism.

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One of the first discussions we had in the commission (and this, remember, was in the early 90s) was about the epithet ‘global governance’ itself as used in the name of the commission. There were many colleagues who had misgivings; they had misgivings about the meaning of governance, and even greater misgivings about the intimations of global governance. Did governance imply “government”, or “regulation” and whether it did or not what did global governance imply? Were we postulating the “supra national global state”? Were we promulgating “world government”? Were we proclaiming ourselves a chapter of the World Federalist Movement? The questions were predictable and valid, and at an early stage in our report we made it clear that by global governance we were not implying global government. This is a conceptual delineation I repeat here. I believe the commission was right in not giving governance that further reach and it was interesting how, from that moment of early questioning in 1992, members of the commission came to acknowledge unanimously that global governance was the right concept, and were to go on to give the commission’s report its title “Our Global Neighbourhood”. Indeed, by the time the commission’s report was released in 1995, “global governance” had passed into contemporary usage – so quickly had the world adjusted to the new era that was dawning: an era in which the nation-state would not cease to be a basic organising principle of our planetary existence but would just as surely lose some of its centrality. It was a time of profound, if still interstitial, change. In his 1985 Wiles Lectures, Nations and Nationalism Since 1780, the eminent historian Eric Hobsbawm caught the flavour of this incipient change when he envisaged the way future historians would write the history of the late 20th and early 21st centuries: . . . it will inevitably have to be written [he said] as the history of a world which can no longer be contained within the limits of “nations” and “nationstates” as these used to be defined, either politically, or economically, or culturally, or even linguistically. It will see “nation-states” and “nations” or ethnic/linguistic groups primarily as retreating before, resisting, adapting to, being absorbed or dislocated by, the new supranational restructuring of the globe. Nations and nationalism will be present in this history, but in subordinate, and often rather minor roles. . . It is not impossible that nationalism will decline with the decline of the nation-state, without which English or Irish or Jewish, or a combination of all these, is only one way in which people describe their identity among the many others which they use for this purpose, as occasion demands. It would be absurd to claim that this day is already near. However, I hope it can at least be envisaged.

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The commission did envisage that day and, a decade after Hobsbawm’s lecture, envisaged it as being at hand. By 1995, the commission saw the world not so much as an aggregation of nation-states, but as a global neighbourhood of people. In that global neighbourhood, while we were not talking about a need for world government, we were asserting the compelling need of states to work together effectively and in ever more areas – with a deeper commitment to consensus, less preoccupation with power (political, economic or simply voting power). The commission was talking about global governance – governance on a global level. One does not have to go back to the ancient philosophers and visionaries to validate this perception, although there were many over the centuries who shared it. Writing four centuries ago in protest at the narrow nationalisms of 17th century Europe with its pervasive sense of separateness and division, John Donne counselled memorably that “no man is an island entire of himself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the maine”. Today that ‘maine’ is our planet, and how much a part of the maine we are is beyond contention when we reflect that in today’s world cooperation on a global basis is indispensable on innumerable critical fronts. It is indispensable if we want to maintain international peace and order, expand economic activity, tackle pollution, check global warming, combat pandemic disease, curb the spread of weapons, prevent deserts growing, preserve genetic diversity, save species from extinction, deter terrorists, ward off famine, defeat economic recession, share scarce resources, defeat the culture of narcotics. None of this, not any one, can we do alone; we can only achieve success by working together consensually, by acting multilaterally using the tools of global governance . Globalisation in its economic connotation is a central element, perhaps the central element, of the world’s new realities; and globalisation, involving as it does, both enlarged opportunities and heightened dangers, demands complementary global governance arrangements. The essential management of interdependencies and global risks cannot be rooted in yesterday’s concepts of a hegemonic world order. There must be effective multilateralism, more shared responsibilities, less paranoia about sovereignty, more genuine acceptance of the idea of global society. In short, globalisation must not run ahead of global governance or it will become like wild horses not harnessed to a chariot of human good. The last Human Development Report for the 20th century made exactly this point when it said, looking to 2000 and beyond: The challenge of globalisation in the new century is not to stop the expansion of global markets. The challenge is to find the rules and institutions for stronger governance — local, national, regional and global — to preserve the advantages of global markets and competition, but also to provide enough

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space for human, community and environmental resources to ensure that globalisation works for people not just for profits. Globalisation with: Ethics ... Equity ... Inclusion...Stabilisation for Human Security.... for Sustainability ....for Development. In short, globalisation leavened, humanised, managed to enhance its potential for human betterment and to curb its propensity for human injury. But there are resistances – especially from the strong whose instinct is to take from globalisation what it offers in enhancement of their power, but deny its potential for enhancement of the power of others. Globalisation is still only minimally reflected in the structure of international relations; it does not yet inform the exercise of conventional power. Global governance, which should be the handmaiden of globalisation, is being relegated to its periphery. Even during the years that the commission on Global Governance was working, the imperatives of effective global governance were being underlined by such events as the Gulf War, ethnic cleansing in the Balkans, brutality in Somalia and genocide in Rwanda. And there was deepening disquiet over the actions, and in some cases inaction, of governments and of the United Nations. Instead of coming together around a common vision of the way forward, the world seemed in danger of losing its way. And, of course, matters have grown steadily worse. In 1995, the Commission on Global Governance urged the international community to mark the 50th anniversary of the United Nations by beginning a determined process of rethinking and reform. We made recommendations for promoting security in its widest sense, including the security of people and of the planet – including reform of the Security Council and enlargement of its powers. We made recommendations for managing economic interdependence through an Economic Security Council and a start with “global taxation”. And we called for reforming the United Nations in other ways so that it would offer a larger role to people through the organisations of international civil society. We addressed the need for extending on the global stage the rule of law that has been so great a civilising influence in national societies. As important as anything else that we urged, the commission drew attention to the world’s need for enlightened leadership that can inspire people to acknowledge their responsibilities to each other and to future generations: leadership that upholds the values we all need if we are to live together as neighbours and preserve the global neighbourhood for those who follow us. But the 21st century has not dawned well for global governance. It has not been a good dawn for humanity. Instead of going forward, for example, to a new era of security that responds to law and collective will and common responsibility, we are going backwards to the spirit and methods of the sheriff’s posse dressed up to masquerade as global action. There should be no question of which way we go. But the right way requires the assertion of the values of

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internationalism, the primacy of the rule of law worldwide and institutional reforms that secure and sustain them. How to make life in the 21st century more democratic, more secure, and more sustainable has become the foremost challenge of this generation and, of course, it should not need emphasising – but, alas, it does – that our vision must be of the lives of all the world’s people. Just after September 11 2001, just under a year ago, I wrote Caribbean Heads of Government in my office as chief negotiator, commenting on the terrible events of that day and I ventured to say this: It is trite to say that the world changed on September 11, but it may not have changed as much as that assertion implies. It may just have got worse. Yet for Caribbean people and governments, and for many others around the world, particularly the developing world, that worsening of the global environment could make a massive difference to our present condition and future prospects. Fidel Castro’s condemnation of the September 11 attacks was both forthright and prescient. He condemned the attacks for being not only “a huge injustice and a great crime” but also “an enormous error”. In my reflections with Caribbean leaders, I suggested that: Our strategic goal must be to minimise immediate deterioration in our situation and to optimise the prospects of a long-term improvement in the global order – as it bears on us. In short, to limit the negative implications for us of that “enormous error”. As events have developed these past 11 months, that strategic goal I suggested for the Caribbean has emerged as the strategic goal towards which all the world must reach. As it does so, it is important that we keep the dangers in historical perspective. They are not wholly new. The ambition for world domination has ever been a global curse. A century ago, Lord Curzon as viceroy of India had no compunction in saying “to me, I confess that [countries] are pieces of chessboard upon which is being played out a great game for the domination of the world”. And before, Pax Britannica was Pax Romana. Nor did Pax Americana begin on September 11 2001. More than 50 years ago George Kennan, the political analyst, adviser and diplomat, the man in charge of long-range planning for the American State Department in the years of the Cold War, asserted American supremacism in these terms: We have 50 percent of the world’s wealth but only 6.3 percent of its population. In this situation, our real job in the coming period . . . is to maintain this position of disparity. To do so, we have to dispense with all

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sentimentality . . . we should cease thinking about human rights, the raising of living standards and democratisation. George Kennan is, I believe, still alive. He must be pleased with the maintenance, indeed the enlargement, of America’s position of disparity with the consummation of his vision of world domination and the overt abandonment of sentimentality in the drive to achieve it. So September 11 is not the fons et origo of present dangers. It has provided a timely opportunity for a new imperialism to emerge with plumes of virtue and trumpets of righteousness. That “enormous mistake” has offered opportunities only dreamed of by the globally regressive forces of the “right”. But victory may yet elude them. World domination in the 21st century is at odds with too much that is also a part of the 21st century. It is too large a contradiction of the reality of global oneness and the evolution of human values of respect for life, for liberty, for justice and equity, for mutual respect, for caring and integrity. It is too much the antithesis of democracy within and between nations. It is too flagrant a derogation from the old but still sturdy norms of sovereignty and selfdetermination. It struts the global stage with arrogance; but it is absurdly old fashioned. But old fashions do return. Writing in January of this year in the Korea Times Henry Kissinger asserted: The issue is not whether Iraq was involved in the terrorist attack on the United States, though no doubt there was some intelligence contact between Iraqi intelligence and one of the chief plotters. The challenge of Iraq is essentially geopolitical. He was affirming (despite hype of a different kind now; weapons inspectors etc.) that Iraq is seen in his Washington essentially as a problem for America’s political objectives in the Middle East – and that is justification enough for bombing its government into subjugation and its people at whatever level of inhumanity it takes to achieve that aim. And that was eight months ago. The American assertion today is that it acknowledges no constraint on any action it chooses to take in whatever it asserts to be the interest of America. And indeed it has not failed to be noticed (see London Guardian of August 22, 2002) that each war fought by the United States since the Gulf War has crossed a new line, with a less secure legal and international foundation than the one which preceded it. If America pursues its present course of war on Iraq, it will set a disastrous global precedent for the principle of unilateral pre-emptive attack – one that is likely to prove a watershed not only in the

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Middle East but in the entire relationship between the United States and the rest of the world. Of course, if every nation made a similar assertion to the Americans, our world would be in chaos. But America will contend that no other nation has the capacity or should have the right to act as it chooses in its own interest. In other words, the much vaunted principles of democracy at the national level have no place on the global stage. Centuries of steady progress away from a feudal world – progress, deepened we believed in enduring ways by the establishment in 1945 of the United Nations system – is being undone. In his recent book which he called The New Rulers of the World, the well known journalist and filmmaker, John Pilger, describes the world in which this philosophy is ascendant in these terms: In this world, unseen by most of us in the global north, a sophisticated system of plunder has forced more than ninety countries into “structural adjustment” programmes since the eighties, widening the divide between rich and poor as never before. This is known as “nation building” and “good governance” by the “quad” dominating the World Trade Organisation (the United States, Europe, Canada and Japan) and the Washington triumvirate (the World Bank, the IMF and the US Treasury) that controls even minute aspects of government policy in developing countries. In the West, we are trained to view other societies in terms of their usefulness or threat to “us” and to regard “cultural” differences as more important than the political and economic forces by which we judge ourselves. Those with unprecedented resources to understand this, including many who teach and research in the great universities, suppress their knowledge publicly; perhaps never before has there been such a silence. It is that silence that is perhaps the most worrying of all. Americans have been in the vanguard of the human struggle for freedom on many fronts but, remembering their own torment of McCarthyism, remain silent patriots. Europe, out of its bitter history, knows the dangers of unbridled nationalism and the need for systems of global governance that sustain a world order rooted in internationalism; but Europeans too remain silent sacrificing principle for what passes for practicality – including a share of the spoils. The largely powerless world beyond considers silence the path of prudence. At another time, such silence was appeasement and the price paid for it was global catastrophe. At what we believe is the height of the flowering of human genius, must we still repeat the mistakes of history? Meanwhile, the stage for the new imperium that has no place for

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multilaterialism, and hence for global governance, is being assembled in composite pieces. The progress we have been making slowly in manifesting, at the global level, a sense of caring for the planet and ourselves as its human inhabitants has been halted by the American withdrawal from the Kyoto Protocol. There is something grotesque in this posture of isolation; for the US is the biggest culprit in the poisonous emission of CO2 gases. The rest of the world, but especially the poorest countries, among them our own in the Caribbean, are left to pay the price of global warming while America continues its free ride on cheap oil which, of course, is central to the global mission of Pax Americana. Meanwhile, as if to shout from the global rooftops its philosophy of abjuring all things multilateral, the American president this week stayed away from Johannesburg where the world convened at the summit to try to advance the unfinished business of the Earth Summit at Rio ten years ago. On the eve of Johannesburg, the statistics were unworthy of our claim to civilisation. Nearly 3 billion people live on less than $2 a day and 1 billion have no access to drinking water. Those who have the least are the first to be deprived when resources are scarce and, at the current rate of use, the world’s water supply will run out in three decades. Again the world’s poor, reliant on agriculture and bereft of sanitation will suffer most and first. Had the Earth Summit tackled seriously the world’s global divisions and its pervasive inequalities, trade policy would have had centre stage. Poorer nations need greater market access, they simply cannot compete globally when rich countries subsidise production. This is especially true in agriculture where farmers alone in the West collect $335 billion a year in subsidies – about seven times the total amount poor nations receive in aid. In a publication on the eve of the Earth Summit, Action Aid under the headline “Cows are better off than half the world” made the following point: For half the world’s population, the brutal reality is this: you will be better off as a cow. The average European cow receives $2.20 a day from the taxpayer in subsidies and other aid. Meanwhile 2.8 billion people in developing countries around the world live on less than $2 a day. The facts of global inequality are truly staggering. The richest 25 million Americans have an income equal to that of almost 2 billion people while the assets of the world’s 3 richest men, even after the recent fall in the value of stock markets, is greater than the combined income of the world’s least developed countries – all 49 of them. So – would you rather be a cow? Only global governance offering effective management of global economic interdependencies can redress these gross inequities.

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By the same token, nothing became us more as an enlightened global community than the recent establishment of the International Criminal Court – once it was a truly international court. Here, our global community was employing the tools of global governance to ensure respect for human values by the rule of law worldwide. The ICC’s raison d’être is its universality. The United States has declined to bring itself within the jurisdiction of the court. The sheriff is to be above the law. And the US has gone further in threatening peacekeeping efforts around the world if American citizens are not placed above the law and made immune from the reach of the court. Both of these treaties had actually been signed by the Clinton administration. Its successor sought at first to introduce the concept of “de-signing” – a novelty and a nonsense in the evolution of international law. In the end, this was too much for the Europeans to swallow and the US ended up refusing to ratify the treaty and serving notice of withdrawal from the court even before it was established. So much from a country that prides itself with being a nation of laws not of men. To this noble condition the rest of the world must not even aspire. Why? Because in Pax Americana all men are not equal; such oneness is not a selfevident truth beyond the 5 per cent of the world’s people that are today Americans. To those other 95 per cent, different rules apply; for their lives are not valued in the same way. A hundred years ago, Tagore wrote perceptively of his world of the late 19th century in which “the few were more than the many”. Today he would have to write of their being more precious, more special, more privileged, more human, even, than the multitude of humanity. These distortions are peculiar to every imperialism and all who aspire to world dominion. In our own time, for the Nazis Aryans were the master race, for the Romans civis Romanus sum was the password that separated Romans from lesser mortals. A cult of superiority underpinned the British Empire. So it is with the American imperium. Such vainglorious conceits will not subsist. The times are simply out of joint. But this is not to deny that in the short-term perversity allied to power can be ruinous for all the world. None of these absurdities can be corrected, save through concerted global efforts and that means global governance; but not through the flawed institutions and systems that pass for global governance today: the WTO and the IMF being the most obvious candidates for reform. But of course above and beyond them is the United Nations itself which ought to be the control centre of our global effort for human survival – a centre more operational than the chamber for debate and filibuster that it all too often is. With the UN giving every indication of an incapacity to reform itself – shackled as it is by the veto of yesterday’s victors – the hope of reform every day seems less and less to rest with governments and more and more with the people: people within countries and people interacting in our larger country, the planet.

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Somehow we have to return to the imperatives of global governance. It may be through that global interaction of people that it will come. Let me read you the opening words of Our Global Neighbourhood. They were these: The collective power of people to shape the future is greater now than ever before, and the need to exercise it is more compelling. Mobilising that power to make life in the 21st century more democratic, more secure, and more sustainable is the foremost challenge of this generation. The world needs a new vision that can galvanise people everywhere to achieve higher levels of cooperation in areas of common concern and shared destiny. That vision, I believe, is the vision of global governance. One question remains: what can West Indians do – West Indians as governments, West Indians as people – in the face of these monumental challenges of global governance? First of all, of course, to recognise the limitations of our options and actions; but just as surely to be mindful of our possibilities and responsibilities. As a people, we are among the most literate and articulate in the developing world, and have been so for a long time now. We are a region of democratic societies that live by the rule of law, not flawlessly, but in fundamental ways. Our voice, when we speak with one voice, commands respect, if not always action, within the councils of the world community. Within the developing world, in the Group of 77, in the Non-Aligned Movement, in the ACP, we have earned influence. We must not be so overwhelmed by our smallness as to forget our capacities and simply disengage. Within our limitations, we must do what we can do. That includes standing tall for principle, being unequivocal about a global society governed by law and guided by a global civic ethic in which the rights of all, even the smallest, are respected and in which none is above the law. Being in the backyard of the United States – within the “single perimeter” or at least the “third frontier” will require courage in taking that stand. But we have not lacked courage before, whether it was with Britain in the struggle for freedom or with the Americans in our historic recognition of Cuba or more recently in arguing with the OECD in their many assaults on our interests. We must remember the greatness of the American nation and that in time it will return to more virtuous ways and stand once again on the side of internationalism. We must not then look back on this time as one in which we failed to be true to ourselves. And what of West Indian people? There are roles too beyond governments. West Indian civil society must be part of the wider movement of people worldwide who insist on a future that is more just, more secure, more sustainable. West Indians must be in the vanguard of the crusade of people everywhere for a fairer share in the bounty of the planet. What I am saying really is that we must not

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believe that the great struggle that is unfolding and will determine the nature of our global neighbourhood is one from which we can stand aside and simply be spectators. Civil society in its widest amplitude, including our universities, our private sectors, our trade unions, our religious communities, all have roles to play. It is not only the case (as we are urged constantly by the North) that we must think globally and act locally (that we must do) but we must do more in furtherance of global action. It is in the global theatre that the ultimate destiny of humanity will be acted out. Our part will be a small one, but many small players will shape the nature of the scene. We owe it to ourselves to be able to answer without shame to future generations when they ask what it was that we did when the fate of the world was in balance.

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Globalisation & The Caribbean

PART 2 GLOBAL GOVERNANCE

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Globalisation & The Caribbean

C H A P T E R

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t h r e e

GLOBALISATION AND THE CARIBBEAN IN THE AGE OF NEO-MERCANTILIST IMPERIALISM HILBOURNE WATSON

Introduction Historically, realist and liberal theories of international relations have shared a commitment to the idea of the self-interested individual. Traditional realism projected individual self-interestedness onto societies and states and the international system where they discovered anarchy and state’s interest defined in terms of power and tamed both with a rationalistic disposition which they yoked to organic sovereignty and the balance of power. Liberals remained faithful to individual and state self-interestedness and rationalistic economism, and stressed the role of order through international rules, institutions and organisations to mediate power. At the core, both theories have remained committed to the centrality of the national state with all its contradictions. They have been partial to global white supremacy (Eurocentrism) and, increasingly, they have converged along lines of methodology and are less divided in terms of how they see the world. The shift to neo-liberalism reveals this convergence to the point where it is useful to speak of a realist-liberal position on the key issues in contemporary international relations. It is on questions such as the role of the state in contemporary globalisation, the question of imperialism, the use of the power of the United States of America in the world, and world order that the convergence is most obvious. My main concern in this chapter is to provide a context for analysing the September 11, 2001 events within an alternative theoretical framework to liberalism and neo-liberalism in order to explain contemporary global change. To this end, I will discuss some of the problems with liberalism, discuss global governance within the context of the deployment of the financial, economic and military power of the United States (US), provide an alternative theory of globalisation to counteract liberal globalisation theory, connect contemporary war and crisis to neo-mercantilist imperialism and explore some of the

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implications for the contemporary Caribbean. I argue that liberal globalisation theory displaces imperialism and distorts the explanation of contemporary global change. Contemporary global restructuring via states, science and technology, industry, finance, markets, and military and geopolitical processes turns on the restructuring of imperialism. The crisis that grips Caribbean states and their societies is integral to the larger crisis of capital accumulation, with myriad implications for diverse interests in those societies. I locate the September 11 events within this broad context and I treat those events as an aspect of the broader shifts within the geopolitics of contemporary imperialism. At the core, international relations theory turns on questions and problems of world order where many questions about legitimacy, justice, rationality, ethics, and human rights abound. Such questions extend to issues of political economy as opposed to economics, which is dominated by neoclassical concerns. The idea that contemporary economic globalisation is an unprecedented development that marginalises and/or empties national states fails to account for major changes in the global political economy. It is an argument that favours the class and other interests of dominant states and corporate capital and diverts attention from contemporary imperialism. Another concern is that liberalism romanticises the scientific and technological revolution which is based on computers and the application of computer-based technology for the production of goods and services. Capitalism in the age of electronics is a very contradictory process that has not delivered what liberals and neo-liberals have asserted to be its most prominent achievements (Petras 2002). Global instability and US unilateralism and militarism have been among the most prominent features of neo-liberalism. In relation to capitalism and imperialism the term crisis refers to fundamental “turning points” around “discontinuities of history, … breaks in the path of development, ruptures in a pattern of movement, variations in the intensity of time” (Holloway 1995: 5-6). Crisis necessitates a restructuring of the productive base of the political economy and the broader material and subjective aspects of social life. Under capitalism, crisis inheres within the capital relation itself, though it unfolds in the capital accumulation process. A core cultural construct of liberal philosophy and political theory is that valuing freedom in the West is a peculiar contribution the West has made to its own development and that of the world. In reality, values and institutions like freedom, liberty, justice, and equality have been conditioned by protracted struggles that humans have waged against exploitation, oppression and other exclusions along lines of geographical origin, race, ethnicity, gender, and religion. Such oppressions and exclusions have included the genocidal removal of population groups from their lands along with other strategies that modern imperialism has employed to clear the earth for capital. Capitalism is the foundation upon which liberal conceptions and practices of liberty, freedom, justice and equality have been built, and capitalism is a system of production,

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exchange, and accumulation that necessitates one group to produce and alienate its own surplus labour to reproduce another group as the precondition of its own reproduction. Liberalism bases its commitment to universal humanism on this very foundation that necessitates the naturalisation of material, economic and social inequality. The construction of liberal institutions on foundations of inequality means that all forms of freedom, rights and justice within liberal capitalist societies are already prefigured and compromised by inequality and the myriad forms of exclusion and violence on which capitalism and the nationstate are based. Liberalism invents a self-interested individual with properties that refer to an “abstraction inherent in each single, isolated, individual” that approximates an “unencumbered self”, an idealised “antecedently individuated self” (Ramsay 1997: 24-27) who begins as a subject mired in alienation. Liberalism makes the historical institutions and social relations that humans create and in which they are embedded secondary and relatively passive means to the private ends of self-interested individuals. The subjugation of social interests to marketdetermined individualist impulses is based on the myth that the market and the “antecedently individuated self” have natural origins. Humans acquire individuals with human agency through a process of internalising the values and institutions of society but liberal philosophy and political theory make the individual in capitalist society prior to society, in effect subordinating the social aspirations of all individuals to market necessity (Marx 1968: 29; Marx 1973: 84, Castoriadis 1991). Liberalism lodges a false dichotomy between nature and culture and assigns to capitalism, markets and labour approximate values that derive from a pre-social human ontology. In the liberal schema markets become a natural amalgam of distillated individual strivings and labour is reduced to a technical entity that humans naturally alienate in their striving toward selfinterestedness. The effect is to separate labour from the social relations of capitalism and to disconnect it from any worthwhile relationship to its particular productive ontology under the political economy of capitalism. Thus the three categories of capital, labour and the market are separated from the social relations of which they are integral parts, humans become miraculously capitalistic by nature and the way is left open for the reification of categories, the banishment of social relations and the abolition of historical facts. In this scenario theory atrophies, liberal commonsensical pragmatism takes the high ground, a false dichotomy is imposed between market rationality and state irrationality, markets and capital are equated to autonomous technical forms, bad government policy is blamed for economic crisis and capital is shielded from its historical contradictory nature and processes. The liberal way of naturalising individual self-interestedness through competition and egotism does not only make it difficult to understand liberal democracy as a form of class power and class rule in the state and civil society,

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but it also obstructs our view of capitalism as a historically delimited system in which market anarchy is the “characteristic social form of capitalist modernity” (Rosenberg 1994). The anarchy that connects the liberal-realist project in international relations does not derive from any world without a superordinate governance system. The starting point for understanding the concept of anarchy in international relations is to see how the abstraction and separation of sovereignty from civil society and the resultant dichotomy this engenders between the domestic and international realms creates a false dichotomy between civil society and the international states system. The concept of anarchy requires the naturalisation of a fictive state of nature with special cultural artifacts assigned by the Christian myth of origins and replicated by modern liberal social contract theory (see Jahn 2001, Eder 1996). Anarchy is central to the fundamental capitalist process. The realist tendency to naturalise anarchy in international relations brackets imperialism, separates capitalism from its historical predatory character, equates the interests of capital with those of humanity, and normalises societal and global inequality.

Global Governance, Financial Terrorism, September 11th and Contemporary Imperialism Imperialism remains central within contemporary globalisation. John Pilger questions the idea of a “war on terrorism” on the grounds that the “‘coalition’ waging it consists of some of the leading terrorist states in the world – Algeria, Turkey, Russia, China, Indonesia – falling in with the United States”, which established the broad framework for international terrorism, including financial, monetary and other predatory forms that it manages in line with its national security imperatives. There is no doubt that emphasis on the war on terrorism and the “search for Osama bin Laden” obfuscates the real imperialist goal which is “the control, through vassals, of former Soviet Central Asia, a region rich in oil and minerals and of great strategic importance to competing powers, Russia and China”. This strategy is multifaceted with economic, commercial, financial, military and broader geopolitical dimensions. The record shows that by “February 2002, the United States had established permanent military bases in all the Central Asian republics, and in Afghanistan, whose post-Taliban government is American approved” (Pilger 2002: 104-105). By that time the US had made public its decision to build a pipeline through Afghanistan. The assertion that the September 11, 2001 attacks changed the world forever becomes plausible provided one understands that the attacks exposed the twin myths of United States exceptionalism and invincibility. Ideologically, the “war on terrorism” serves a number of ends such as restoring the myth of invincibility and exceptionalism, redefining the contours and spaces of repressive tolerance

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within the United States to suit post-Cold War and post-communist imperatives, and rendering the cultural norms of “neo-mercantilist” imperialist competition more palatable in the age of globalisation. More substantively, the September 11th attacks, much like the Persian Gulf War, the war against Yugoslavia, and the war against Afghanistan represent fortuitous developments that coincide with US plans to dominate the oil-rich Caspian Sea region, the neighbouring former Soviet Central Asian republics, and Iran and other countries. The military subjugation and occupation of Afghanistan opened a solid front for the United States to extend the reach of a much broader strategy of global domination. Modern imperialists described the discovery of oil as the “greatest prize” and, in 1945, the US Department of State referred to the Middle East oilfields as “a stupendous source of strategic power, and one of the greatest material prizes in world history” (Kolko and Kolko 1972: 242). The US subjugation and occupation of Afghanistan left US leaders gloating. Secretary of State Colin Powell stressed that “America will have a continuing interest and presence in Central Asia of a kind that we could not have dreamed of before [September 11]” and Vice-President Dick Cheney thinks the life of such a strategy will extend beyond “our lifetimes” (quoted in Pilger 2002: 105). The US aims to control Iraq to enhance the prospects for realising its designs in the region. An interesting feature of contemporary imperialism is that the dominant states like Germany and Britain acknowledge their relative marginalisation by towing the American line to gain a stronger global economic and financial foothold for their leading capitalist interests. Global aims and designs which the indecisive outcome of World War II prevented the US from pursuing have now come into relief and Washington is embarking on a “Faustian gamble” to subordinate the globe at all costs on the basis of a far wider military, economic and geopolitical strategy. The issue of global governance is part of a larger social, spatial process of global restructuring in science and technology, biotechnology, industry, production, transportation, geopolitics, military strategy, warfare technology and many other areas. The prospects for strengthening the social, political, economic and cultural dimensions and institutional basis of global governance are being conditioned by the imperatives of imperialism. The United States exercises leverage over most states and over key resources and through the medium of the United Nations Security Council, the World Bank, IMF, World Trade Organisation (WTO), the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), and Wall Street through the “Dollar-Wall Street Regime” (DWSR) (Gowan 1999, Petras 2002, Amin 1997). Whatever vision of global governance Washington might envisage is based on an ascendant American unilateralism (Holloway 2000: 361-381, see Ougaard 1999, Valtonen 1999). Liberal notions of cosmopolitan and universal norms frame the dominant

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discourse of global governance. Liberalism promotes an idea of cosmopolitanism that fosters cooperation via fragmentation. It abstracts sovereignty from civil society by privileging the primacy of the rights of nation-states over civil society, dividing the world along lines of developed and underdeveloped, setting rules and agenda for global governance mainly in the north, equating universalistic strategies with northern sanctioned initiatives and using multilateral institutions to leverage smaller and weaker states by keeping them subordinated to imperialist priorities. The point is not to deny agency to small and weak states, as there are ruling interests within those states that benefit from imperialism in terms of broad production relations, direct foreign investment strategies and outlays, technical assistance, and military and other connections. The strong attachment which liberals display for constitutional processes in international relations is never strong enough to dislodge or deflate the individualist impulses that frame all liberal notions about individuals, societies and states. The liberalism of fear, constitutional liberalism, cognitive liberalism and liberal individualism all share an abiding commitment to the national state, at which point we are on safe grounds to speak of a realist-liberal commitment to the primacy of the nationstate (Rengger 2000: 101-107). Liberalism privileges a pluralism of voices of credible state and non-state actors with the state and the structural contradictions it helps to reproduce such as economic and social inequality, exclusionary national citizenship, racialism and racism, and economic, political, military coercion and terrorism, more broadly the “liberal government of unfreedom”, and other factors that register and normalise the sovereignty of state violence. In this broad sense, liberalism fosters the social conditions that rationalize its own inconsistencies and make realism plausible (Hall 1996: 30-32). No matter how liberals fragment their own frame of reference under the liberalism of fear, constitutional liberalism, cognitive liberalism and so forth, this internal dialogical pluralism amounts to modest distinctions within an internal debate that does nothing to banish the inequalities that liberalism normalises. It is hard to draw rigid lines of demarcation between the liberalism and realism, especially on the issue of the primacy of the coercion and the sovereignty of state violence. It is the ruling classes, their organic intellectuals – operating in and through the structures and institutions they privilege – that make realist and liberal views popular in international relations (Rengger 2000: 107-112). The liberal way of abstracting the state from civil society and the realist naturalisation of anarchy constitute two key cultural prejudices in international theory that are instrumental in framing the realist-liberal interface (Rosenberg 1994). Broadly, academics who make the case for United States liberal unilateralist hegemony (see Brilmayer 1989), a shared “co-operative oligarchy” between the US and the Group of 7, and advocate the so-called “regimes” theory in International Relations (Keohane

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and Nye 1977, Krasner 1983), routinely understate the issue of US imperialism (Gowan 1999: 36-37). Where American unilateralism is concerned, the record is unambiguous in international relations and international political economy. The US set up and used the DWSR to abandon fixed exchange rates and used the power of the dollar to secure a variety of other political, economic, and financial objectives around the world, forcing other states into compliance with its strategies and exploiting the insecurities that come with financial market volatility in the process. The US used the DWSR to restructure its international financial policy and practice to make it plausible for other states to build up their foreign exchange reserves in dollars and accumulate larger foreign reserves to deal with the volatility and turbulence that the same financial policies engender. By extension, other states have found it pragmatic to put their reserves in US financial markets, notably bonds that make foreign reserves easily convertible to stabilise exchange rates that Washington’s policy and practice render unstable. Foreign governments and other borrowers have seen the wisdom of borrowing increasingly from Wall Street with its strategic control of the most competitive lending rates, and they have embraced those new financial instruments that the new technology did not create but rather has made feasible and necessary. The DWSR strategy encourages borrowing from Wall Street and discourages investment in productive activity. The effect is to undermine economic growth in many foreign countries and make it more difficult for those governments to repay loans and service the current and future external debt. This has resulted in profound financial and economic difficulties for weak states and their societies. In fact, many states have been reduced to making the servicing of the external debt to Wall Street lenders their first priority to the neglect of social, economic and other priorities, a problem that is compounded by the effect of the rolling back of the economic and social borders of states as demanded by the neo-liberal turn. The DWSR also makes foreign populations bail out American banks that get into trouble in their foreign lending activities, a move that protects the American tax payer from financing the bail out of American banks abroad (Gowan 1999: 33-34). The IMF use of structural adjustment programs (SAPs) in certain countries keeps many foreign governments tethered to the DWSR with heavy debt-serving requirements in place, a strategy that promotes the flow and flight of money from debt-ridden economies into Wall Street, in effect, strengthening Wall Street as the indebted countries sink deeper into crisis. Strategically, the IMF also covers the risks that US financial lenders undertake abroad with the effect of sheltering the rich, wealthy and powerful interests from the contradictions that result from their own actions. Substantively, foreign borrowers have become dependent on Wall Street for the determination of their creditworthiness in the spatial complexes of global capitalism. The DWSR has made the dollar into the dominant currency for holding central bank foreign reserves around the world,

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the main currency for international loans, the major currency for international bond issues, for Eurocurrency deposits, for invoicing world trade and definitely for all foreign exchange transactions (Gowan 1999: 35-36). Financial terrorism is a distinctive feature of the DWSR. Of course, liberals view themselves as “the peacemakers and conservatives the warmongers, but the imperialism of the liberal may be more dangerous because of its open-ended nature – its conviction that it represents a superior form of life” (Guardian, October 24, 2001, quoted in Pilger 2002: 154). Global governance based on the primacy of US imperialism and social class and economic inequality reinforces global polarization along class, gender and ethnic lines and undermines prospects for global stability. The issues stressed by Peter Gowan point to the neo-liberal transition in the liberal imperialist approach to global governance. The role of the United Nations as the paramount protector of sovereign autonomy is built on a foundation of post war imperialism. Especially since the crisis of the Bretton Woods arrangements, national states have been shifting key areas of national decision making authority to the world level, which is consistent with capital accumulation as a global process that has been buttressed by the imperatives of the DWSR. The UN and its “model” of sovereign autonomy were not created to give sovereign autonomy an independent economic base in the newly independent countries, rather the UN “model” has worked to widen the gap between economics (capital accumulation) and politics (sovereign autonomy) (Rosenberg 1994). Keynesian assertions about the primacy of the national determination of economic policy had the effect of misrepresenting the deepening of the internationalisation of capital and the international socialisation of production within post-war imperialism. Substantively, the UN model of sovereign autonomy privileged the intensification of the separation of politics from economics and the abstraction of state sovereignty from civil society. The idea of the UN General Assembly as the standard bearer of the democracy of “one state, one vote” is a liberal notion that masks the fact that “one state, one vote” is built on the primacy of the rights of capital on a world scale. The World Bank Group controls disbursements of development assistance to the majority of states and the DWSR sits atop the entire system. The separation of sovereignty from civil society is built into the UN model and severely undermines the possibility of achieving a form of global integration that makes emancipation from the sovereign state likely. Historically, modern states have engaged in exclusion, ethnocentrism, ethnic cleansing, population displacement and removal, poverty, dehumanisation, terrorism, war, other forms of injustice and forms of genocide on behalf of some groups of humans and against others. The UN model of sovereign autonomy has not been effective at preventing the decomposition of certain national societies. The UN model also encourages the idea that the territorial state is the ultimate container of humanity, in the face of evidence that the integration of national states with

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imperialism exposes the limitations of substantive state autonomy under contemporary capitalist globalisation. George Steiner (1996: 237) made an important observation about the limitations of the nation form under the state when he said: There is no synagogue, no ecclesia, no polis, no nation, no ethnic community which is not worth leaving … A nation is a place always worth leaving, because it will behave in ways that we may or must come to find unacceptable. (Quoted in Rengger 2000: 202). It is problematic to separate war and the makers of war from the multiple forms of violence, terror and terrorism that come with war and warfare. The new military technology allows imperialism to depoliticise and depersonalise war by equating war and security to an expression of technical relations removed from the human condition. This is consistent with how the nation-state privileges sovereign violence through which it also reproduces exclusions by forcing us to choose between the inside and the outside as part of becoming and remaining national. In the realist imagination anarchy, instability and disorder endure as constant threats to the security that is assumed to characterise the inside of the state. This false inside-outside dichotomy normalises the use of violence to defend and protect those exclusions, to justify who will make war and kill, which society will suffer, how many infants and children will have to starve to death because they are denied food and medicine or will die slow deaths because of exposure to the plutonium or low-grade uranium from the bombs that are dropped on them by rational states, as in the American-led war against Iraq. In 1996, in an interview on 60 Minutes, Madeleine Albright, then the US Ambassador to the United Nations, was asked about the massive number of deaths of Iraqi children due to the impact of sanctions: “We have heard that half a million children have died . . . is the price worth it?” Albright declared: “I think this is a very hard choice, but the price – we think the price is worth it.”1 At the UN in New York and at all UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF) offices around the world the UNICEF mission statement is clear: “Above all, survival, hope, development, respect, dignity, equality and justice for women and children.” What is clear is that UN agencies operate within the norms of the geopolitics of imperialism. Throughout the colonial period, genocide remained a feature of liberal imperialism: genocide and imperialism cradled the Lebensraum principle of clearing the earth of “uncivilized” races of humans to create new space for the state and corporate capital in the name of progress and the “civilized” races (Lindquist 1996: 131-160). During World War I, Winston Churchill, who was then colonial secretary in Britain, declared: “I do not understand this squeamishness about the use of gas? I am strongly in favor of using poisoned gas against uncivilized tribes” (quoted in Pilger 2002: 65). The Americans are always

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more forthcoming when it comes to making the connection among Manifest Destiny, capitalist interests and imperialism. Brigadier-General William Looney, US Air Force, director of the bombing of Iraq, declared: They know we own their country . . . we dictate the way they live and talk. And that’s what’s great about America right now. It’s a good thing, especially when there’s a lot of oil out there we need. (quoted in Pilger 2002: 45). A distinct mark of contemporary scientific and technological progress under capitalism is that for the first time in human history the technical means exist, or are coming into existence to realize the vision of a society free of want, with the abundance made possible by new technologies distributed on no other basis than need (Davis 1998/99: 46). But capital accumulation and imperialist competition privilege necessity over freedom by intensifying the rule of dead labour over living labour in reproducing the class rule of the global bourgeoisie. The Lebensraum principle is alive and well: it is at work in the Caspian Sea region, in Afghanistan and will be deployed against Iraq once more just as Israel deploys it with a twist against the Palestinians. It is operating in what Michael Klare calls “resource wars” over global scarcity and the ways certain states are using military power to address such problems. Klare anticipates that the 21st century will witness military conflict over oil, natural gas, water and minerals with new forms of instability and national decomposition in tow (Klare 2002). Thomas Friedman highlighted the connection between the needs of corporate capital and imperialism: The hidden hand of the market will not work without a hidden fist. McDonald’s cannot flourish without McDonnell Douglas, the designer of the F-15. And the hidden fist that keeps the world safe for Silicon Valley’s technologies is called the US Army, Air Force, Navy and Marine Corps (cited in Pilger 2002: 114). The US has set about to increase its monopoly over raw materials, science and technology, media and communications, money and finance and weapons of mass destruction (Amin (1997). Liberal global governance privileges the interests of capitalist investment and production and exploitation; in other words, the liberal discourse of human rights presupposes an environment that is favourable to capital which means compliant national states ruling over weak civil society. Not surprisingly, liberals must separate their “ideal” of global governance from the global instability, human suffering, and national decomposition that capitalism engenders. The US anticipates that the deepening of material and social polarisation associated with contemporary globalisation will pose new regional challenges for itself (Pilger 2002: 122). The implication is that globalisation as we know it is unstoppable and therefore Washington

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must make the necessary military preparations to confront the inevitable challenges. The dominant neo-liberal logic insists that competition among states is an organic process that inheres in the nature of the interstate system. Clearly, what is needed is a theory of globalisation that demystifies the philosophical and empirical basis of contemporary imperialism.

Fr om Liberal Gl obalisa ti on Theo ry t o a Theo ry o f Fro Glo alisati tio Theor to Theor of Gl obalisa ti on Glo alisati tio Liberal globalisation theory operates at the level of popular common sense, separating politics from economics, glossing over the contradictions of imperialism and substituting globalisation for imperialism (Rupert 2000: 42-64). In the liberal imagination, philosophical and methodological nationalism equates the political economy to the interplay of economics and politics at the national and international levels. This economistic representation pervades liberal treatments of contemporary globalisation. Neo-liberalism has taken the high road in shaping the terms of the globalisation debate, directing the forward thrust of deregulation for liberalisation, privatisation, and protectionism under “free” market and free trade impetus; rationalising structural adjustment programmes in post colonial states and societies partly through the strategy and programme for rolling back the economic and social borders of states; defining the scope and limits of cosmopolitan-oriented universal standards and norms, open regionalism, and rules-based (transparent) legal principles of governance; the appropriate role for trade unions and social movements and other forces in civil society; and the proper role of states in relation to “free” markets in contemporary globalisation. Through these and other means liberals have attempted to banish the concept of imperialism from the discourse of political economy, substituting the concept of globalisation and the notion of the “new political economy” (NPE). The legitimisation of the autocracy of corporate capital is the utopia of the neoliberal (Coussy 2001: 146-47). An effective theory of globalisation must be grounded in a clear understanding of neo-mercantilist imperialism (see Petras 2002 for details). Globalisation as contemporary imperialism and what Jim Davis (1998/99) calls “capitalism in the age of electronics” approximates, at one level, a dialectical interaction of local and global historical processes. Hoogvelt connects globalisation to “… the ascendancy of real-time, trans-border economic activity over clock-time economic activity (whether domestic or trans-border)”. It is important to note that liberal globalisation and the associated ideology of globalism reify the very “process of globalisation as some meta-historical force that develops outside of human agency, conditioning and limiting the scope for action of individuals and collectivities alike, be they nation-states or local

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groups”. Globalism fosters a belief in the inescapability of the transnationalization of economic and financial flows to the existing credos of neo-liberalism, namely the belief in the efficiency of free competitive markets and . . . that this efficiency will maximize benefits for the greatest number of people in the long run” (Hoogvelt 2001: 154-55). The idea that globalisation is unstoppable and there is no alternative to capitalism (TINA logic) follows from the liberal idea that capitalism approximates natural human inclinations. Globalisation confirms Marx and Engels’ insistence that the bourgeoisie, in revolutionising the instruments of production, the relations of production and “the whole relations of society” has had to expand “markets for its products . . . over the whole surface of the globe” of necessity nestling everywhere, settling everywhere, and definitely establishing connections everywhere. This reality registers the historical basis of capitalism as a very modern international system of production for profit and capital accumulation for its own sake (Marx 1977: 224). Justin Rosenberg argues that liberal globalisation theory is not a theory of globalisation after all, rather it conflates the globalisation process (explanans) with its own explanation (explanandum). Rosenberg stresses that an effective theory of globalisation must separate the explanans from the explanandum and distinguish between the two by making the concrete globalisation process a subset within capitalism and imperialism, which are the real substantive issues (Rosenberg 2000: 3). This requires locating the social relations of production in world capitalist development at the centre of the analysis, a task that neither academic realism nor liberal idealism in international relations is equipped to perform. Not only do both theories articulate the interests of the bourgeoisie within a context of imperialism but they also lack the ontological, theoretical and methodological tools for grasping historical capitalism in order to execute such a project. A meaningful theory of globalisation must account for the globalisation process because the “density of accretions” in the process provides an important glimpse into the reality of the quantitative and qualitative transformations taking place in the deep inner structures of the system (Rosenberg 2000: 3-5). This particular approach should help to inform the new theoretical departures that are integral to an explanation of the structural crisis in the political economy itself (Holloway 1995: 5-6; Petras 2002).2 It is necessary to distinguish between creative labour as an ontological category and the political economy category of labour as a productive force (Gulli 2002). It is the latter category of labour that interests capital and the state in relation to social and economic reproduction, as each has a concrete interest in the exploitation of productive labour which is

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the source of surplus value (Rosenberg 2000: 4). Global integration is not in doubt, rather it is the form, process and contradictions of it that are at issue. The fact is that the United States is dominating the globalisation process, extending its imperial reach by projecting its coercive military power across the world and deploying the policies of the DWSR for capitalist and imperialist domination to integrate the world to its advantage. Philosophically and theoretically, a relevant globalisation theory must overcome the limitations that inhere in liberal accounts of the nature of the world, human nature, culture, history and economic relations. Liberalism equates the division of labour between the state (politics) and capital (economics) and the relationship between the state and civil society to a substantive separation, though the separation is technical. Liberals view the state and state power as a more or less unitary, neutral, administrative entity that derives its legitimacy from sovereign competition (market) subjects, with security issues nestled in military considerations that are defined in terms of inter-state conflict that is also separated from capitalism and imperialism. This economistic vision externalises social relations, banishes class exploitation and privileges notions of state-state (core-periphery) exploitation that typify the sovereign state model of inter-state competition. Recent liberal and realist depictions cast neocolonies as maladjusted variants of the state of nature with preferred descriptors such as “failed states”, “rogue states”, anemic states and “weak states”, suggesting that the post colonial world is trapped in the vortex of cultural linear time of the state of nature where the West located it since colonial times. Litwak (2000: 49) links the category of rogue state to [the] realist tradition of US diplomacy in that it is linked not to the internal organisation or national character of those states, but to three criteria of external behavior: first and foremost the pursuit of weapons of mass destruction; second, the use of international terrorism as an instrument of foreign policy; and third, a foreign policy orientation that threatens U. S. allies or important American interests in key regions (2000: 49). Such a narrowly self-serving reading of the issue treats US security interests as a doxa and hides those interests and US imperialism from the scrutiny they deserve. It is important to consider the long history of economic, financial, diplomatic and military terrorism and other forms of low intensity warfare and destabilisation the US has conducted against many post colonial states (Blum 2000, Pilger 2002). The US and many academics reserve the term “rogue states” for states whose actions tend to constrain new initiatives in Lebensraum, and view any state that compromises the expansion of capital as a threat to global security! Small and weak states have tried to use the UN to bind the “great powers to legal, alliance and other multilateral institutions”, but states like the

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US have “relied on their own power advantage” while “minor powers relied on law and international organisation. Put simply, great powers tended to be unilateralist, small and medium powers tended to be multilateralist” (Holloway 2002: 364). The US has been consistent and systematic in practicing unilateralism at the UN, routinely trying to get the UN to endorse its view of appropriate international conduct from the Security Council to the General Assembly. In the Security Council the US strategy has been to cast its “hidden veto” by getting an adequate majority of allied members to vote against what Washington opposes, thereby shifting negative attention away from itself (Kegley and Wittkopf 2001: 178). Across the spectrum, from issues dealing with the Middle East to broad human rights matters – The Convention on the Rights of the Child, the Convention banning discrimination against women, the International Criminal Court, the Convention Against Racial Discrimination, the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, and the Genocide Convention and many other UN conventions – US action or inaction has had the effect of alienating allies, friends and clients by obstructing the passage of key UN resolutions on human rights (Holloway 2002: 361-362). Given the way Litwak defines a “rogue state”, it would be extremely difficult to identify the circumstances under which the US becomes a rogue state within the definition and pursuit of its national security interests. By extension, it would be difficult to establish the conditions under which American unilateralism undermines global stability beyond destabilising effects of the DWSR regime. It is important to note that any effort to combat terrorism must include finding ways to reign in the US, whose policies and actions have produced the conditions that engender terrorism (Blum 2002). Rosenberg (1994) notes that there is something awry with the myth of realism, the claim that the historical triumph over idealism involved something like an epistemological break which marked the inauguration of the discipline of international relations. In fact, he continues the business of defining “international politics in terms of the balance of power . . . involves posing a hierarchy of issues facing states internationally . . . when it exchanges goods and services with the other nations (1994: 19, 29). More to the point, the structural specificity of state sovereignty endures in its “abstraction from civil society – an abstraction which is constitutive of the private sphere of the market, and hence inseparable from capitalist relations of production” (1994: 123-124). Liberals separate, fragment, and disembody the complex reality of globalisation with the effect of reifying the associated categories. In the shadows of liberal globalisation theory are to be found the Christian myth of origins and

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modern social contract theory that together impute presocial origins to human nature and culture. Modern social contract theory abstracts space and time from historical contexts rendering them linear in the construction of cultural and social reality. Yet the historical record does not reveal any humans who have ever experienced “spatial and temporal determinants which are not mediated or constructed in particular socio-cultural forms” (Rosenberg 2000: 6). The proponents of liberal globalisation theory suggest that international relations has conquered “supra-territorial . . . distanceless space”, and ushered in the end of the nation-state and sovereignty and substituted “postinternationality”. This hype is influenced by the technological determinism that liberalism privileges in relation to capitalism and the market and individual self-interestedness. Under contemporary globalisation, neo-liberals and neo-realists in international relations seem to be moving closer together at the level of sharing analytical foundations with a falling off of “big” intellectual and moral struggles and differences between them (Rengger 2000: 191). Substantively, both theories obstruct our vision to an enriched understanding of the international derived from analysis of the wider historical process of capitalist world development – a process rendered invisible, or at any rate irrelevant, by the notion of a Westphalian System, (Rosenberg 2000: 10). The liberal view equates the state to its functions and the governmental roles of its leading functionaries, a view that makes it impossible to understand the entire complex of practical and theoretical activities with which the ruling class not only justifies and maintains its dominance, but manages to win the active consent of those over whom it rules (Gramsci 1971: 244). When we distinguish between the state and capital and come to appreciate the technical basis of the division of labour between the two we discover that globalisation does not negate the state, as the world system comprises “a multiplicity of states” with each capitalist state assuming the “nation-state form” such that “national states are forms of the global totality of social relations”. This point highlights the methodological problem posed by the liberal habit of yoking each state, capital and the attendant social processes to narrowly conceived technical understandings of the geographical nation and its territorial state (Holloway 1995: 122, 123). The national state plays an important role in the spatially unbound capitalist relations that transcend the nation-state, and those spatial relations are an integral part of the political moment which is “a moment of the totality of capitalist social relations”. Specifically, the “totality of global capitalist relations” refers

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to “a global (world-wide) totality” of which the nation-state is an integral part. Therefore, no single territorial state can encompass the full expression of the political moment that characterises the “moment of the relation between capital and labour”, given that the political is a “moment of a global relation”, and in light of capital’s aspatiality no individual national-state can be the definitive container of capital. Relations of exploitation are spatial and people inhabit particular spaces; therefore the cultural particularism of place we associate with national states and societies is a very dynamic and “constantly changing” reality (Holloway 1995: 123, 124). In relation to contemporary globalisation, the idea of an organic ontological, political and economic primacy of the national state is undermined by the reality of contemporary imperialism. Notably, the global market spaces of capital demand “free trade” under globalised norms of openness. The neorealist/neo-liberalist logic of using the economy as a “weapon in the old-style application of the logic of the balance of forces” (Salamé 2001: 168) muddles the issue by yoking inter-state competition to inter-imperialist rivalries that are subsumed under the logic of the balance of power (Petras 2002). Holloway’s account of the relationship between the state and capital poses insurmountable problems for liberal globalisation theory. Contemporary globalisation has its own characteristics but globalisation is not reducible to a recent development that has suddenly ruptured the bounds of a “historically and logically prior national society”. The state features as a more or less fixed entity within a geographically delimited space in contrast with capital which is a “globally mobile phenomenon”. In the interest of theoretical clarity it is necessary to free the spatial globality of capitalist social relations from the rigidity that the neo-liberal construct of the state imposes on the capital relation. Not only is capital not tied down to any particular region of the world, even though it accumulates in certain areas more than others, but its specialisations have become so complex and intertwined that it is hard to fix coordinates to any single complex of industries anywhere in the world. A good deal of intra-capitalist and inter-capitalist competition confirms that corporate capitalist specialisations are “transitory moments, staging posts in the incessant flow of capital” on a global scale. Capital lodges itself in different places on the basis of the expected profitability of its operations and is constrained more or less by the form of its operations – “bricks and mortar” versus, say, financial operations. Capital’s incessant struggle against the “inadequacy of its own basis” is dictated by the search for profitability: it is the crisis that inheres within the capital relation itself that engenders instability (Holloway 1995: 131). Since capital and capitalists are not interchangeable forms and since national states compete with one another to attract capital, it should be obvious that states often act in ways that marginalise or destroy certain national and international capitalists to the benefit of more productive capital. Therefore, it is impossible for any national state to have an absolutely fixed relationship to

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“any particular part of world capital” (Holloway 1995: 126). Those who draw rigid lines between national capital and foreign capital about the excesses of foreign capitalists versus national capitalists imply that workers prefer the national exploitation of homegrown capitalists over foreign ones. Realistically, capitalist relations derive from the historical global nature of the capitalist relation of exploitation as a relation, mediated through money, a relation freed from spatial constraint. The aspatial, global nature of capitalist social relations has been a central feature of capitalist development since its bloody birth in conquest and piracy (Holloway 1995: 123). The liberal conception of universality sets equality at variance with commensurability, creates hierarchy within difference, naturalises inequality and objectifies culture and nature and reduces history to a series of distinct developmental stages. Liberal organic intellectuals equate the role of the multilateral institutions to the triumph of rationalism beyond the power and leverage of the Dollar-Wall Street financial regime and makes it impossible to grasp the dimension of class exploitation and the economic compulsion on which all subjects are constituted and all the forms of human rights, systems of justice and epistemologies and theories of freedom and equality that pertain to them are constructed under capitalism. In sum, a relevant theory of globalisation would have to rescue social phenomena from the logic of linear time and relocate them in concrete historical time-space contexts in order to reformulate social theory. Rosenberg (2000: 4, 5) reminds us that temporality and spatiality have varied across periods and cultures, that they have been socially constructed and mentally experienced in different ways, and . . . those . . . ways have . . . been highly consequential for the constitution of social orders. Not only have Western “constructions of space and time . . .” rendered time and space “abstracted, linear, and . . . emptiable” (Rosenberg 2000: 4, 5) but those particular space-time constructions and representations have also sought to generalise and universalise those conceptions to the world at large. A relevant globalisation theory must jettison the impedimenta of the “Westphalian System” and rescue the “human history of nature” from the cultural logic of the state of nature. Only by defetishising nature, culture, history, and time-space does it become possible to locate accounts of globalisation within the historical-social theory of explanation (Rosenberg 2000: 14-15, Noble 1998: 253-55, Fabian 1983: 26).3

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The ‘Empire o f Liber ty ’, Co ntempo rar y Imperialis m, of Libert Contempo ntemporar rary Imperialism, and Interna ti onal Rel ati ons after September 11. Internati tio Rela tio Contemporary globalisation is central to capital’s struggle against the constraints imposed by its own modes of domination. Historically, capital has fought against the constraints imposed by the very modes of domination and exploitation it imposes on the power of labour. The scientific and technological revolution represents an attempt to overcome those constraints. How and where capital settles in the world and the consequences of its operations vary enormously for different states and their societies and this is why class relations of production trounce centre versus periphery formulations. With national states as moments of the global capital relation, it is impossible for each national state and international capital to be external to the capital relation. The dual world model conjures up the impression of centre exploiting periphery when it is capital that exploits labour and states and capital have a direct interest in the exploitation of labour. States adopt laws and policies to normalise exploitation: capital accumulation is a global process and ruling classes prefer to invest their capital where the productive forces are most developed for certain types of production, where the rate of exploitation is most intense, and where capital expects to obtain the highest rate of return. Each state is a constitutive element of global capitalist social relations within which the development of the globally connected capitalist system takes place. Formal sovereignty is inseparable from the bipolarity of class relations in and through which exploitation occurs. In fact, formal state sovereignty expresses and mediates that “bipolarity of class”, in the state’s own strategy for attracting and retaining portions of global capital within national borders. Unequal and uneven development is a law of capitalist development regardless of the society. States have embraced neo-liberal reforms which reflect their “differential relation . . . to global capital” and this expresses “the forms taken by the struggles around the development of global capital”, and reveals that their own development “can differ enormously, and … what appears at first to be common development (the neo-liberal reform of the state, . . .) conceals a large number of different (and competing) strategies to achieve a redefined relation to global capital in the process of restructuring” (Holloway 1995: 129). This highly differentiated pattern of heterogeneous social relations can only be maintained by a system of imperialist domination which polarises the accumulation process: this is where the military fist of the state, the political leverage of the multilateral institutions and the political functions of the capitalist market become inseparable. I see the events of September 11, 2001 as directly related to the fallout from the contradictions that are associated with combating the structural, conjunctural and ideological constraints imposed by capital’s own mode of domination. Inside the United States, September 11 provides an unusual

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opportunity for the bourgeois state to reconfigure the norms of repressive tolerance to suit broader post-Cold War imperatives. The US strategy for global integration deepens the integration of national states with the global movement of capital while fragmenting national societies and aggravating the decomposition of some societies. The US also asserts its own sovereign rights and demands transparency in rules while removing itself from any obligation to uphold the very rules it insists that other states must follow. The scientific and technological restructuring of capitalism under electronics-based production continues to be a very uneven process on a world scale. In part, it registers a growing trend toward labourer-less production in certain leading economic sectors, industries, and services and many workers from the US to China are forced to compete with robots and other smart tools and machines for jobs. This effectively drives down the value of labour power and average wage rates around the world (Davis 1998/99: 37, 40, 42, Altvater and Mahnkopf 1997: 309-312) as the rate of exploitation intensifies. The production and application of computer technology reflect the changing social and political class objectives of capital. As part of the social relations of production, the new technology must pass through the “social blender” of society via production, exchange, transportation, marketing, distribution, currency trading, money flows, the labour process around employment issues, strikes, human dumping and the polarisation of wealth and poverty (Davis 1998/99: 38-43, Harris 1998/99: 23). The churning of the “social blender” is evident in how the politics of technology conditions the historical relationships and patterns around labour-based production along lines of worker to self, worker to worker, worker to employer, worker to family, worker to community worker to the ecology, and worker to the national state (Davis 1998/99: 43, 45, see Harris 1998/99: 27-32). This very contradictory process of the churning of the “social blender” also engenders instability and uncertainty for droves of humans around the world and intensifies marginalisation and the decomposition of certain national societies. This is the hothouse of terrorism! The outcome of the Gulf War strengthened the strategic advantage the United States had been pursuing over Europe and Japan as part of the restructuring of its hegemonic base, partly in relation to the geopolitics of world oil. The US searched for ways to exploit the geopolitical and other advantages that came with the collapse of the Soviet Union. In this context the events of September 11 provided a golden opportunity to revamp the Cold War liberal ideology of repressive tolerance at home under the rubric of the war on terrorism. The US state is doing everything to fold anti-communism and the war on terrorism into a unifying xenophobic force to refashion the logic of the “empire of liberty”. The strategy involves restructuring the federal state apparatus to include a Department of Homeland Security. Such a project draws on certain white supremacist, masculinist themes that endure in the American body politic to reconfigure the

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ideology of invincibility and exceptionalism that the low intensity attacks of September 11 on the state (Pentagon) and corporate finance (World Trade Centre) had compromised. Key post-Soviet achievements included the war against Yugoslavia with the support of NATO allies: the war against Yugoslavia said a great deal about how to conduct new wars in the heart of Europe and it revealed much about how much Russia’s power had been weakened in the geopolitics of Europe. Working with the European Union, the IMF and World Bank, the US took the necessary steps to subject Russia to the norms of the DWSR. The United States also exploited the collapse of the Soviet Union to widen the scope and intensity of the leverage it had been exercising over much of the post colonial world in production, trade, finance, monetary policy, military matters and geopolitics. In the 1990s, the US employed the DWSR regime to deconstruct the neo-mercantilist capital accumulation strategies it had cultivated in East Asia as part of the Cold War project in Asia. The deconstruction of neo-mercantilism in East Asia made it possible to expand the scope of the DWSR neo-mercantilist strategy for the world in conjunction with an assertive militaristic posturing to stem Japanese and European competition. In the wake of the collapse of the Soviet Union, Washington moved in 1990, to restructure its national security strategy in the Western Hemisphere. This involved a combination of measures such as open regionalism, trade and investment strategies, structural adjustment, the “shiprider agreement”, and a new national security policy to inform the idea of a partnership between unequal states and revamp the heterogeneous division of labour that integrates Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC) with the political economy of the US. Broadly, the Organisation of American States (OAS) adopted Resolution 1080 of 1990 at Santiago, Chile, which initiated the restructuring of the InterAmerican Treaty of Reciprocal Mutual Assistance of 1947 (Rio Treaty) (Bloomfield 1998). For the LAC region, Resolution 1080 is a central plank in the neo-liberal project in that it institutionalises a new constitutionalism for market, fiscal, and monetary reform to engender broader economic, social, political, legal and regulatory reform that makes strengthening the infrastructures of capitalism and the inequality capitalism necessitates the basis of all legitimate change across LAC. Washington’s vision for transparency, pluralism and accountability requires the states of LAC to be leaner with reinvigorated coercive apparatuses that protect the property rights of capital, provide guarantee against the expropriation of foreign property and lower the cost of doing business for transnational capital. All these weaken civil society while fostering a rhetoric about “win-win” outcomes with certain NGOs bringing up the rear for capital and the state in the name of individual and community empowerment. Resolution 1080 requires each member state of the OAS to make the protection of capitalism and free markets the bedrock of sovereign autonomy, the defence

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of national and hemispheric security and capital accumulation. Resolution 1080 is by no means unique; the counterpart for Africa is the Africa Growth and Opportunity Act that Congress passed and that requires African states to “protect property rights, guarantee foreign property against expropriation, reduce high import and corporate taxes” and remove subsidies, controls and other impediments to the free run of capital (Tabb 2001: 153). The Gulf War, the war against Yugoslavia, the September 11 attacks and the war against Afghanistan reveal a new dimension of the strategy of waging warfare. They tell much about how to refashion states and societies by military means and how to restructure regional and global geopolitics to accommodate the changing requirements of neo-mercantilist imperialism (Petras 2002). Clearly, the September 11 events are part of the conjunctural, ideological and structural dimensions of contemporary imperialism. Conjuncturally, globalisation encompasses spatial, ideological and class formation dynamics around the expansion of capital and capitalism into the former Soviet Union and Eastern European countries, the entry of more than one billion new workers and consumers into the capitalist world market, the embrace of bourgeois strategies by the Communist parties and party elites in China and Vietnam, the collapse of national liberation revolutions in the post colonial states and the acute processes of national decomposition that is afoot in many societies (Panitch 1998). These developments have altered the geopolitics of international relations, contributed to the intensification of the international socialisation of production and private appropriation, realigned the transnational bloc of the dominant capitalist ruling forces, increasingly through the dominance of money and financial activities, and adjusted the dialectic of hegemony and counterhegemony (see Van der Pijl 1998, Rupert 2000: 43-49). In terms of the restructuring of class relations, globalisation also signals the deepening of the integration of certain components of heterogeneous transnational capitalist class fractions, but this process is consistent with the restructuring of competition around the world that intensifies social and economic polarisation and aggravates a sense of hopelessness for denizens of global humanity. Competition for profit propels capitalism but capital will . . . do everything possible to circumvent competition . . . to increase market share, and one classic way of doing so is to collude with competitors to create monopolies . . . or . . . drive out rivals by the sheer force of size and economies of scale. (Wood 1998: 7) As such, the global “concentration and centralisation of capital is not the antithesis of competition but one of its expressions” Wood continies. The intensification of competition also mirrors the integration of the national state with the global movement of capital and the shifting upward and outward

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movement to the world level of aspects of state decision-making under the initiative of US imperialism and via the DWSR and the multilateral institutions like the IMF. In order to avoid the temptation to treat terrorism as an aberrant form, it is necessary to situate state and non-state terrorism within the context of contemporary imperialism. The tendency by imperialism and certain academics to use terms like “weak states”, “failed states”, “collapsed states” and “rogue states” to describe certain post colonial states is consistent with the cultural logic the West employs to tether the non-West to the fictive state of nature by suggesting that post colonial states are ill-equipped to embrace the culture of rational civil law. The effect of abstracting the post colonial state from the global social relations and class struggles within imperialism is to externalise the consequences of piracy, colonialism, imperialism, ecological and demographic constraints and retardation of the productive forces. The displacement of imperialism and its contradictions allows liberals and realists to objectify what they reduce to the internal failures of post colonial states and societies (Bilgin and Morton 2002: 59-61, 73, Furedi 1994). The dominant state and intellectual perspectives on this issue are shaped by certain historical and philosophical legacies. Eric Foner observes that colonial subjects in “America” took to heart the notion that the colonial enterprise in North America was an experiment in liberty that was destined to separate the “American” state-making and nation-making experience from all other similar projects. Two interrelated and distinguishing features of American imperialism have been the idea of the US as the “empire of liberty” (Tucker and Hendrickson 1990) and exceptionalism, two notions that did much to nurture the myth of American invincibility. From antebellum times onward the glorification of the revolutionary cultural heritage of the US equated “acceptable revolutions” to “those made by white men . . .seeking their freedom from tyrannical government, not those made by slaves rebelling against their own lack of liberty” (Foner 2002: 62). This notion, which conditioned the American outlook on revolution since the Haitian Revolution, also nurtured racial Anglo-Saxonism, Manifest Destiny, global white supremacy and the myth that the US is uniquely equipped to define the legitimate parameters of the freedom for global humanity. The seeds of a globalist vision rather than a narrow nationalism were sown in the soil of the “empire of liberty” from the inception of the American republic. The discourses of insularity that mediated the discourses of American imperialism routinely conflated exceptionalism with the ideology of manifest destiny and racial nationalism and tended to mask America’s abiding faith in one or another vision of globalism in the rhetoric of isolationism. In reality, the logic of the Jeffersonian “empire of liberty” imputed to “the American Creed a timeless definition of American nationality” (Foner 2002: 60-64). Not surprisingly, the dominant liberal approach has equated US imperialist exploits with the pursuit

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of freedom – freedom versus barbarism, savagery, oppression, tyranny, Nazism, Communism, and now freedom from terrorism. Among the contradictory tendencies likely to arise to contest the war on terrorism are the anticommodification struggles by labour, the unorganised oppositional motion from the smear of “social strata” that represent dehumanised humanity, including fundamentalists of all stripes that are caught in the maelstrom of imperialism’s decomposing national societies. The US Space Command anticipates that even though the US is “unlikely to be challenged by a global peer competitor, the United States will continue to be challenged regionally” (quoted in Pilger 2002: 122). Imperialist competition dictates a deepening polarisation between the classes and their strata nationally and globally. The making of the postnational world is a violent process.

US Neo-Mercantilist Imperialism and the Globalized War Economy Civil wars and the privatisation of war and violence around various forms of ethnic conflict and the crisis of state authority are best theorised as political conflicts that are associated with different forms of the crisis of national decomposition and state restructuring. In some decomposing societies, new centres of private fighting forces have emerged in an attempt to reinvent the state and its basis of authority and create new modes of primitive accumulation and appropriation and new ruling strata. Certain traditional and nontraditional political forces have been manipulating state power, identity politics and resorting to violence to reproduce themselves and their political power inside and outside the state (Shaw 2000: 170-71, Kaldor and Vashee 1997, Kaldor, Albrecht, and Schmeder, 1998, Kaldor 1999). The central issue is the changing relationship between national states and capital accumulation within contemporary imperialism. Lawrence Serewicz’s intervention reflects considerable confusion about national decomposition and state restructuring. Serwicz attributes the crisis of state authority to the challenge to state sovereignty “from below, or within, by sub-state military actors and from above, by supra-state organisations” (2002: 75). He does not make explicit his notion of organic states whose sovereignty has come under question by the challenges of globalisation. Serewicz views globalisation as compressing the national and international realms of state authority in ways that generate crises of authority that necessitate the restructuring of the bases of legitimacy (see also Rosenau 1995: 199). He claims that “globalisation, especially in the military sphere, unmasks a developmental process that has been concealed since the state emerged” and insists that the “foundation of that process was the state’s ability to combine sovereignty with the ability to harness military innovations” and which “allowed the state to

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meet military and political threats from other political organisations” (Serewicz 2002: 76). Substantively, challenges to state authority and state restructuring have been a fact of life for modern states. Following Spruyt, Serewicz sees the sovereign state emerging out of “a social coalition based on an affinity of interests and perspectives between incipient monarchy and burghers” (Spruyt 1994: 76, see Serewicz 2002: 81). This leads Serewicz to abstract the state from civil society. He sets globalisation and the state adrift in two separate spheres, failing to see the state’s role in producing globalisation, which he thinks is a totally recent phenomenon. Having abstracted state sovereignty from civil society and having set the sovereign state adrift from the international system, he makes the mistake of blaming globalisation for undermining the state (Serewicz 2002: 83). Serewicz fragments social relations to the point of failing to see how the production of military goods and the rise of private international security forces are connected to the state and corporate capital and how and why both of these rely on private security forces to mediate certain contradictions around state reproduction, primitive accumulation and capital accumulation. The claim that rather than “a direct transformation of sovereignty . . .the state (and the state system) may be adapting to the globalisation of military technology and information” ignores the role of military production in the reproduction of certain states that control and produce military technology, which is a source of profits for state-sponsored and other private military-industrial companies. Serewicz does not seem to understand the nature of crisis in relation to state restructuring, military-industrial production and contemporary globalisation which might explain why he thinks that “globalisation and the re-emergence of private international security companies might challenge the state’s authority, but not its sovereignty” (2002: 85). Peter Burnham’s insistence that “national states are best theorised as differentiated forms of global capitalist relations” (Burnham 1995: 103-04, 105), sheds light on the location of state sovereignty as simultaneously nationalised and an internationalised property relation within the social relations of capitalism. Serewicz’s concepts of the state and globalisation are in dire need of theorisation. Contemporary wars play a key role in the restructuring of global capitalist relations of production. The issue of new wars extends to the restructuring of armies, new techniques of warfare, paramilitaries that are organised, trained, and financed by states in the interest of imperialism as in Colombia, other parts of Latin America, the Middle East region, and Asia (Petras 2002), mercenaries that protect corporate capitalist interests in oil reserves and other raw materials in the post colonial societies; ethnic cleansing and/or the forcible removal of populations, and the genocidal impact and the economic and social consequences that result (Shaw 2000: 172). Martin Shaw subsumes the reproduction of certain “forms of violence” within an “extreme form of globalisation in which

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production collapses and armed forces are sustained via remittances, diaspora fund-raising, external governmental assistance and the diversion of international humanitarian aid”. Shaw stresses that “globalized arms markets. . . transnational ethnicities and internationalised western-global interventions are all integral to new wars” (Shaw 2000: 172). As the gap between civil society and sovereign autonomy widens around capital accumulation and inter-state competition the terrorist tendency of certain states has been becoming even more menacing. Mary Kaldor’s cosmopolitan vision of a liberal paradigm to guide us beyond the “breakdown of legitimacy” (Shaw 2000: 172, 173) does not extend to a genuine universalism, as her gaze is fixed on the cosmopolitan liberal state4 with all of its contradictions and limitations. Liberal imperialism and its “pluralist democratic politics” do not only privilege weak civil society but normalise inequalities and human suffering while building the case for universality and global governance on foundations of capitalism and global white supremacy. A key underlying problem with this vision is the notion that dialogical pluralism can build “the” level playing field and engender equality among unequally positioned interests (Ebert 1996). David Goldberg is correct to argue that the modern state . . .founds itself not just on exclusions, those absences that render invisible, but on the internalisation of exclusions … State apparatuses sew the variety of modern social exclusions into the seams of the social fabric, normalising them through their naturalisation. So social exclusions in terms of race, complexly knotted with class and gender, become the mark of social belonging, the measure of standing in the nation-state, the badge of social subjection and citizenship (Goldberg 2002: 10). Goldberg connects the “increasingly sophisticated elabouration of liberalism from the late seventeenth century” to a strategic role in the “normalisation and naturalisation” of “racial dynamics and racist exclusions”, He stresses that as modernity’s definitive doctrine of self and society, of morality and politics, liberalism has served to make possible discursively, to legitimate ideologically, and to rationalise politico-economically prevailing sets of racially ordered conditions and racist exclusions. He adds that Classical liberalism (which includes in its range much of the commitments of contemporary conservatism in the form of neo-liberalism) … was a key element … in promoting racial reasoning and its racist implications as central to modernity’s common moral, socio-political, and jurisprudential

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sense. Not surprisingly . . . racially conceived compromises regarding racist exclusions – ranging from constitutional endorsements of slavery to formalised segregation, colonial rule and its aftermath, affirmative action, immigration and crime policy – have been instrumental in sustaining a consensual dominance of liberalism in modern state formation, over the past century and a half (Goldberg 2002: 4-5). Goldberg thus emphasises liberalism’s structural investment in the production of global white supremacy which also mediates the political economy in relation to productive labour and the mediation of its historical relationship to colonialism, imperialism, slavery, indenture, war, racism, gender oppression and the production of national political and cultural exclusions. The wars against Iraq, Yugoslavia and Afghanistan play a critical role in destroying economic and other infrastructures and war creates new opportunities for the renewal of corporate capital and provides temporary relief for the US economy from recession (Shaw 2000: 177). Just as the Cold War created significant opportunities for corporate capital to grow through military and related production, so too will “Homeland Security” make American tax payers finance corporate expansion. Corporate interests from a wide spectrum of the production of technology goods and services are circling the state for contracts against the war on terrorism: Cold War ideology meshes with homeland security ideology for capitalist renewal and the ends of imperialism. World War II ended rather indecisively. The US spent about $6 trillion to fight the Cold War which has not “ended”. The fallout from World War II and the Cold War assumes the form of the war on terrorism. Contemporary globalisation and neo-mercantilist imperialism engender the immediate conditions for terrorism of, by, for, and against states (Blum 2002). The indecisiveness of the end of the Cold War can also be detected in the crisis that Russia and former USSR republics have fallen into thanks in part to the DWSR strategy and its contradictions. The crisis in Chechnya is symbolic. From Russia to Venezuela, Brazil and Argentina the structural contradictions of the DWSR are evident. The imperialist discourse of terrorism masks the fact that certain forces are struggling against imperialism. The popular forces fighting against the Mexican State in Chiapas, the ones that elected Chavez in Venezuela and Lula in Brazil will be sooner or later classified as terrorists. The “empire of liberty”, has worked against any popular determination of the political and economic power in the US and abroad. The neo-imperialist strategy is exploiting class contradictions in Venezuela to remind Chavez that the popular masses may elect a president they like but it is not up to them to keep him in power in the age of global capitalism. The “empire of liberty” is adept at visiting war and destruction on masses of humanity to prepare them for freedom and the virtues of neo-Kantian civil law which always includes making those places safe for

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capital (Salamé 2001: 167-68). Capitalist crisis endures in the capital relation itself and financial speculation, new forms of imperial conquest and illegal capitalist activity aggravate world economic instability (Holloway 1995). Historically, mercantilism emphasised “monopoly profits, unilateral action, and state intervention to favour business interests against external rivals”, with support from certain domestic class strata in the dominated countries and “armed conflict and large military expenditures”. Petras modifies contemporary “neomercantilism,” using Latin America to show where US military expenditures have increased “with new military bases and the colonisation of air space, shore lines, and rivers and estuaries,” the militarisation of borders between certain Latin American countries and training of military and paramilitary forces, death squads, and militarist posturing in Asia vis-à- vis China and other places. He equates these and other measures to a US “policy of projecting unilateral military power” around the globe (Petras 2002: 45, 48, 55). Petras connects neo-mercantilism to expanded state regulation to monopolise power to determine economic, financial and political outcomes around the globe with special reference to the Third World, a point that shows the Third World still plays a key role in providing surplus labour and profits for capital. He explains the connection between the class interests of Third World political leaders and ruling strata in facilitating neo-mercantilism by transferring funds from their countries abroad in various ways. He draws on the experience of Latin America to explain the unfair trade practices the US employs, the outflow of profits from the region to the US, the impact of the protectionist policies of the US on the domestic market and the contradictory outcomes for Latin American societies. Competition surrounding US, EU and Japanese interests in Latin America does not mean Europeans and Japanese capitalists do not rely on US military and security strategy in Latin America to protect their investments, markets, and broader access to Latin America, a fact that stresses the centrality of US hegemony over Latin America. US unilateralism in economic, financial, military, and environmental affairs and American confrontational strategies on geopolitical issues have become the global norm. Petras concludes that it is this US-led, militarised world order that facilitates the unrestricted global flow of corporate capital, with NATO, the WTO, the UN Security Council and key agencies of the US state playing the instrumental roles in the grand assault on the American working class and against workers around the world. The restructuring of science and technology is tied to the “resurgence of US imperialism and the expansion of US-European capital based on class warfare and imperial wars” (Petras 2002: 56). Terrorism is inseparable from the contradictions associated with neo-liberalism and neomercantilist imperialism. In terms of the implications for international relations theory, Shaw explores

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some of the bigger theoretical problems that the repudiation of war could pose for the social sciences. He argues that the national state culture under post-war imperialism generalised “total war” as a “mode of warfare”, which dominated the capitalist mode of production in mid-century and normalised it through “the Cold War and nuclear arms race (not to mention the ‘revolution in military affairs’)” and succeeded in integrating society and economy with the war culture. I have noted that this process also coincided with the intensification of the abstraction of sovereign autonomy from civil society. Shaw insists that “globalisation results not only from the end of the Cold War but from the loosening relationships of the war machines and the economy . . .” (Shaw 2000: 178, 179). This assertion is very contestable in view of the foregoing analysis. Shaw would have to account for earlier forms of globalisation, including Cold War globalisation, and he would have to identify the factors that empirically substantiate his claims for the “loosening relationships” between the “war machines and the economy”. A major problem with international relations perspectives that make contemporary globalisation a function of the end of the Cold War is that they displace imperialism.

Caribbean Crisis in the Age of Terrorism The integration of the Caribbean with Cold War globalisation and imperialism emphasised mechanisms of social control that kept the state outside popular determination. The decolonisation strategy was based on the subsumption of labour under capital, the privileging of the rights of capital by making those rights prior to all other rights and framing concepts of freedom, justice, and equality on the material foundations of capitalist inequality. The Cuban Revolution violated the model that Cold War imperialism designed for the Caribbean and Latin America. The American Cold War project isolated Cuba and complicated decolonisation in the British West Indies (BWI) not only by steering the process within the limits of Cold War globalisation but also by forcing the new post colonial states to take sides in the East-West conflict as part of the process of institutionalising national identities. Post-war independence in the Caribbean involved asserting the primacy of sovereign autonomy separated from civil society and without economic independence. Such an arrangement could not be conducive to the national determination of economic policy or national integration to remove ethnic, gender and other contradictions. Since the 1960s, Caribbean states such as Jamaica, Guyana and Trinidad and Tobago have witnessed varying degrees of instability given the particular articulations of the crisis within the capital relation that dominates those societies. Throughout this period, the main concern of the US has been about how state participation in the economy – whether in the pragmatic mode of Trinidad and Tobago in the 1970s or Democratic Socialism in Jamaica or Co-

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operative Socialism in Guyana – would affect the Cold War geopolitical balance and the more specific relationship between the state, market and civil society in relation to imperialism. The neo-liberal conception of democratisation privileges an increasingly disembodied state at the expense of the political economy of the state as an integral component of the social relations of production. Certain Caribbean states have been included among the categories of rogue states, weak states and anaemic states that imperialism set up. Economic crisis, production problems, illegal drugs, guns and violence and other problems that plague Jamaica signal the deepening of the state and societal crisis in Jamaica (Robotham 2002). Ethnic problems, production crisis, and bureaucratic, social and political malaise have intensified the crisis of the state and society in Guyana with acute ethnic manifestations that are taken to be expressions of primordial differences between people of African and Asian descent, which is far from the truth. Haiti has been listed among the “anaemic states” (Gros 1996: 455-471 passim, see Bilgin and Morton 2002: 64) and US imperialism includes Cuba in its list of “rogue states”. Trinidad and Tobago also has been experiencing economic and political problems that have aggravated ethnic tensions. The state and/or societal crises in the Caribbean are linked to the neo-liberal reforms that intensify the separation of the state from civil society and deepen the abstraction of sovereignty from civil society while intensifying the integration of the state with the global movement of capital. The integration of the state with the global movement of capital is evidenced by the transformation of institutions like the central bank into a sentinel of international finance via the DWSR regime and the shifting of key areas of national decision-making to the world level through the World Bank, the IMF and the WTO. Caribbean states that have embraced the Bank-Fund stabilisation and structural adjustment strategy in pursuit of export competitiveness, and this reveals their political character, nestled as post colonial states, are in a “world of world money . . .whose borders are defended at the counters of the foreign exchanges or within the global ‘swift-network’ of internationally operating banks”. The economic and financial terrorism of the Dollar-Wall Street Regime compels post colonial states in the direction of subordination (Altvater and Mahnkopf 1997: 311, 316, 318). Andres Serbin (1998) draws attention to certain contradictions Caribbean states and societies face in dealing with the regional and global challenges of imperialism which he calls globalisation. His use of the metaphor of “sunset over the islands” alludes to the decomposition reflected in the crisis, the specific problems of dealing with the fallout from the crisis and the weak restructuring measures the states and societies have adopted to stem the crisis. He raises important questions about the regional capacity of Caribbean state and nonstate actors for responding to global change, the potential paradigmatic contributions of the social sciences like International Relations for interpreting

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regional and global change with attention to the needs of the region, and the role of political, economic and intellectual elites and other organic forces in forging a “regional consensus” about challenges and needs (1998: 3). Serbin emphasises the role of civil society, at both the national and the international levels, in the general process but he does not sufficiently theorise the contradictory relationship of civil society to sovereign autonomy with reference to the implications of the abstraction of the state from civil society for the role he would like to attribute to civil society and how his key concepts of globalisation and civil society mask and displace imperialism and imperialist rivalries and their impacts on the Caribbean. Serbin is aware of the contradictory effects of neo-liberal reforms on the region but his argument does not break with the logic of the liberal globalisation paradigm which I discussed at length above. The crisis Caribbean states face in production, the effects of economic marginalisation, drug transhipment, gun violence, money laundering, corruption, illegal migration, violence against females, and other threats to the security of persons, groups and the state itself are integral to the political economy of imperialism, their particular national characteristics notwithstanding. Surely, from the perspective of the neo-Weberian logic of institutional political development, the facts seem to undermine the claim that state development equates to the ability of the state to control civil society and implement its agenda (Chowdhury 1999: 1095). With respect to Serbin’s idea of civil society it is necessary to probe the issue of how one builds consensus among unequally positioned interests, considering that the liberal “notion of a dialogical or pluralist space in which a diversity of positions is represented with the complacent notion that they are equally powerful” will not produce consensus. In fact, liberal notions of “plurality, multiplicity, and complexity” customarily “silence, occlude, and marginalize other positions and . . . suppress a . . . radical diversity” and inevitably settle for a “pluralistic dialogue” that privileges repressive tolerance under bourgeois norms. The prospects for real “openness in an unequal society … must be struggled over and built through a dialectical contestation that challenges the violent exclusions and breaks the silence of the hegemonic frames of intelligibility. . .” Serbin does not seem to understand that the struggle for an “emancipatory praxis” begins by locating the struggle over theory as a social and political struggle within the intellectual culture (Ebert 1996: 43-44, see Gulli 2002: 2-3). It is not helpful to equate any Caribbean state or any other post colonial state to aberrant or pathological state forms. The national state system is in crisis and the crisis and its aftermath also develop in different ways in each society. Theoretically and methodologically, it is pointless to rely on the taxonomy of the neo-Weberian ideal state form to explain the crisis of Caribbean states because such a state form is an abstraction from social reality. The challenge

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is to historicise post colonial states by locating them within the international system of which they are integral parts. A major problem with mainstream Caribbean international relations scholarship is that it is heavily conditioned by the “international relations scholarly discourse on North-South relations” that is “imbued through and through with the imperial representations that have preceded it” (Doty 1996: 166). The mainstream international relations discourse encourages a predisposition to lump Caribbean states with so-called “permanent underachievers” in ways that serve imperialist national security policy interests. Caribbean states like Jamaica, Haiti and Guyana have met the neo-liberal criteria of responsible states but this is also why they have been under acute pressure from within and without that aggravates the contradictions of decomposition. Neo-liberalism is a crisis management strategy for capitalism in the age of electronics where money rules, a reality that fosters the impression that globalisation and state sovereignty are incompatible. Such a notion thrives where globalisation is responsible for deconstructing the sovereignty of Caribbean states. Globalisation highlights the restructuring crisis the state is undergoing. The liberal version of freedom that almost all Caribbean states and their societies value is based on the necessary separation of politics from economics, sovereignty from civil society, and the market from the state, but it is incapable of preventing class polarisation, the explosion of class, ethnic and gender contradictions and certain forms of national decomposition. Mainstream Caribbean international relations scholarship is not equipped to address the problem of the alienation of power in Caribbean societies where the emphasis has been on ways to bring popular demands in line with the imperatives of the neo-Weberian and Huntingtonian formulae (Bilgin and Morton 2002); such a political model lacks the capacity to service popular demands. Caribbean workers, like other workers around the world, have to compete with machines and other smart tools for jobs as they deal with the strategic power of World Bank, the IMF, the WTO and the US state. The US subsumes its doctrine of free trade and open regionalism under its restructured national security doctrine. As pointed out above, Resolution 1080 of the OAS – the Santiago Commitment — commits the OAS and its member states to defend against “threats” to capitalism, state sovereignty and market democracy in any American republic (Bloomfield 1998: 126). Resolution 1080 acknowledges that the economies in the Western Hemisphere are deeply integrated with the American economy via investment, production, trade, finance, communications, transportation and geopolitical and military arrangements and it also redefines reciprocal collective security by placing the burden on LAC states to protect capitalism and market democracy. In this sense, Resolution 1080 confirms the ongoing reterritorialisation of sovereign autonomy by making the protection and mediation of global private property rights the primary focus of state

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sovereignty. Cooperation and security are among the themes and topics that dominate recent scholarship about US-Caribbean relations (Tulchin and Espach 2000). The US approach to closer cooperation in the Caribbean concentrates on isolating Cuba and increasing instability in the Caribbean. For the Caribbean region as a whole, an appreciation of the seriousness of the chronic problems in areas such as production, trade, markets, balance of payments, migration, drug trafficking, money laundering, employment, the environment, and military affairs is insufficient to engender mutuality. The US approach to issues like bananas, hemispheric integration with the US, the “shiprider agreement” and many other matters bears out this claim. The terms and conditions of the integration of the Caribbean with the United States reflect the way Caribbean economies are integrated into the heterogeneous division of labour in the Western Hemisphere that reproduces them as sites of low wage production and exports. It is difficult to imagine Caribbean economies forging a meaningful regional strategy to invent mutually reinforcing regional interests and put them ahead of narrowly conceived national interests when the deep material, scientific, technological and other inner structures and institutions for producing a region have neither been produced nor nurtured. The US does not define its regional security strategy in terms of how any given Caribbean state may feel about its sovereignty, rather the US expects Caribbean states to approach military and non-military regional security issues with a view of what is important to Washington. From such an angle, the idea of mutuality assumes that Caribbean states will monitor their own behaviour and that of their citizens and residents to avoid arousing the anger of the United States. Those who equate westernisation to democratic universalisation will insist that the West provides the model of meaningful universality that is suitable for security in the Americas (Rojas-Aravena 2000: 65). Cosmopolitanism built on inequality does not engender universalism. The neo-liberal crisis management strategy Caribbean states have embraced accelerates integration with the outside world, mindful that this would appear to be the next best option for states and capital that lack the capacity to build viable integration strategies for regional viability in a world dominated by imperialism.

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Gros, Jean-Germain. 1996. “Towards a taxonomy of failed states in the New World Order: decaying Somalia, Liberia, Rwanda and Haiti”. Third World Quarterly, 17.3: 455-471. Gulli, Bruno. 2002. “Praxis and the Danger: The Insurgent Ontology of Antonio Gramsci” http://eserver.org/clogic/2002/gulli.html Hall, John. 1996. International Orders, Cambridge: Polity Press Harris, Jerry. 1998/99. “Globalisation and the Technological Transformation of Capitalism”. Race & Class 40. 2/3: 21-35. Holloway, John. 1995. “Global Capital and the National State”. In Global Capital, National State and the Politics of Money, edited by Werner Bonefeld and John Holloway. New York: St Martin’s Press. Holloway, Steven. 2002. US Unilateralism at the UN: Why Great Powers do not make Great Multilateralists”. In Global Governance 6: 361-381. Hoogvelt, Ankie. 2001. Globalisation and the Postcolonial World: The New Political Economy of Development. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press. Jahn, Beate. 2001. The Cultural Construction of International Relations. London and New York: Palgrave. Kaldor, Mary and Basker Vashee, eds. 1997. New Wars, London: Pinter. Kaldor, Mary, Ulrich Albrecht and Geneviève Scméder, eds. 1998. The End of Military Fordism, London: Pinter. Kaldor, Mary. 1999. New and Old Wars: Organized Violence in a Global Era. Cambridge: Polity Press. Kegley, Charles W. and Eugene Wittkopf. 2001. World Politics: Trend and Transformation New York: St Martin’s. Keohane, Robert and Joseph Nye. 1977. Power and Interdependence. Boston: Little, Brown and Co. Klare, Michael. 2002. Resource Wars: The New landscape of Global Conflict. New York: Holtzbrinck Publishers. Kolko, Joyce and Gabriel Kolko. 1972. The Limits of Power. New York: Harper and Row. Krasner, Stephen. 1983. International Regimes. Ithaca: Cornell University Press. Landau, Saul. 1987. The Dangerous Doctrine. Boulder: Westview Press. Litwak, Robert S. 2000. Rogue States and U. S. Foreign Policy. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press. Lindquist, Sven. 1996. Exterminate All the Brutes. One Man’s Odyssey into the Heart of Darkness and the Origins of European Genocide, translated from the Swedish by Joan Tate. New York: The New Press. Luckham, R. 1984. “Of Arms and Culture”. Current Research on Peace and Violence VII I: 1-64. Malik, Kenan. 1996. The Meaning of Race. New York: New York University Press. Marx, Karl. 1968 Selected Works. New York: International Publishers. 1973. The Grundrisse. Harmondsworth: Penguin. 1977. Capital, Volume 1, New York: Vintage. Marx, Karl and F. Engels. 1977. “The Communist Manifesto”. In Karl Marx: Selected Writings, edited by D. McLellan, 221-47. Oxford: Oxford University Press: 221-47. Noble, David W. 1998. “The Anglo-Protestant Monopolization of ‘America’”. In José Martí’s ‘Our America’: From National to Hemispheric Cultural Studies, edited by Jeffrey Belnap and Raúl Fernández. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.

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Ougaard, Morten. 1999. “NAFTA, the EU and Deficient Global Institutionality”. In Economic Integration in NAFTA and the EU: Deficient Institutionality, edited by Kirsten Appendini and Sven Bislev. New York: St Martin’s Press. Panitch, Leo. 1998. “Globalisation and the Future of the Nation-State”. A Lecture delivered by Leo Panitch, Professor of Political Science, York University, Toronto, Canada, at Bucknell University Langone Center. Sponsored by the Social Science Colloquium Series Program, February 18, 1998. Petras, James. 2002. “The Myth of the Third Technological-Scientific Revolution in the Era of Neo-Mercantilist Empires”. In Latin American Perspectives, 29. 127: 44-58. Pilger, John. 2002. The New Rulers of the World. London and New York: Verso. Ramsay, Maureen. 1997. What’s Wrong with Liberalism: A Radical Critique of Liberal Political Philosophy. London: Leicester University Press Rengger, N. J. 2000. International Relations, Political Theory and the Problem of Order: Beyond International Relations Theory? London: Routledge. Reuten, Geert and Michael Williams. 1989. Value-Form and the State: The Tendencies of Accumulation and the Determination of Economic Policy in Capitalist Society. London: Routledge. Robotham, Don. 2001. “Crime and Public Policy in Jamaica”. In Wadabagei - A Journal of the Caribbean and its Diaspora, Vol 4, (Summer/ Fall), No 2, Rojas-Aravena, Francisco. 2000. “New Security Agenda in the Caribbean: Challenge of Cooperation”. In Security in the Caribbean Basin: the challenge of regional cooperation, edited by Joseph Tulchin and Ralph Espach. Boulder: Colorado: Lynne Rienner Publishers. Rosenau, James N. 1995. “Sovereignty in a Turbulent World”. In Beyond Westphalia? State Sovereignty and International Intervention, edited by Gene M. Lyons and Michael Mastanduno. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press. Rosenberg, Justin. 1994. The Empire of Civil Society: A Critique of the Realist Theory of International Relations, London: Verso Press. 2000. The Follies of Globalisation Theory. London: Verso Books. Rupert, Mark. 2000. Ideologies of Globalisation: Contending Visions of a New World Order. London: Routledge. Salamé, Ghassan. 2001. “New Issues at Stake in War and Peace: Post-Cold War Wars”. In The New International Relations: Theory and Practice, edited by Marie-Claude Smouts, trans. from the French by Jonathan Derrick. New York: Palgrave in association with the Centre d’Etudes et de Recherches Internationales, Paris. Serewicz, Lawrence W. 2002. “Globalisation, Sovereignty and the Military Revolution: From Mercenaries to Private International Security Companies”. In International Politics 39.1: 75-89. Shaw, Martin 2000. “The Contemporary Mode of Warfare? Mary Kaldor’s Theory of New Wars”. Review of International Political Economy, 7:1, 171-80. Smouts, Marie-Claude, ed. 2001. The New International Relations: Theory and Practice, trans. from the French by Jonathan Derrick. New York: Palgrave in association with the Centre d’Etudes et de Recherches Internationales, Paris. Spruyt, Hendrik. 1994. The Sovereign State and Its Competitors, Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press. Steiner, George. 1996. No Passion Spent: Essays 1978-1996. London: Faber. Tabb, Willaim. 2002. Unequal Partners: A Primer on Globalisation, New York: New Press

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Todorov, Tzvetan. 1984. The Conquest of America: The Question of the Other. New York: Harper and Row. Tucker, Robert W. and David C. Hendrickson. 1990. Empire of Liberty: The Statecraft of Thomas Jefferson. New York: Oxford University Press Tulchin, Joseph and Ralph Espach, eds. 2000. Security in the Caribbean Basin: the challenge of regional cooperation. Boulder, C.O.: Lynne Rienner Publishers. Valtonen, Pekka. 1999. “The Challenges of Regionalism: Unbalanced Integration in the Americas”. In Economic Integration in NAFTA and the EU: Deficient Institutionality, edited by Kirsten Appendini and Sven Bislev. New York: St Martin’s Press. van der Pijl, Kees. 1998. Transnational Classes and International Relations. London: Routledge. Wallerstein, Immanuel et al. 1996. Open the Social Sciences: Report of the Gulbenkian Commission on the Restructuring of the Social Sciences. Stanford: Stanford University Press. Watson, Hilbourne A. 2001. “The Racialisation of Global Politics and the Caribbean Experience”. In Alternatives 26.4: 449-483. Wood, Ellen Meiksins, Peter Meiksins, and Michael Yales, eds. 1998. Rising From The Ashes?: Labour in the Age of “Global” Capitalism, New York: Monthly Review Press.

Notes 1

“Punishing Saddam”, 60 Minutes, CBS Television, May 12, 1996, cited in Pilger 2002: 61.

2

Robert Brenner’s explanation of crisis in the advanced capitalist economies – in mainly the US, Germany, and Japan – emphasises issues of declining profitability that affect investment, productivity of labour and capital, wages and employment. Central to Brenner’s account are overcapacity, overproduction and the lack of planning and coordination in the capitalist economy (Brenner 1998: 2-10). Brenner subordinates class struggle to the logic of competition in accounting for the dynamic of the capitalist process around growth and recession. He does not agree that workers by and large set out to attack the rate of capital accumulation, as they are aware of their dependence on the expansion of the capitalist process for jobs and wages. Three key points arise here: workers are part of that self-monitoring civil society that regulates itself in defense of the market and the rights of capital from the logic of competition (market) subjects; workers do not necessarily see themselves as the sources of the surplus value that is capital, and workers’ existential self-understandings do not necessarily equip them with working class consciousness by virtue of being sellers of labour power to capital.

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3

Western concepts of meaningful time and meaningless time do not break down at the simple level of Occidentalism versus Orientalism. See Noble 1998 and Carrier 1992 for details.

4

See Kaldor and Vashee (1997) and Kaldor (1999) for a discussion of old warfare, Kaldor’s analysis of the Clausewitzian concept of war, the ways in which twentieth century warfare departed from Clausewitz’s model of war. See Shaw (2000: 173-180) for an interpretation of some of the problems in Kaldor’s formulation of the concept of new war. Shaw criticises Kaldor for restricting the “significance of new wars by overemphasising their separation from continuing interstate war and by understating how far genocidal tendencies have come to dominate in contemporary war as a whole” (Shaw 2000: 178).

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F O U R

RETHINkING INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS: CHANGING PARADIGMS OR MORE OF THE SAME? A CARIBBEAN SMALL STATE PERSPECTIvE JESSICA BYRON

I

n international relations theory, as in history, it is useful to take a long rather than a short-term view of the world. The contours and significance of events come more clearly into focus when viewed from a distance and we see the wood rather than just the individual trees. In evaluating the significance of “9/11/ 2001”, it helps to start with an earlier watershed in international politics, namely the end of the Cold War and the collapse of the Soviet Union, the power structures and alliances that defined the era from 1945 to circa 1990. New paradigms are not created instantaneously. In times of crisis, actors revisit what already exists and shape it to fit the new situation. A tremendous amount of theorising has taken place in the post-Cold War decade, and it is these ideas which are now being applied, discarded or modified after 9/11. The end of the Cold War, though momentous, was certainly not the end of history as prematurely proclaimed by Francis Fukuyama. It was the collapse of a specific bipolar axis of power at the global level. Beneath this were seething masses of regional, national and sub-national tensions and conflicts, and a diverse mix of ideologies, identities and nationalisms which assumed greater prominence thereafter. The last decade of the 20th century juxtaposed the former against the reinforcement of Western dominance, symbolised most graphically in the promotion of neo-liberal values and a globalised free market economy. The post-Cold War period has not seen much of the promised peace dividend. Indeed, it can be argued that 9/11 was the culmination of the chronic governance and developmental problems of the past decade, which quickly put an end to the euphoric “Brave New World” sentiments expressed in some quarters at the end of the Cold War. This paper will discuss some of the theoretical developments in international relations during the last 15 years which relate to the theme of governance. I begins by defining governance, and then gives an overview of some theoretical areas which address issues of governance at the international level. It examines

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the impact of 9/11 on these international relations paradigms and, conversely, their likely impact on the world after 9/11. The final section of the paper analyses the implications of both the pre - 9/11 and post - 9/11 periods and paradigms for the Caribbean region.

Governance: a fashionable but fluid concept The term “governance” has been used extensively, and rather loosely, in a variety of contexts since the 1980s. Although it is supposed to be distinct from the concept of “government”, the two terms appear at times to be used interchangeably, particularly in the Caribbean discourse on governance. They are, of course, linked by the notions of regulation and order inherent in both, and by the fact that governance, with its emphasis on coordination and steering, harks back to the classical Greek idea of government as the art of steering a ship.1 However, reference texts generally differentiate governance from government by describing the latter as “the formal and institutional processes which operate at the national level to maintain order and facilitate collective action. . .core functions are legislation, implementation of the law and adjudication”.2 Governance, in one sense, has a broader meaning. It is said to involve a much larger number of actors from state and non-state sectors, and it is a more informal process of consultation and coordination. Although governance is associated in the literature with notions of regulation and control,3 this takes place without there necessarily being a sovereign central authority with the right to use force. Heywood4 identifies the main processes of governance as the interaction of markets, hierarchies and networks. Markets regulate through the forces of supply and demand, while hierarchies, which include state bureaucracies, exercise control through vertical authority systems. Networks are said to have more informal, possibly less authoritarian, organisational forms and, in the sphere of governance, usually consist of some types of non-governmental organisations. Keohane and Nye add to this the idea of the “geography of governance”, which means that governance not only involves actors other than the nation-state, but it takes place on supranational, national and subnational levels5. Governance is a complex and demanding process which fundamentally changes the political environment, the relationships and eventually the modus operandi among the participants. This notion of governance has been promoted since the 1980s in response to growing recognition of political, economic and societal changes at the national and international levels and the impossibility of governmental authorities regulating social activities on their own. The concept of governance is therefore linked, to some extent, to neo-liberal propositions about a reduced role for governments and to debates on reforming the state and democratic processes nationally and globally. However, this broad concept has also been criticised

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for its imprecision and for the lack of accountability implicit in loose processes of coordination. Such criticisms have been voiced, in particular, about the notion of global governance. Sceptics have questioned the efficacy of regulation without a central authority and have also expressed the view that the power vacuums in global governance processes will lead to disproportionate influence and little accountability for powerful private sector interests. The term governance is also used in a more restricted and prescriptive sense, notably by major Western states and the international financial institutions. Good governance connotes managerial efficiency, accountability and transparency, particularly where public goods are involved. These two conceptions of governance are not incompatible. However, they have tended to be used by different actors for different purposes. The broader definition has been the concern of interest groups seeking a greater degree of participation in decisionmaking processes at the national, regional and global levels. The narrower concept of good governance has been the primary concern of the international donor community, sometimes to the exclusion of other dimensions of governance, and it is used extensively in their dealings with developing countries (although corruption is a worldwide phenomenon). Globalisation, interdependence and far-reaching changes within the nationstate as well as in the international political system have made governance a major theme in international relations policy and theoretical discussions. The concept of global governance assumed centre stage in the 1990s. International governance arrangements were seen as the key to coping with the major changes in international and national politics that were underway, and to complementing the eroded capabilities of the nation-state. In fact, some commentators argued that if effective governance structures did not evolve to manage the challenges posed by globalisation, there would be major risks to international peace and security. 6 Governance, with its emphasis on participation, consultation and policy coordination among many actors, seemed to be a formula for democratising international structures. International regimes were promoted as the way to manage global problems of trade and finance, the natural environment, human rights etc. Finally, regional integration, particularly in the European Union, was leading to multi-level governance systems7 which increasingly supplemented state-centric forms of political and economic organisation. The policy focus on global governance has been paralleled by the development of global governance theory. For Hewson and Sinclair, this theoretical area has been a valuable tool for analysing changes in the international system and their political implications.8 They identify three principal streams of global governance theory. Theories on institution-building and the evolution of international regimes probably have the longest association with global governance9 but are regarded as the least dynamic of the three

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streams. The second theoretical focus received a tremendous boost during the 1990s. It concerned the reform, restructuring and new roles for international organisations in the post-Cold War era. Although literature on these policy issues has been prolific, most studies have limited themselves to the United Nations system. Work on the activities of global civil society and on regional organisations has, regrettably, progressed more slowly. The final stream of global governance theory, viewed by the authors as the most promising one, concerns the study of the social and economic forces, thrown up by globalisation, which are influencing the course of global governance. Such forces include global civil society networks and counter-globalisation coalitions, global business elites and knowledge communities. Their actions will ultimately determine the form and substance of globalisation and of its regulation.10 This perspective on global governance, which emphasises the roles of markets, epistemic communities and new technologies, arguably has the potential to lead to a deeper and more comprehensive understanding of global change.

Interna ti onal Rel ati ons Theo ry and the Theme o f Internati tio Rela tio Theor of Governance Theoretical discourse in international relations (IR) has always been intimately associated with themes of governance, given IR’s core concepts of the state, power and international order. Governance issues came even more to the forefront during the 1990s. Sorensen identifies three principal issue areas debated in the literature of this period: globalisation, sovereign statehood and world order.11 On the one hand, the discipline of international relations experienced a type of crisis of relevance, since clear-cut boundaries between the domestic and the external seemed to be dissolving and the nation-state came under siege as the main unit of political organisation. On the other hand, the turbulence of the decade brought about a renaissance for international relations theory and its revitalisation through increased contact with other disciplines in the Social Sciences and beyond. On one level, an intense debate was staged between the proponents of neorealism and neo-liberalism. In a similar fashion to the way in which an earlier liberal paradigm, liberal internationalism, had been debunked after the collapse of the League of Nations and the global crisis of the 1930s, now theorists identified the many shortcomings of realism in depicting the shape of the international system and the behaviour of its actors.12 Realism’s critics particularly targeted its static perspectives on governance of the international system, charging that they were inadequate as policy guides for the contemporary environment – the emphasis on hegemonic control and order, the territorial state as the central unit of political, economic and social organisation and the traditional approaches to power and security. Most of this seemed outmoded and misplaced in a post-

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Cold War, globalised world. However, initial trends toward total rejection of the realist paradigm gave way to a more measured rethink of realism’s core concepts of the state, security and power. Some realist contributions which stand out during the past decade include John Mearsheimer’s “Back to the Future” article which asks sobering questions about the organising principles for Europe after bipolarity in an age of nuclear proliferation,13 Samuel Huntington’s controversial piece on “The Clash of Civilizations”14 which seeks to establish a new framework for conflict analysis, Barry Buzan’s thoughtful article entitled “The Timeless Wisdom of Realism”,15 and Kenneth Waltz’s thoughts on the dangers of unipolarity.16 However disturbing some of these analyses may seem, they are insightful about recurrent patterns of human behaviour which emerge in times of flux, the prospects for long-term global instability and the undesirability of any state exercising overwhelming power vis-à-vis the rest of the international community. Another concern very much related to contemporary issues dates back to even older realist writings – the challenge of reconciling order and cultural/civilisational diversity in an increasingly heterogeneous international society.17 This theme has re-emerged with the critique and reinterpretation of realist texts by postmodern writers seeking to deconstruct realist interpretations of international history. More anon on that subject. The 1990s also witnessed the ascendance of neo-liberalism, fuelled by technological change and economic globalisation. The proponents of neoliberalism generally have a vested interest in preserving the environment that its principles produce. It has therefore tended to be presented as an ideology which is not to be questioned. However, inevitably, it has gone through a number of modifications as the flaws and risks of operating an unregulated global market economy have emerged. International organisations during the past decade have documented ever-increasing international and national inequities with deepening poverty and marginalisation in many countries (cite ECLAC and UNDP publications). There has been chronic instability in the international financial markets, most notably the Asian Crisis of 1997 and a series of more recent crises in Russia and Latin America. To many observers, there is a need for more effective checks and balances among the various forces in the global economy. There are growing perceptions of and hostility towards Western cultural and economic imperialism encompassed in neo-liberal values. Also, personal, community and national insecurity has intensified in many parts of the globe. Neo-liberalism appears unable to provide a universal formula for peace and security and extend the zone of stability and well-being beyond core liberal states. The challenges of power, security, governance and conflicting value systems in the neo-liberal world system have become its Achilles heel. This has engendered one of the most fertile areas of debate in contemporary international relations theory leading, for example, to the convergence between neo-realism and neo-liberalism contained in neo-liberal institutionalism, and

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also to the debate within Liberalism itself on its origins, alternative positions and possible reform routes.18 But international relations theory has also progressed way beyond the intellectual straitjackets earlier imposed by these two mainstream paradigms which, interesting though they may be, generally view the rest of the world merely as a backdrop and arena for the activities of industrial and post-industrial states. Sorensen19 refers to the proliferation of “dissident theoretical voices” after the Cold War. We mention but a few of these which have particular relevance for the theme of governance. One fruitful growth area has been in the sphere of international political economy. A resurgence of neo-Marxist perspectives on the evolution of the global capitalist system has shed new light on the power relations between the different parts of the global economy, changing modes of production, shifts in the international division of labour and in the international political economy of governance. In this broad genre, three writers focus critical attention on the deepening socioeconomic polarisation resulting from globalisation and the issues posed for governance. Ankie Hoogvelt observes that the current global division of labour has produced “a core-periphery hierarchy (that is) no longer a geographic division between nations but a social one that cuts across nations”.20 While there remains a broad polarisation of industrialised and developing countries, the globe can more accurately be envisioned as a series of concentric circles of people, a small proportion of whom are integrated into the formal economy while the vast majority (up to 50 per cent in some developing countries) are marginalised from the global market economy. Hoogvelt points to the governance implications of this situation, namely the “politics of exclusion” implicit in much neo-liberal policy, which operate in the domestic context by tackling social problems primarily with law and order solutions. Equally at the international level, the programmes of major international organisations in the 1990s, in the eyes of some observers, appeared to focus mainly on global disaster relief and global riot control.21 Samir Amin22 refers equally to the deepening marginalisation of large sections of the world’s population and the crisis management regimes induced by the globalisation of capital. He dwells extensively on the failure of the developmental project, the disintegration of the nation-state and the rise of ethnic ideologies in developing societies. Amin feels that it is impossible to roll back the interdependence and connectivity brought about by globalisation but recommends “negotiated interdependence”.23 This would entail a more interventionist multilateral governance system, akin to a world government, in which policies would focus on the regulation of market forces, redistribution and the management of global environmental resources for the common good. Amin also sees a major role for regional governance, particularly for capital markets and monetary systems. He

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concludes that this counter-project to globalisation can only be implemented if social forces capable of carrying it out are consolidated within nation states. The third voice is that of Robert Cox24 whose Critical Theory interprets a broad sweep of world history in demonstrating the processes whereby global, social and political orders have evolved and replaced one another over time, the relationship between global forces of production, hegemonic political structures and actors, and the socioeconomic forces operating within national societies. These are the principal engines behind the evolution of world order. Cox devotes much time to examining alternatives to contemporary features of world order, namely the possibilities for a post-globalisation, post-hegemonic and post-Westphalian order, by historical investigations of how earlier societies responded to periods of change in the overall political order. He sees the existing structures of world order as being maintained by a coalition of intergovernmental economic institutions as well as less formal consultative bodies and thinktanks, a complex of transnational financial actors and finally, covert organisations of various kinds.25 The potential for the emergence of counterhegemonic forces lies in the presence in all societies of excluded and precarious sectors which periodically join forces in the form of social movements. The reconstitution of an active civil society at the international, national and subnational levels is therefore an essential prerequisite for counter-hegemony. Another may lie in the deep-seated tensions that arise between the pressure of a homogenising global economy and what Cox refers to as “the different forms of political economy that express civilizational differences”.26 In addition to their critique of the social effects of neo-liberal policies and globalisation, these writers all emphasise the close link between domestic and transnational developments and forces. Finally, while they make detailed analyses of the structures of hegemony and exploitation, they all give credence to the power of human agency to transform or maintain these structures. There are many other dissident voices in the realm of recent IR theorising, too numerous for the scope of this paper. I refer only to some categories of critical theory which have implications for the sphere of governance and for the post-9/11 global society. Feminist international relations thinkers since the late 1980s have strongly made the point that mainstream IR theory defined a limited world which relegated many subjects to the margins and missed out huge chunks of human activity (women, children, indigenous peoples, stateless people, people from developing countries, ethnic minorities).27 This has inevitably led to flawed, partial policy prescriptions for the management of international issues. The work of feminist international relations researchers and activists has had a noticeable impact by introducing greater gender awareness and, to some extent, a more inclusive approach into many areas of international policy-making and programmatic activity. Another key area, albeit still embryonic, is ecological theory which

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challenges the notion of the human being as the central entity on the planet, dismisses the idea that the state is the most efficacious form of social organisation and contends that human survival is ultimately dependent on the functioning of the ecological life support systems of the planet. This theoretical perspective views contemporary models of economic production and growth as being responsible for the deepening global ecological crisis. The theory completely rethinks the concepts of sovereignty, security and property rights and it explores structures of governance at the sub-national, national, regional and global levels which would lead to better management of the global environment.28 Ecological and environmental thinkers are exerting a growing influence on contemporary analyses of global security issues as is evidenced by the concern with resourcebased conflicts and with the destabilising effects of large-scale movements of environmental refugees.29 Postmodern writers have launched a powerful critique of both realism and liberalism in their exploration of key concepts and values in these mainstream international relations theories and their reinterpretations of 19th and 20th century international history. Their work has opened up important spaces for the perspectives of Southern actors. Mark Salter, for example, drawing on the work of two prominent Caribbean thinkers, Aimé Césaire (1972) and Frantz Fanon (1963, 1967), explores the issues of race, culture and identity in international relations by tracing the European philosophical and policy discourse on civilisation and barbarism. The latter was central in defining the boundaries and rules of the European state system, and later the international community. It buttressed a European identity by distinguishing Europeans from barbarian ‘Others’ and justified imperial and colonial projects. The colonised were invisible and were not official subjects in the international community, violence against them and unjust colonial rule were seldom scrutinised or recorded, as “the rules of civilised warfare and civilised governance were not applicable to barbarians”.30 The human rights records of major Western states would look far more tarnished, for instance, if the violations that took place during decolonisation struggles in Kenya or Algeria, to name a couple, were fully documented. The civilising mission was discredited with the outbreak of 20th century world wars and the collapse of empires. European insecurities were redirected against barbarism within their own societies, identified as fascism and totalitarianism. This climate would ultimately favour decolonisation struggles and the expansion of international society in the second half of the 20th century. Nonetheless, in mainstream IR literature, colonial stereotypes remained in the portrayal of many post colonial states as weak, underdeveloped and essentially pawns in the Western state system. Salter perceives the continued presence of the barbarian/civilised theme in the post-Cold War notion of an international community divided into two spheres – an inner core of peaceful, prosperous,

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developed states and an outer periphery of violent, unstable, impoverished and fragmented territories. It resonates even more in the literature and policy statements on new security threats – the evocation of civilisational conflicts, concerns about the definition of national interest in multicultural societies, the policy discourse on global demographic trends. As Salter puts it, “. . .rhetoric of empire striking back. . .anxiety about the ‘return of the repressed’ (are) common themes in much popular analysis of post-Cold War politics”.31 Although postmodern readings of IR have sometimes been dismissed as ‘the tallest story’,32 they provide opportunities to revisit established accounts of historical events and to uncover completely different perspectives and experiences. They also lead to a more critical evaluation of contemporary policies of exclusion and marginalisation. This may provide a powerful tool for challenging and modifying dominant values and norms in the international system in the interest of more effective, more participatory global governance. A final category of literature that has burgeoned during the past decade, and is central to the Caribbean interest in governance, is the work on regionalism. This is, of course, a subset of the literature on multilateralism. Studies of regionalism, in addition to recording the growth of and changes in the phenomenon, have focused on (1) the internal and external factors encouraging states’ and non-state actors’ new interest in regional organisation; (2) the compatibility or lack thereof between regional and global economic arrangements and the extent to which regional trade areas produce greater prosperity for their members and benefit the international trade system as a whole; (3) the role of regional hegemons; (4) the development of institutions at the regional level and their implications for national and global governance.33 As regional arrangements have deepened and spread in Europe and North America and renewed themselves in Latin America and the Caribbean, Africa and South-East Asia, it has become evident that regionalism is an integral response to globalisation, destined to have a long -term impact on states’ political, security and economic structures. In the post-Cold War era, the traditional multilateral system (the United Nations) has been plagued by limited resources and by the growing unilateralism of its most powerful member. To most observers, recent international institution-building and regime creation have been driven by the demands of the globalised economy and by the neo-liberal political/ ideological project. Ngaire Woods emphasises the long-term ineffectiveness of such global governance mechanisms which are controlled by a minority of states and which have not remedied deep-seated issues of human inequality.34 The focus in multilateralism, therefore, for many state actors has shifted to the regional level and Mistry comments on the governance implications of this fact:

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The new multilateralism will be built with regional blocs being the key consultants in global decision-making structures, with nation-states having a direct say at the regional rather than multilateral level, as they do now.35

International Relations after 9/11 These, then, are the general directions in which IR paradigms moved after the Cold War – heavily influenced by neo-liberal thought, either endorsing it or critiquing it, reacting to it, seeking to go beyond it. The first, most obvious shift since September 11, 2001, is an overwhelming return by major powers, the United States in particular, to a realist paradigm, to a security mindset similar to that which prevailed at the height of the Cold War. Many of the realist theories of the post-Cold War period are coming into their own. Security and alliance concerns and military power are taking precedence over issues of commerce, capital flows, freedom of movement, civil liberties and cultural pluralism. Allied to this shift is a marked increase in unilateralist behaviour by the United States. That trend was visible before 9/11. The Clinton administration practised a nuanced form of multilateralism based on getting multilateral institutions and coalitions to carry out US objectives. At times, however, they refused to support multilateral initiatives, as evidenced by the agreement establishing the International Criminal Court. Under the successor Bush administration, unilateral behaviour has sharply increased with the abrogation of the ABM Treaty, the refusal to sign the Kyoto Protocol, a further rejection of the Agreement to establish an International Criminal Court, unilateral moves in the WTO, disregard for the Geneva Convention on prisoners of war, intraalliance strains, and an apparent new eagerness to go to war against Iraq, perhaps even without the support of their Western allies. One psychological impact of 9/11 and the war in Afghanistan has been a sharp increase in the confidence and militancy of the US administration. Their assessment of American power and influence has strengthened dramatically.36 The manner in which US hegemony is exercised has shifted towards more coercive, less consensual tactics. The third feature of the present epoch is rising civilisational intolerance and a breakdown in inter-cultural dialogue. Huntington’s scenario of a clash of civilisations has been influential in shaping perceptions and policies in the United States towards the Islamic world in particular. The return of the realist paradigm has meant a negation of Liberal values – the imposition of new restrictions on the movement of people and on the flow of information and of ideas. It has meant a retreat for the United States from the promotion of electoral democracy in various countries (witness the support expressed for the coup attempt in Venezuela in April 2002). Above all, it seems likely to slow down considerably the liberalisation of trade in goods and services

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and the free flow of capital, due to the contradictions between these activities and security concerns and border controls. It has caused regional groupings to assume new security functions.37 Finally it has brought about a return to and legitimisation of more state intervention in the economy to prop up ailing sectors. However, notwithstanding the similarities with earlier epochs, some aspects of the new realist era have been profoundly altered by globalisation. High levels of interdependence cannot be rolled back. Nor can the importance of economic power or transnational financial actors. Military power by itself is meaningless. Hence there are various attempts to reconcile economic liberalisation with security regulation which will generate policy contradictions for some time to come. The nature of warfare has also been significantly changed by new technologies and interdependence. During the last decade, the United States has forged ahead with new generations of military technology designed to conduct remote control war and increase the invulnerability of its personnel. Nonetheless, 9/11 was the quintessential new type of conflict – an invisible enemy striking from within, the porosity and vulnerability of modern society based on sophisticated communications and transport systems, an enemy with no forwarding address, the decision to make a retaliatory strike at the nearest possible state-based match for an opponent, abandonment on both sides of the Geneva Convention rules of combat and high levels of “collateral damage” i.e. civilians on both sides. The nature of warfare changed forever and even highly militarised societies are now more vulnerable to terrorism than ever before. There is the related danger of a paranoid response to this threat by a superpower experiencing, for the first time in its history, an unprecedented level of vulnerability. This new environment has pushed to the back burner many of the other agendas envisaged in the post-Cold War era: the reaffirmation of different cultures and civilisations, a greater concern with human rights issues, the participation of non-state actors in global governance processes, sustainable human development issues. One of the pressing tasks for small developing states and for civil society actors is to work to salvage these projects and to transform the operations of international institutions.

How can these theoretical perspectives inform Caribbean foreign policy and praxis? Embattled by economic liberalisation and global capitalist restructuring in the 1990s, some Caribbean actors have at times expressed nostalgia for the Cold War and the strategic value the region possessed at that time, since aid and preferential trade arrangements derived therefrom. However, the return to a realist framework and the new wave of regionalisation have demonstrated the

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extent to which the Caribbean has already adapted to post-Cold War globalisation. Caribbean economies and societies have become quite dependent on trade in services, on an open world economy, on a dynamic North American economy and on our populations’ ability to move freely between the North American mainland and its Caribbean periphery. In fact, ironically, a liberal paradigm of free trade and fluid inter-societal relations, provided it undergoes some modification, suits Caribbean interests better than a realist, securityoriented framework. The latter may well be inimical to Caribbean economic survival in the contemporary world order. And yet, given the new global security context, it is impossible to abandon a realist paradigm altogether. A constant factor for this hemisphere is the reality of US hegemony, and US relations with its neighbours are always guided to a greater or lesser extent by security considerations. This is particularly the case in the Caribbean Basin which functions as a strategic offshore facility for US activities and programmes and finds itself caught up in the US security agenda directly or indirectly. Moreover, many Caribbean territories are deeply dependent on service sectors such as tourism, which are particularly vulnerable to the threat of terrorism and require secure, peaceful international and local environments in order to prosper. Presently, the institutions that manage hemispheric interdependence are undergoing significant change, driven by shifts in US national security strategy and policy38 and in some cases, intensifying conflict and instability within some countries in the region. Examples include the deepening militarisation of US-Colombian relations, US policy towards the Venezuelan administration and the deepening political turbulence there, the continued designation of Cuba by the US administration as a terrorist state after 9/11, the US decision to locate its Taliban and Al-Quaida prisoners in Camp Zero, Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, simmering US-Puerto Rican tensions over the military activities conducted on the island of Vieques.39 Even the “Third Border Initiative” announced in 2001 has elements of US security concerns embedded in its health and education programmes for the Caribbean. Nonetheless it may also represent a more enlightened, potentially more participatory, approach to shared security and developmental issues generated by geographical proximity and interdependence. The issues listed above are indicative of the challenging foreign policy agenda that small Caribbean states confront. They have to balance their economic interdependence and need for free flows of goods, services, people and ideas with the necessity to maintain regulatory controls and meet the security requirements of metropolitan partners, particularly the United States. They have to contend with the periodic contradictions that arise between policies and concerns of the US hegemon and regional trends, such as the deepening integration of Cuba into the Caribbean. As the Western hemisphere becomes an increasingly significant diplomatic arena for them, they need to monitor with

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much greater attention political and economic developments throughout Latin America, particularly in the countries that border on the Caribbean Sea, and in the economically significant MERCOSUR region. While hemispheric relations as a whole require considerable diplomatic attention and shrewd negotiating skills, the management of the US-Caribbean relationship poses particular challenges for small developing states, and requires a theoretical, historical and practical understanding of power relations in international politics. Another theoretical development that can be fruitfully explored in the Caribbean is the widening concept of the state. The traditional definition of the state emphasised territory and a fixed population, governmental machinery and the exercise of sovereignty vis-à-vis the external environment. This has often seemed problematic in the Caribbean context: micro-states, multi-island states, deep-seated economic dependence on the external environment, farflung diasporas and numerous dependent territories, which nonetheless enjoy some degree of decision-making autonomy. Different models of political unit need to be explored in order to maximise community and societal participation in governance and strengthen the economic viability of Caribbean territories. We need to strengthen links with Caribbean diasporic communities who represent an ever-increasing proportion of the region’s people. They should be involved to a greater extent in the affairs of the region and their human and economic resources utilised more effectively. Such transnational links should also enable Caribbean societies to have greater political and economic leverage within the metropolitan countries of Europe and North America, in particular, where most of our diasporas are located, and also to strengthen our cooperative ties with the ancestral continents of Africa and Asia and with the small, but increasingly significant diasporas in Latin American countries. Finally, such rethinking of sovereignty and explorations of alternative forms of community will ultimately strengthen Caribbean regionalism, both within CARICOM and in the wider Caribbean. It should help the region to develop and apply notions of regional governance, rather than simply the more restrictive regional government machinery which we currently grapple with. Another theoretical, yet deeply practical question that is of vital importance for small states in the Caribbean concerns the nature of the multilateral system. What kind of multilateral framework and international environment would be most favourable to small societies and to human development in general? The normative dimension immediately comes to mind. Caribbean states should at all times seek to promote a strong multilateral system based on international law, norms of social justice, equity and human well-being. It is in the interests of small societies to protect the multilateral system and to constantly lobby for a focus on human development issues. In this regard, Caribbean intellectuals should continue to lead the way in developing an epistemic community on the vulnerabilities as well as developmental possibilities of small size. Issue areas

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that are obvious targets of small state concern include the norms that govern trade and investment flows: the possibilities for bolstering special and differential treatment within the World Trade Organisation and the time frames available for adjustment to the rules of economic liberalisation; norms that protect the environment and promote sustainable human development; HIV/AIDS which should continue to receive maximum attention as a huge threat to Caribbean populations and to humanity in general; the harnessing of communications technology for development purposes; food security, education and health; the development and participation of all human resources, particularly women and youth; respect for ethnic and cultural diversity. Finally, Caribbean actors cannot afford to stay out of the security debates that currently preoccupy the international community. They will be as deeply affected as the rest of the world by the consequences of international conflict. They should seek to avoid the parochialism that can at times characterise small societies, form strategic alliances and adopt carefully considered positions on issues of international peace and security. In the contemporary era, regional governance is a crucial issue area for states in general, and for the Caribbean region in particular. Not only is it the most immediate and manageable sphere of international relations but smoothly functioning regional machinery should also enable small states to exert greater influence at the global level. There are at least three levels of regionalism that concern us, namely the hemispheric level, the sphere of the Greater Caribbean or Caribbean Basin and the CARICOM level. There is an organic link among all these levels: norms that are promoted and practised in any one sphere will inevitably affect relations in another one, and there should be policy coherence at the international, regional and sub-regional levels. Can CARICOM states, for example, implement free movement of labour on one level, yet discourage it on another? There are currently a number of issues in regional governance that require urgent academic as well as practical attention. The institutions that manage relations in the wider Caribbean need to be strengthened. The increased movement of people not only within the CARICOM sub-region, but throughout the Caribbean Basin raises numerous citizenship issues. These include issues of social protection and socioeconomic entitlements for all people living and working in a particular jurisdiction, as well as law and order issues. A wider, more integrated Caribbean community inevitably requires much closer coordination among the police forces of the region, in the same way as the creation of a Single European Market necessitated the establishment of Europol and greater collaboration on justice and security matters among the member states of the European Union. Moreover, as the Caribbean regional community becomes more heterogeneous, the need for both state and non-state actors to have access to established dispute settlement mechanisms becomes more

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pressing. More conflicts of interest will inevitably arise. Likewise, there is an urgent need for more formalised machinery to assist territories in establishing or maintaining viable democratic governance systems. One can argue, for example, that currently in CARICOM the greatest security threat is that of a breakdown of the political system within various member states. A region is as strong or as weak as its weakest unit and conflicts over domestic governance have the potential to derail, or at least paralyse, regional movements. Another essential and related area of governance that requires urgent strengthening concerns the establishment of mechanisms to promote greater participation of non-governmental organisations, both private sector interests and non-profit advocacy and development organisations, in domestic and regional decision-making. In this regard, the conference in July 2002 between CARICOM leaders, officials and regional civil society representatives, and the Liliendaal Statement that resulted, represent a small advance in constructing a more inclusive system of regional governance. Finally, the promotion of inter-cultural dialogue in the Caribbean Basin area is of paramount importance. The identities and demographic characteristics of the region are not fixed but forever changing. The contemporary epoch is marked by ethnic and civilisational confrontations which have been especially destructive in the cases of small societies elsewhere: witness Cyprus, Fiji and Liberia. There is a need to avoid such conflicts in the Caribbean context, if possible, by experimenting with different models of representative democracy, various formulae for income redistribution, appropriate social policies and social protection, effective education, sports and cultural development programmes which promote the themes of respect and opportunity for all. Regional civil society can play a major role in this process.

Conclusion This discussion has sought to review the major developments in international relations theory in the post-Cold War era and assess their value for global and Caribbean governance today. We conclude that there is much in the contemporary theoretical debates that can provide deeper, longer term insights into the workings of the international order, and that can be applied to the practical spheres of domestic, regional and international policy-making, even for some of the smallest members of the international community.

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References Amin, S. 1997. Capitalism in the Age of Globalisation, London: Zed Books. Aron, R. 1968. Peace and War: A Theory of International Relations. New York: Praeger Publishers. Bull, H. 1977. The Anarchical Society: A Study of Order in World Politics. London: Macmillan Press. Cesaire, A. 1972., Discourse on Colonialism, trans. J. Pinkham, New York: Monthly Review Press. Cox, R. 1987. Production, Power and World Order: Social Forces in the Making of History. New York: Columbia University Press. ———— 2001. Critical Theory and World Politics. Boulder, Colorado: Lynne Rienner. Diehl, P., ed. 2001. The Politics of Global Governance: International Organisations in an Interdependent World. Boulder, Colorado: Lynne Rienner. Eisman, D., 21/03/2001. “Vieques Still Vital to Navy, PR’s Governor Advised”. The Virginian-Pilot. Evans, G., J. Newnham. 1998. Penguin Dictionary of International Relations. London: Penguin Books. Fanon, F. 1963. The Wretched of the Earth, trans. C. Farrington. New York: Grove Press. ————

1967. Black Skin, White Masks, trans. C. Lam Markmann. New York: Grove

Press. Halliday, F. 29/11-5/12/2001. “The Shape of the New World is Now Discernible”, Guardian Weekly. ————— 1994. Rethinking International Relations. London: Macmillan. Held, D., A. McGrew, eds. 2000. The Global Transformations Reader: An Introduction to the Globalisation Debate. Cambridge: Polity Press. Hettne, D., A. Inotai, O. Sunkel, eds. 1999. Globalism and the New Regionalism. London: Macmillan. Hewson, M., T. Sinclair eds 1999. Approaches to Global Governance Theory. New York: State University of New York Press. Heywood, A. 2000. Key Concepts in Politics. London and Basingstoke: Macmillan Press. Hoogvelt, A. 1997. Globalisation and the Post-Colonial World. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press. Huntington, S. (Summer 1993) “The Clash of Civilizations”. Foreign Affairs, 72.3. Wyn Jones, R. ed. 2001. Critical Theory and World Politics. Boulder, Colorado: Lynne Rienner Publishers. Kegley C., ed. 1995. Controversies in International Relations Theory: Realism and the Neoliberal Challenge, St Martin’s Press: New York. Keohane, Robert O. and Joseph S. Nye. 1989. Power and Interdependence. Harper Collins: New York. Klare, M. 2001. Resource Wars: The New Landscape of Global Conflict. New York:

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Metropolitan Books Laferriere, E., P. Stoett. 1999. International Relations Theory and Ecological Thought: Towards a Synthesis. London: Routledge. Mearsheimer, J. Summer 1990. “Back to the Future: Instability in Europe after the Cold War”. International Security 15.1. ——————. August 1990. “Why We Will Soon Miss the Cold War”. The Atlantic Monthly, 266.2. Nelsen, B., A. Stubb, eds. 1998. The European Union: Readings on the Theory and Practice of European Integration, London: Macmillan. Nye, J., J. Donahue, eds. 2000. Governance in a Globalizing World. Washington D.C.: Brookings Institution Press. Peterson, V. Spike , ed. 1992. Gendered States: Feminist (Re)Visions of International Relations Theory. Boulder, Colorado: Lynne Rienner. Richardson, J. 2001. Contending Liberalisms in World Politics: Ideology and Power. Boulder, Colorado: Lynne Rienner: Boulder. Robertson, D. 1993. Penguin Dictionary of Politics. London: Penguin Books. Rosenau, J., , O. Czempiel eds. 1992. Governance without Government: Order and Change in World Politics. Cambridge: Cambridge Unversity Press. Salih, M. 1999. Environmental Politics and Liberation in Contemporary Africa. Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers. Salter, M. 2002. Barbarians and Civilization in International Relations. London: Pluto Press. Smith, S., K. Booth, M. Zalewski, eds. 1996. International Theory: Positivism and Beyond. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Sorensen, G. December 1998. “International Relations Theory after the Cold War”, Review of International Studies. 24. Steans, J. 1998., Gender and International Relations: An Introduction, New Brunswick, New Jersey: Rutgers University Press. Teunissen, J.J. ed. 1995. Regionalism and the Global Economy: The Case of Latin America and the Caribbean. The Hague: FONDAD. Tickner J. Anne, 1992. Gender in International Relations: Feminist Perspectives on Achieving Global Security. New York: Columbia University Press. Waltz, K. 1993. “The New World Order”. Millennium: Journal of International Studies. 22.2. Young, H. 01/02/2002. “Only American National Interest Counts Now”. Guardian Unlimited.

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NOTES 1

D. Robertson, Penguin Dictionary of Politics, (London: Penguin Books, 1993), 212.

2

A. Heywood, Key Concepts in Politics, (Basingstoke: Macmillan Press, 2000), 19.

3

James Rosenau, “Governance, Order and Change in World Politics”, in Rosenau and Czempiel, Governance without Government: Order and Change in World Politics (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992), 4.

4

Rosenau, “Governance”, 19.

5

J. Nye and J. Donahue, eds, Governance in a Globalizing World, (Washington D.C: Brookings Institution Press, 2000), 13– 14.

6

Keohane and Nye, Governance, p 14.

7

G. Marks, L. Hooghe, K. Blank, “European Integration from the 1980s: State-Centric vs. Multi-Level Governance” in B. Nelsen and A. Stubb, eds., The European Union: Readings on the Theory and Practice of European Integration, (London: MacMillan, 1998), 273-293; Heywood, Key Concepts, 20.

8

M. Hewson , T. Sinclair, eds. Approaches to Global Governance Theory, (New York: State University of New York Press, 1999), 3–19.

9

See G. Evans and J. Newnham. Penguin Dictionary of International Relations (London: Penguin Books, 1998), 209.

10 Hewson and Sinclair, Approaches, 18. 11 G. Sorensen, “IR Theory after the Cold War”, Review of International Studies, 24 Special Issue (December 1998): 83– 100. 12 A good overview of this debate can be found in C. Kegley, ed., Controversies in International Relations Theory: Realism and the Neoliberal Challenge (New York: St Martin’s Press New York, 1995). 13 J. Mearsheimer, “Back to the Future: Instability in Europe after the Cold War”, International Security 15.1, (Summer 1990); J. Mearsheimer, “Why we will soon miss the Cold War”, The Atlantic Monthly, 266.2 (August 1990). 14 S. Huntington, “The Clash of Civilizations”, Foreign Affairs, 72.3. (Summer 1993). 15 Found in S. Smith, K. Booth, M. Zalewski, eds. International Theory: Positivism and Beyond (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), 47-55. 16 K. Waltz, “The New World Order”, Millennium: Journal of International Studies, 22.2 (1993): 187– 195. 17 See, for example, Hedley Bull, The Anarchical Society: A Study of Order in World Politics (London: Macmillan Press, 1977); and Raymond Aron on homogeneous and heterogeneous international systems in Peace and War: A Theory of International Relations, (New York: Praeger Publishers, 1968). 18 J. Richardson, Contending Liberalisms in World Politics: Ideology and Power, (Boulder, Colorado: Lynne Rienner, 2001). 19 Richardson, Contending Liberalisms, 84. 20 A. Hoogvelt, Globalization and the Postcolonial World (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1997), 146.

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21 This latter phrase in reference to the international organisations is not Hoogvelt’s, but was used by Robert Cox (2001). 22 Samir Amin, Capitalism in the Age of Globalization, (London: Zed Books, 1997). 23 Amin, Capitalism, 104. 24 R. Cox, Production, Power and World Order: Social Forces in the Making of History (New York: Columbia University Press, 1987); “Towards a Post-Hegemonic Conceptualization of World Order: Reflections on the Relevancy of Ibn Khaldun”, in Rosenau and Czempiel, Governance, 132–159; “The Way Ahead: Towards an Ontology of World Order”, in R. Wyn Jones, ed., Critical Theory and World Politics, (Boulder, Colorado: Lynne Rienner, 2001), 45-60. 25 Cox (2001), Op.Cit. 26 Ibid. p. 55. 27 See, for example, V. Spike Peterson, ed., Gendered States: Feminist (Re)Visions of International Relations Theory, (Boulder, Colorado: Lynne Rienner, 1992); J. Anne Tickner, Gender in International Relations: Feminist Perspectives on Achieving Global Security, (New York: Columbia University Press, 1992) ; J. Steans, Gender and International Relations: An Introduction, (New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, N.J., 1998). 28 See, E. Laferriere, P. Stoett, International Relations Theory and Ecological Thought: Towards a Synthesis, (Routledge: London, 1999). 29 See, M. Klare, Resource Wars: The New Landscape of Global Conflict, (New York: 2001); M. Salih, Environmental Politics and Liberation in Contemporary Africa, (Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1999). 30 Mark Salter, Barbarians and Civilization in International Relations, (London: Pluto Press, 2002) 62. 31 Salter, Barbarians, 143. 32 Fred Halliday, Rethinking International Relations, (London: Macmillan, 1994), 37–46. 33 E. Mansfield, H. Milner, “The New Wave of Regionalism”, in P. Diehl, ed., The Politics of Global Governance: International Organizations in an Interdependent World, (Boulder, Colorado: Lynne Rienner, 2001), 313–357; B. Hettne, A. Inotai, O. Sunkel eds. (1999), Globalism and the New Regionalism, (London: Macmillan). 34 N. Woods, “Order, Globalization and Inequality in World Politics”, in D. Held and A. McGrew eds., The Global Transformations Reader: An Introduction to the Globalization Debate, (Cambridge, Polity Press, 2000), 387– 400. 35 P. Mistry, “Open Regionalism: Stepping Stone or Millstone toward an Improved Multilateral System?” in J.J. Teunissen, ed., Regionalism and the Global Economy: The Case of Latin America and the Caribbean, (The Hague: FONDAD, 1995), 11– 25. 36 See F. Halliday, “The shape of the New World is Now Discernible: aftershocks to shake us all”, Guardian Weekly, Nov. 29–Dec. 5 2001; H. Young, “Only American National Interest Counts Now”, Guardian Unlimited Special Reports, 1/02/2002. 37 One example is the North American Free Trade Area (NAFTA) which now has joint defence arrangements for the United States and Canada. Another possible example is the Plan Puebla–Panama which seeks to bring about economic development and

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political stability for Mexico’s Southern regions and Central America. Some analysts point to underlying security objectives for both the Mexican and US establishments: the stabilisation of Chiapas, the reduction of illegal migration into the US, and ensuring greater control over Mexican oil reserves in the Chiapas/Gulf region. 38 In late September 2002, the US government published a new National Security Strategy of the United States document which emphasised the US prerogative to strike preemptively against perceived enemies, and insisted on the need to maintain its military supremacy against all contenders. See Guardian Weekly 26/9–2/10/2002, “Bush vows to snuff out all potential enemies”, p. 1. This post-9/11 position has significant implications for the Western hemisphere in which the United States is embedded. Notably, the US has reinforced the notion of “homeland security” to mean much tighter coordination of security arrangements with Canada, ultimately controlled by a US military command centre. 39 Such tensions flared to boiling point in 2001– 2002 over the death of one resident of Vieques and numerous health problems experienced by many others as a result, it is claimed, of the US Navy’s training exercises on the island. See statement by US Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld to the Governor of Puerto Rico: “The facilities owned by the US Navy on Vieques remain an important element of our national defence readiness. . .We plan to proceed with training as required to maintain an appropriate level of readiness”. Reported by Dale Eisman in The Virginian-Pilot, March 21, 2001.

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F i v e

GLOBAL GOvERNANCE IN THE CONTExT OF GLOBALISATION: THE IMPERATIvES OF ECONOMIC CHANGE MAURICE ODLE

Introduction

A

t the same time that there is acceleration in the intensity of the globalisation (including the complementary regionalisation) process, there is increasing concern about inequities and scepticism about the gains that will accrue to developing countries from their deeper insertion in the world economy. This paper will focus on the economic rather than the political and cultural aspects of the process. The gist of the paper is that global governance has tended to become more arbitrary than accommodating to the interests of the disadvantaged; that corporate capital has assumed a more concentrated, corrupt and co-opting form; that financial crises are now more systemic than serendipitous and the solutions more perverse and pauperising; and that there is less coherence and more contradiction in tackling the phenomenon of underdevelopment. Existing proposals for dealing with the current crisis of development fail to tackle the fundamental issue. There is an imperative for global governance to be better structured and more cognisant of differences in levels of development, to be more flexible with greater scope for safeguard adjustment to adverse economic changes and for policy makers in developing countries to be placed in a less constrained position in managing development.

I)

Imbalance in Global Rules and Asymmetry in Compliance/ Enforcement

Global governance should be expected to be transparent, democratic, power balanced, accountable, incorruptible and working in the interest of all. However, this is not always the case with respect to the pillars of the globalisation process – trade, finance, investment and technology. The developed countries have

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contrived to introduce an architecture which serves to maintain their dominant position through a mix of instruments that exact compliance from developing countries while retaining for themselves certain degrees of freedom. The system is obviously iniquitous in its evolving forms. Examples of such manifestations are indicated in the following sections of the paper.

1.

Warped Mandates and Skewed Implementation

The critical departure of today’s globalisation process from the internationalisation tendencies of the past is its rules based nature. The system is becoming increasingly mandatory and no more so than with respect to global trade. The WTO system has member countries locked into a system in which it would be difficult to achieve “roll-back” of measures on which agreement has already been reached.“ Standstill” is required with respect to existing protectionist measures, and “progressive liberalisation” in the future is a commitment made with respect to services and the positive list approach. Although mandatory, the trading system is essentially unequal in its construct, with rapid progress in liberalisation being sought in those areas in which the developed countries have a technological lead and head start, such as telecommunications and financial services, and painfully slow progress being evinced in areas in which the developing countries’ comparative disadvantage is smaller, such as agriculture and textiles. The unequal nature of this structure is compounded by certain implementation practices employed by the developed countries, such as those with respect to sanitary and phytosanitary measures and anti-dumping determination, that are tantamount to protectionist devices. At the same time, the trading system is very lukewarm in its recognition of the need for special and differential treatment for developing countries, is miserly in its admission of the necessity for waivers and safeguards, allows for transition periods (of typically between five and seven years) that are much too short to permit any significant change in supply capacity to compete on a level playing field, and holds in check any tendency to flout the rules by the threat of being enmeshed in very costly dispute settlement procedures and the possibility of retaliatory and cross retaliatory measures. While compliance is thus assured on the part of the developing countries, the developed countries (despite the rules being in their favour) have no compunction in violating these results when their economic interests are perceived to be at stake, at least by the politicians and their special interests. This is no more evident than in the recent cases involving the USA raising tariffs on steel imports and increasing subsidies to farmers. The penalties are bearable in an economy of such magnitude, strength and resilience.

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The global arrangements with respect to investment are also not evenhanded. The WTO Agreement on Trade Related Investment Measures (TRIMS) removes from countries the hitherto useful developmental measure of imposing performance requirements relating to minimum use of local materials in exchange for the granting of fiscal and other incentives; the same obtains for performance requirements relating to exporting a minimum percentage of the output. The USA has been resisting the call of developing countries for a review of TRIMS by arguing that this should only be done within the context of negotiating a comprehensive Multilateral Agreement on Investment, a proposed instrument that had been rejected some years ago. The WTO Agreement on Subsidies and Countervailing Measures has added to the problem by stipulating that any incentives which result in a government foregoing revenue would constitute a prohibited subsidy. The Caribbean countries are currently engaged in a time-consuming battle with the developed country representatives on the WTO Committee on Subsidies and Countervailing Measures in trying to prove that their incentives legislation refers to “local value added” (and not to local goods per se) and that this would include wages and salaries, interest, management charges and other payments, and depreciation on imported plant, machinery and equipment. The Agreement on Trade Related Intellectual Property Rights, an instrument that actually reinforced technology monopoly conditions rather than liberated them, has not helped the goal of foreign investor transfer of technology. It took years of pressure from the developing countries, culminating in the Doha declaration on TRIPS and Public Health for the issue of compulsory licensing to be clarified and for hope of gaining access to cheaply manufactured antiretroviral HIV drugs to be obtained. There is also the situation where treaties that were expected to be binding are in danger of being reduced to the level of “soft law” and becoming not much more in practice than weak codes or mere guidelines and recommendations. The Kyoto Protocol of 1997 is an example. The Europeans at that time committed themselves to reducing harmful gas emissions through binding targets. But the USA, under the Clinton administration, was only prepared to accept stabilisation, that is agreement not to increase current levels, even though with 4 per cent of the world’s population it accounted for about 25 per cent of global green house gas emissions. The decision of the Bush administration to withdraw from the treaty and further negotiations on it, in deference to industry lobbying and satisfying political constituencies, is threatening to cause an unravelling of the entire exercise despite the efforts of the Europeans to salvage the situation. Australia recently announced that it had decided not to ratify the Kyoto Agreement on the grounds that it would cost jobs and harm its industry. Canada

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also seems to be moving in that direction. Developing countries are generally sticking with the treaty in the hope that they would be rewarded with meaningful compensation funds. It may remain a mere hope.

2.

Crushing and Escalating Conditionalities in Accessing Multilateral Capital

Both long- and short-term capital tend to have significant conditionalities attached to access. With respect to long-term capital, there has been a decline in volume throughout the 1990s, a situation characterised as donor fatigue, but which was really a symptom of decline in the geopolitical and strategic importance of many developing countries following the collapse of the Soviet Union and the end of the Cold War. Only four countries have managed to attain the 0.7per cent of GDP target that was set by the UN a few decades ago. The concern of the developed countries for good governance is appropriate but it should not be excessively intrusive and invasive. For example, although the environment is a global public good, its preservation should not be at the expense of meaningful development. Similarly, the emphasis by donors on poverty reduction should not foreclose the option of utilising policies that will produce genuine growth and transformation. In fact, the miracle economies of South East Asia employed the latter to achieve the former. The developed countries also do not help the situation by insisting, in some cases, that metropolitan based consultants be used at the project formulation, project design and project development stage, or that goods and services to be utilised in the implementation stage be procured from the donor country. Securing capital has become an increasingly long drawn-out process, with the recipient country being virtually asked to jump through hoops. This situation obtains whether it is the World Bank or some other international financial institution, a regional development bank or a bilateral donor. With respect to short-term capital, the IMF consistently imposes conditionalities for gaining access to funds under its stabilisation programme. The basic problem with IMF programmes designed to deal with severe current account deficits is that they invariably result in the stabilisation of income at a much lower level of equilibrium than is desirable. Part of the reason is that there is heavy emphasis on current (and capital) expenditure reduction policies that tend to impact heavily on the poor and those least able to adjust. In the absence of safety nets, the result is increasing pauperisation. This is the crux of the problem. Whereas there is merit in some of the fiscal and other stabilisation policies countries under an IMF programme are asked to enact better crafting of such policies is required to reduce the impact on the poor. In those cases where the emphasis is also on increasing revenue in order to

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close the financing gap, a problem could arise if there is such a heavy cap on the capital expenditure programme that not enough income multiplier effects are created to effectively raise tax revenue out-turns. In Caribbean type economies, expenditure and revenue changes seem to be the only available policy options. Changing the price of imports and exports through deliberately engineered exchange rate movements is unlikely to be employed even by floating exchange rate regimes, partly because some commodity export prices are fixed in dollar denominations and partly because the production structure is not capable, as in larger mature economies, to readily respond to such stimuli.

3.

Extra-Judicial Decrees and Unilateral Impositions

Another weapon in the armory of those who have arrogated to themselves the right to determine the nature and limits of the global financial infrastructure relates to the blacklisting of countries, combined with the threat of sanctions, if certain corrective actions are not taken in respect of their offshore financial operations. Accordingly, in the year 2000, thirty-five jurisdictions were blacklisted as tax havens by the OECD (whose tax base was supposedly being undermined) for so-called harmful tax practices (not including the nine that had scampered to find accommodation with the OECD to avoid being blacklisted). The Financial Stability Forum (FSF) listed 25, nine, and eight jurisdictions as having low, medium and high standards of financial regulation; and the Financial Action Task Force (FATF) blacklisted 15 jurisdictions for having poor anti money laundering regimes. Since then the lists have dwindled as more and more jurisdictions decided to toe the line for fear of suffering the consequences of debilitating sanctions. For example, following the deadline of February 28, 2002, thirty-one of the 35 blacklisted jurisdictions have now agreed to adhere to the two OECD designed tax principles of transparency and effective exchange of information. A common feature of the supranational classification tactic is its undemocratic nature, particularly with respect to the OECD and the FSF, whose membership in the former organisation contained no developing countries, and in the case of the latter organisation only Singapore and Thailand among developing countries are members. The OECD “Global Tax Forum”, in which formerly blacklisted jurisdictions will now be able to participate, is not a truly democratic entity, since it reports to ministers of the developed countries only. Moreover, a number of developed countries which could be considered both tax havens and also havens for money laundering, were not blacklisted in the

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first place. Forty-seven developed countries, including Switzerland and Luxembourg, and certain other preferred jurisdictions like Hong Kong and Singapore were merely mentioned in the OECD 2000 Progress Report as “potential tax havens”, rather than as definite tax havens. The playing field is anything but level and continues to be so. For example, the June 2002 OECD paper on accounts and auditing requirements seems to want committed jurisdictions to meet standards that do not apply in some OECD jurisdictions. It is not surprising that the blacklisting and pressure to institute drastic reforms in the offshore regimes is causing a significant shake-out in the industry. For example, over 60,000 offshore entities have exited from the previous 100,000 company profile in Bahamas, which is considered to be one of the strongest jurisdictions, and the OECD has privately stated that it expects only a few of the jurisdictions in the larger Caribbean region to survive. The irony is that the World Bank in 1996 publicly endorsed the strategy of the Caribbean giving incentives to offshore financial services and other emerging service activities to compensate for the decline in the traditional commodity sectors. Moreover, developed countries like Switzerland and Luxembourg are the major tax havens in today’s world and these countries, along with New York and London, are the largest conduits for money launderers. An International Tax Organisation should be set up but, although it was discussed during the preparatory stage of the 2002 Monterrey Conference, it never found its way into the Consensus Document, partly because the developed countries wanted to maintain the dominance of the OECDs so-called Global Tax Forum. The tactic of blacklisting groups of states to bring them in-line with developed country unilateral conception of what should constitute the financial rules of the game is consistent with what is being employed against three countries that have been recently labelled as constituting an “axis of evil”. Two of the three, Iran and Iraq, are large oil producers. In fact, Iraq is said to have the second largest oil deposits in the world. When we also consider the enormous domestic and external pressure that is being brought to bear on the government of Venezuela, it is fair to say that economic interests are probably dictating political rhetoric and the contemplated military action. September 11 and the crusade against “terrorism” have provided a convenient cover for the implementation of certain strategic plans. Harming the interests of kith and kin can also incur the wrath of the power-brokers and invite retaliatory economic sanctions as is currently the fate of Zimbabwe, a country in which the first land grab was perpetrated by Cecil Rhodes, one hundred years ago, and which did not receive the funds for land redistribution that was promised by Britain after independence.

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Perverse Application of Special and Differential Treatment

The call for special and differential treatment (SDT) is usually associated with developing countries, especially the least developed and smaller economies. As the prime minister of Barbados, Owen Arthur, in justification, is fond of saying, it took the developed countries eight rounds of GATT/WTO negotiations, stretched over a period of 50 years, to make the required economic and production adjustments that would allow them to reduce tariffs from an average of 47 per cent to the 4 per cent that it is today. However, the way the current global economic system is structured and governed suggests that it is the developed world that seems to enjoy the more significant preferential treatment. For example, as mentioned above, in the global trade architecture, agriculture and textiles, two sectors in which developing countries have some capability, are the ones most protected by the developed countries and which have been pushed far back in the WTO schedule for removal of tariff and non-tariff barriers. In the case of agriculture, the developed countries not only subsidise this sector to the tune of a mind-boggling $365 billion per year but have contrived, also, to have included among non actionable green subsidies, not subject to removal, such measures in which they have a comparative advantage or a vested interest as support for R&D, land lying fallow, etc. There is very limited recognition in the WTO Agreement of the need for SDT treatment. Typically, there is a mere transition period of five years for developing countries and seven years for least developed countries, after which they are expected to operate on the same “level playing field” as the developed countries. A 2000 publication by the Commonwealth Secretariat and the World Bank did acknowledge the vulnerability of small economies (associated with sectoral concentration, extreme dependence on world trade and proneness to natural disasters) and the resulting 20 per cent or so greater income volatility. This helped to persuade the 2002 WTO Doha Ministerial Conference to examine the issue. However, there is reluctance to make “small economies” a preferential sub-grouping of developing countries. Thus while the WTO Doha Ministerial Conference instructed the General Council to set up a Working Group on Small Economies, it pre-empted its outcome by stating that the object of the work programme is “not to create a sub-category of WTO Members”. With respect to the global investment architecture, the design is still incomplete and some of the floors, ceilings and windows of opportunity are yet to be determined. However, it should be noted that in the case of Bilateral Investment Treaties (BITs), one of the foundations of the evolving structure, only the home country of the foreign investor seems to have rights and only the host country appears subjected to various obligations. There seems to be no

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recognition of the development objectives of host countries. Concerning the global financial architecture, we have already made reference to the iniquity of some of the conditionalities, extra-judicial acts and unilateral measures. In a later section, we shall deal with the issue of the management of financial crises in emerging market economies and the way that the system tends to bail out lenders but does not seek to bail them in to take some of the risks (by way of accepting rescheduling, etc) when a dramatic downturn occurs. The global technology architecture is just as defective as the other pillars of the globalisation process. The developed countries, the major source of technology, determine who should access such technology and under what conditions. For example, sales of advanced computers are restricted, ostensibly on the grounds that these computers have military applications. The real reason is probably to prevent countries like China from catching up too quickly. Such discriminatory strategic decision-making is taking place in a situation in which the capitalist states also heavily subsidise R&D directly and indirectly. The USA is also attempting to have included in the FTAA chapter on investment a NAFTA- type provision which prescribes performance requirements with respect to transfer of technology. At the WTO, the Working Group on the Relationship between Investment and Competition Policy has, after a number of years of deliberation, failed to come up with any meaningful recommendations. The transnational corporations are still able to employ many anti-competitive restrictive business practices in the course of their intra-firm (parent/subsidiary) operations abroad and, also, as provisions in the contracts for arms length licensing of the technology. The result is an increasing technology gap. The WTO has not been impressive in its performance with respect to other provisions that can proactively serve to enhance the development prospects of developing countries. Having granted monopoly power via the TRIPS, it now feebly attempts to redeem the situation by making vague references to the need to prevent abuse of intellectual property rights. The post-Doha Working Group on Trade and Transfer of Technology is probably a sop to the idea of a development round and could turn out to be a mere talking shop (See Box 1). The FTAA has also been grappling with the issue of the treatment of the differences in the levels of development and size of economies via a specially formed Consultative Group on Smaller Economies. However, despite many guidelines issued by the group, in keeping with the mandates of the ministers, there has been very little translation of these guidelines into concrete reservations, exceptions and transitional periods in the draft negotiated texts of the nine negotiating areas. There has also been no fleshing out or subscription

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Box 1: Very Limited Areas in the WTO Agreement where there is Recognition of the Need for Transfer of Technology TRIMS: Incentives (subsidies) can be granted based on the performance requirement that the investor carries out basic and applied industrial research, adapts production facilities to new environment standards and undertakes economic activities in disadvantaged regions of the country (but performance requirements are not permitted with respect to local content stipulations and export ratios). TRIPS: ”The protection and enforcement of intellectual property rights should contribute to the promotion of technological innovation and to the transfer and dissemination of technology . . . and appropriate measures provided they are consistent with the provisions of this Agreement, may be needed to prevent the abuse of intellectual property rights by right holders or they resort to practices which unreasonably restrain trade or adversely affect the international transfer of technology “(Articles 7 and 8). GATS: ”There shall be appropriate flexibility for individual developing country Members for opening fewer sectors, liberalising fewer types of transactions, progressively extending market access in line with their development situation and, when making access to their markets available to foreign service suppliers, attaching to such access conditions aimed at achieving the objectives referred to in Article IV.” (Article XIX) WTO WORKING GROUP ON TRADE AND TRANSFER OF TECHNOLOGY Terms of Reference 1. Identification of ways and means of taking full advantage of the flexibility existing in the TRIMS, TRIPS, GATS and other WTO Agreements with a view to increasing transfer of technology. 2. Identification of home country measures including incentives that encourage transfer of technology in various modes to developing countries, in particular to the least developed countries, including promotional measures for building up a sound and viable technological base (Articles 66.2 and 67 of the TRIPS Agreement). 3. Examination of WTO Agreements to identify restrictions that certain provisions may be creating against transfer and dissemination of technology with a view to making the necessary amendments for facilitating and ensuring the transfer of technology on fair and advantageous terms and in line with the special and differential treatment provisions. 4. Assessment of the implementation by developed countries of WTO provisions related to transfer of technology with a view to identifying the need for appropriate changes or strengthening of, including possible amendments to, these provisions in order to ensure that technology flows to developing countries.

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to the proposed idea of a hemispheric cooperation program of technical assistance.

II)

The Failure of Global Corporate Governance

The accounting scandal that started in the USA with Enron and engulfed many major, and previously very respectable, companies such as WorldCom, QWEST, Arthur Anderson, ImClone, Global Crossing, Tyco, Xerox, Merck, General Electric and others should not be seen as affecting only Americans. The USA attracts a not insignificant proportion of the world’s savings partly because of its “ring fencing” policy of not taxing bank deposits of non-residents, while taxing those of residents and, also, the “source” income of subsidiaries abroad. Some of the savings of the non-residents would then have been invested on their behalf by investment bank managers and brokers on the various stock exchanges. They too would have been short-changed and denied their just share by the CEOs who creamed off a significant part of the runaway “profits” by employing their now famous stock options strategy. Non-resident savings would also have been used to help fuel the information technology bubble of the 1990s, which finally burst when the very high price/earnings situation could not be sustained and the realisation dawned that the so-called new economy was no different from other technological eras in their susceptibility to booms and slumps. The result was a catastrophic fall in stock prices. In the case of Enron, the managers bailed-out early with their stock options, whereas the employees were forced to bail in and suffer ruinous asset declines in their retirement savings. So much for the 1999 OECD Principles on Corporate Governance. Corporate failure in the USA has its counterpart in the developing world in the failure of capital to be accountable to the goals and objectives of host countries and being cognisant of the need to transfer technology, create linkages and employment and generally promote development. The failure of corporate governance is therefore nothing new and not restricted to the USA. A vivid example is the attempt to introduce a code of conduct on transnational corporations. The process began in the 1970s as a reaction to ITTs attempt to engineer the overthrow of the socialist Allende government in Chile. The United Nations decided to set up a group of wise men whose report resulted in the formation of the United Nations Centre on Transnational Corporations. Negotiations began in earnest in the late 1970s and, although a draft UNCTC Code of Conduct on Transnational Corporations appeared in 1985, the process was suspended in 1990. During the lengthy negotiation period, a code that was supposed to be a constraint on the behaviour

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on the transnationals was transformed into a code that contained rights and obligations with respect to both transnationals and host governments as a result of the hard bargaining of the developed countries. Later on, the balance shifted even more in favour of the transnationals. Eventually, the negotiation process failed, partly because of the increasingly liberalising nature of the global economic environment. The developed countries recognised that they did not need a code to protect their cross border investments and exercise global corporate reach and that they could do so via an even more favourable Bilateral Investment Treaty (BIT) type of instrument. The developing countries did not protest the abandonment of the negotiations too vigorously, partly because of fatigue and partly because economic exigencies had made them increasingly vulnerable to entrapment to the economic doctrines of the Washington Consensus. The abandonment fuelled an explosion of BITs, an instrument so favourable to foreign capital that it has no obligations, only rights. There are no responsibilities on the part of the investor to train workers, transfer technology, create backward and forward linkages, etc. There are nearly 2000 BITs in existence. The developed countries felt, nevertheless, that a neater and more rational operation would be to forge a truly multilateral instrument that would obviate the need to go the route of each capital surplus country having a long list of bilateral agreements with the capital deficit countries. The result was that an investment instrument that the OECD had, since 1995, been discussing among themselves as part of the deepening of their own economic integration process, ambitiously called a Multilateral Agreement on Investment (MAI), was thrust onto the global stage and recommended for possible negotiation and adoption by all countries. The strategy of the OECD was to persuade and cajole nonOECD countries to sign on as soon as the developed countries had come to an agreement among themselves. However, there was failure to reach accord on an MAI, partly because the Europeans themselves had difficulty in accepting some of the proposed provisions that, paradoxically, are similar to those that they impose on developing country bilateral investment treaty partners. The NGOs also played an important part in scuttling the MAI because of concern about its structure and objectives, as well as a number of substantive issues: its failure to deal with competition, corruption and investor behaviour; the increase of investor rights as regards the definition of investment (i.e. the inclusion of portfolio investment); “pre-establishment” protection; and performance requirements and repatriation of capital. Corporate governance will continue to be an issue since policy makers tend to have difficulty in exercising effective control over corporate conduct,

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owing to dependence on their capital for campaign financing, special interest lobbying and the revolving door that characterises the relationship between government and business.

III)

Bankruptcy Governing Approach to Financial Crises

Since the 1990s, starting with the Mexican debacle, financial crises have gripped one or more of the emerging market economies every two years or so. Finance is indeed the Achilles heel of the global economic system. One important characteristic of these crises is that they always result in the foreign lenders being bailed out. The loans secured from the IMF (sometimes with contributions from the USA Treasury) are designed to maintain the schedule of repayments to the creditors (i.e. prevent the country from defaulting) rather than to keep the borrower country from suffering grave economic and social distress. The argument that risk taking has its ups and downs and that there is a reward to be gained for foresight and a penalty to be paid for misjudgment (of the borrower’s credit worthiness in this case) no longer seems to apply. Also conveniently ignored is a favourite IMF precept regarding “moral hazard” which, if applied to this situation, would mean that bailing out the lenders without their suffering any hardship could perpetuate profligate lending in the future. Deviation from IMF orthodoxy would therefore indicate that the solution should be to “bail in” rather than totally bail out the creditors who should be pressured to accept a partial rescheduling of repayments. The justification for making the borrower country bear the full burden of adjustment is based on a strategy of painting its domestic policies in the worst light. This obtains whether the debt is mainly public or private sector in origin. Thus, in the case of the essentially private sector borrower driven crisis that began in S.E. Asia in 1997, criticism was made of currency mismatch and of the policy of borrowing short and lending long, in addition to practising corporate cronyism. It has taken only a few years for the accountancy crisis in the USA to show that the cronyism disease is not restricted to developing countries. Widening current account deficits and growing inflation also helped to make the foreign exchange peg unsustainable, as was also the case in the 1999-2001 Turkish crisis which itself came not very long after the Russian crisis. The groups in society most adversely affected, the poor, are invariably the ones least capable of adjusting. The origin of the current crisis in South America is not much different, except that in Argentina the foreign exchange peg was a “hard”, rather than a “soft”, one. The lack of capacity to effect price adjustment made their products uncompetitive compared with those from Brazil. The reaction of the IMF to the

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deteriorating situation in Argentina was, as usual, too slow, and caused the crisis to deepen and the contagion to spread to Uruguay. Many Argentinians had bank accounts in Uruguay and sought to withdraw their funds when denied bank access in their home country. The spread of the crisis to the apparently sound Brazilian economy, partly due to the fear of lenders that a possible incoming leftist government would demand a rescheduling of loans, has triggered capital flight, suggesting that international lenders and portfolio investors are, after a decade of upheaval, much more nervous about their exposure in emerging markets.

IV)

Limitations of Process of Promoting Development by Global Conference Declarations and Exhortations

The increasing resort to major international conferences is a clear sign that the global economic system is failing to produce meaningful development. Since the beginning of the 1990s, and coinciding with the launch of the UNDP pathbreaking annual Human Development Report, a series of major international conferences have been convened to deal with the environment and social and economic issues. In the last few years, economics has taken centre stage partly because of revelations by UNDP and other analysts that current approaches to globalisation have resulted in increasing disparities, both among countries and within countries. It was shown that there was a widening in all the major development gaps, including the human development gap; the technology gap; the knowledge and information gap; the production gap; the trade gap; and the terms of trade gap. The millennium development goals set by the UN General Assembly in 2000 included eradicating extreme poverty and hunger (reducing by half the people living on less than a dollar a day); achieving universal primary education; eliminating gender inequality; reducing child mortality by two-thirds; reducing maternal mortality by three quarters; halting and beginning to reverse HIV/ AIDS, malaria and other major diseases; ensuring environmental sustainability; and developing a global partnership for development. In order to concretise the idea of developing a global partnership for development, a special conference was arranged by the UN, in collaboration with the Bretton Woods institutions and the WTO, in Monterrey, Mexico in March 2002. The Monterrey Conference covered a great deal of ground in tackling such issues as mobilising domestic financial resources for development; mobilising international resources for development : foreign direct investment and other private flows; international trade as an engine for development; increasing international financial and technical cooperation for development; external debt; and addressing systemic

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issues: and enhancing the coherence and consistency of the international monetary, financial and trading systems in support of development. Monterrey produced rather limited results. The actual commitment of hard resources did not match the rhetoric and the promise. The prior announcement by the EU (of twenty billion dollars) and the USA (of ten billion dollars) of initiatives to increase their combined official development assistance by about thirty billion dollars between 2003 and 2006 or twelve billion dollars a year, is considerably short of the additional fifty billion dollars a year that both the UN and the World Bank say is required to attain the year 2015 millennium targets. Moreover, the additions will hardly raise the USAs ODA (Official Development Assistance) ratio above the current 0.2 per cent of GDP and will probably not be sufficient to reach the EU’s own announced target of 0.33 per cent by 2006. As a result, the world ODA ratio which fell from 0.33 per cent at the beginning of the 1990s to its current dismal level of 0.22 per cent is not likely to reach the long standing UN goal of 0.7 per cent anytime soon after 2015. There were at least three other disappointing aspects to the Monterrey Conference. First, there was an almost total focus on what developing countries needed to do by way of domestic policy reform in order to stimulate local investment and attract foreign capital and partnerships (a new buzz word) that could facilitate this process. On the other hand, little emphasis was placed on the role of developed countries in furthering economic transformation. Thus, for example, the USA stated that any increased contribution on its part would be conditional on beneficiaries meeting specific targets with respect to governance, market liberalisation, human development and political reform. Second, the developed countries tried to extract watertight commitments from the developing countries with respect to reform but they, in turn, generally refused to make specific commitments (as opposed to vague promises) or to accept as a real obligation the need to transfer financial resources. Third, the developed countries shied away from setting up any new international financial institutions or from strengthening existing ones to serve the cause of development and to minimise the lack of coherence and consistency in the functioning of the global economic system (see Box 2). Not much more progress was made at the World Summit on Sustainable Development held in Johannesburg in August/ September 2002 (a direct followup to both Monterrey and the 1992 Rio conference whose pledges remain unfulfilled) despite the strenuous efforts of the various stakeholders, including the NGOs, whose agenda items include water, energy, health, agriculture and biodiversity. There is a basic reluctance to recognise certain aspects of international market failure and the need for global public goods. While civil society is, in a real sense, the conscience of the world, it is left out of the corridors

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Box 2: ath ologies o f In co heren ce in the Selec ted List o fP of Inco coheren herence Selected of Pa tho Gl obal D evel opment al Pr ocess Glo De velo pmental Process 1. Overriding emphasis and clarity with respect to domestic policy reform without comparable messianic zeal and vision concerning the parameters of an enabling global environment (moreover, the policy reform, especially its structural adjustment aspects, sometimes conflicts with the goal of poverty reduction). 2. Specification of trade as an engine of growth without sufficient concern for the prerequisite of effective market access. A lack of fair trade increases the reliance on Official Development Assistance (ODA) and exacerbates the debt burden. 3. Protection by developed countries of certain industries (e.g. agriculture and textiles) which are precisely the ones in which developing countries are able to exercise some degree of competitiveness. 4. An emphasis on foreign direct investment as a supposedly adequate source of long-term capital for developing countries when the bulk of it goes to a mere handful of countries. 5. Persistent, nay chronic, reductions in ODA at a time when competitiveness in the increasingly globalising environment requires massive expansion of human and infrastructural capital, especially in the disadvantaged least developed and small economies that are recipients of negligible flows of foreign investment. 6. An avalanche of unpredictable and speculative short-term private international bank and portfolio capital in the face of the developmental need for crisis free and stable flows of long-term capital. 7. A financial architectural system in which reaction to its increasing volatility and complexity paradoxically takes the form of demands for more liberalisation and deregulation, including elimination of capital controls. 8. A market-driven system in which the increasingly mandatory rules and obligations placed on governments are not matched by the imposition of comparable strict accounting, legal and other responsibilities on corporate behaviour. 9. While extolling competition, there is increasing oligopoly as a result of mega mergers, alliances and other cross border arrangements, and increasing global reach. 10. A system of global governance in which decisions are taken by the powerful in undemocratic economic fora, that claim to represent the interest of the powerless and adopt a guise of conferring “ownership”. The Washington Consensus has now become the Washington-New York-Geneva Consensus. 11. A labour market in which developed countries actively recruit from developing countries skilled workers (IT specialists, teachers, nurses, etc.) that could contribute positive economic benefits while vigorously deporting those who are said to represent negative social benefits. There is no compensatory mechanism. 12. A fundamental and overarching disconnect between the lofty goals trumpeted at various United Nations and other global fora and the financial and other resources the developed countries are willing to provide, in a situation which amounts to a genuine crisis of development and ever-widening economic gaps.

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of power (except for corporate elements) and decision-making centres and is relegated to playing the role of a spoiler. Global conferences and their accompanying lofty, but in the main, empty declarations cannot be a substitute for a thorough going reform of the structure and functioning of all the major global economic and financial institutions.

V)

Conclusion

The management of the global economic system is quite undemocratic in the sense that its major pillars or institutions are essentially under the control of the developed countries and are organised and operated to serve the interests of the latter. The United Nations has, by and large, been deprived of any meaningful economic decision-making function and relegated to the role of providing humanitarian and peacekeeping services. Although the Monterrey Conference encouraged the UN, the World Bank, the IMF and the WTO to address issues of coherence, coordination and cooperation as a follow-up to the conference and ascribed a focal point role to the UN General Assembly (and the Economic and Social Council) with respect to overseeing implementation of the results of the conference, this is likely to turn out to be a grand public relations exercise since the developed countries have, in the past, studiously avoided conferring economic power on the UN (the latest evidence being the decision not to make the new WTO a part of the UN system). The global concentration of economic power is enormous since there is an alliance of capital surplus countries (even if economic disputes between them may arise from time to time) and an alliance of international economic institutions all working in tandem with one another. These forces are not afraid to employ cross retaliatory measures to protect their interests when dealing with developing countries and are in full control of the legislative, executive and, rather expensive, dispute settlement agenda. The system is also non-accountable in nature in the sense that if, for example, a misguided IMF programme succeeds in causing social disruption and increasing immiserisation, or the World Bank denies a country a loan for essentially political reasons, or the adoption of unconscionable conditionalities are made a requirement for financial access, there is no recourse to a higher body for redress or a constituency that can be effectively mobilised for this purpose. The result is that global rules are enacted which do not always serve the interests of the disempowered and disadvantaged. Distortions and discrepancies abound. Coexisting with increasing global economic integration is a situation characterised by growing global policy disconnect. The economic gaps are ever-widening but the system seems unwilling or incapable of devising measures

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to effectively deal with the imbalances between countries and between groups within countries. Developing countries are in a straitjacket. Unlike the South-East Asian countries which managed to achieve their economic miracle partly by being able to exercise various economic policy options, latecomers now find themselves boxed in by various mandatory and pseudo mandatory rules in the area of trade, finance, investment and technology. There is little room for manoeuvre in the egregious free market system. There is also a “one size fits all” approach that makes little allowance for the most disadvantaged countries which invariably have very limited supply capacity. A sceptic could very well describe this era of rapid international economic integration as being characterised by global mis-governance rather than global governance. There is a clear need for fundamental economic change.

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C H A P T E R

S I X

GOvERNANCE IN INTERNATIONAL TRADE: THE MISCONDuCT OF TRANSNATIONAL CORPORATIONS TAIMOON STEWART

G

overnments of developing countries are being required to incorporate good governance practices as conditionality for receiving assistance from international financial institutions and to gain concessions in international trade negotiations. This is being done primarily to create an enabling environment within which Transnational Corporations (TNCs) could operate and maximise profits in developing countries. These governments are therefore being asked to behave themselves so that foreign corporations can secure a predictable environment in which to operate. Are TNCs being legally required by their governments to behave themselves in their conduct of international trade? This paper addresses the question of the absence of strong governmental measures to discipline the misconduct of TNCs in international trade when the effects of such misconduct are felt in developing countries. The vast majority of TNCs are from industrialised countries. The paper focuses specifically on international hardcore cartels and their effects on international trade and particularly the trade of developing countries. The vast majority of international cartel membership consists of firms from the US, Europe and Japan. It explores the issues being debated, the existing provisions to deal with such conduct and the proposals now being advanced in the World Trade Organization Working Group on Trade and Competition Policy (WTO WGTCP) and the FTAA negotiations. The findings of the paper are that hardcore cartel activity in international trade is having an inimical effect on developing economies which is increasing as industrialised countries enforce antitrust law; that existing multilateral rules are voluntary and therefore ineffective; that very little is being done by competition authorities in the developed countries to sanction the misconduct of their TNCs in developing economies; and that proposed arrangements do not augur well for the ability of developing countries to discipline these cartels. There has been a persistent tension between TNCs and developing countries

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governments over the last five decades, and longer in the case of Latin America, over the sharing of capital accumulated in the economy. TNCs, on the one hand, have an overriding objective of maximising profits by whatever means available. This is understandable in that this is their business. However, they have used anti-competitive arrangements and strategies to maximise outflows of capital, such as transfer pricing, withholding of technology transfer, poor standards in subsidiaries in developing countries that lead to environmental pollution and endanger workers (or disasters such as the Union Carbide explosion in India in which over 3,000 persons were killed and many thousands have been injured for life). In response to these strategies, governments of developing countries passed laws: trade-related investment measures (TRIMs) to force retention of some share of the capital generated in their economies by TNCs. This was very evident during the early post-World War II years until the late 1970s. The Third World debt crisis in the late 1970s–1982 forced debtor economies into arrangements with the international financial institutions that involved adopting structural adjustment programmes (SAPs) by which many of the TRIMs were removed. The emergence of the neo-liberal order has intensified this process, and has brought in its wake the reordering of developing countries’ economies to accommodate the needs of international capital. As such, they have had to change domestic law to provide protection for TNCs intellectual property products, remove investment measures that limit international investors and introduce good governance practices amongst others. This thrust is coming from bilateral and multilateral sources as well as the international financial institutions. The concern which is explored in this paper is that there is a dual standard, one that requires developing countries’ governments to conform to the requirements of global capital and provide an enabling environment, but which does not require TNCs to follow ethical practices in international trade. There is an imbalance in that TNCs are being given all that they need, while developing economies are left unprotected, easy targets for the unscrupulous exploitative practices of TNCs. It is this imbalance that the paper addresses and specifically, the existence and practices of hardcore international cartels and the effectiveness of proposals to deal with them, from a developing countries perspective. HARDCORE CARTELS: RECENT EXPERIENCES Over the last decade, it has become increasingly clear that hardcore cartels are more prevalent, persistent and damaging than previously thought. Moreover, with globalisation and the accompanying integration of economies, the effects of cartels are more widespread than previously experienced. Competition authorities now find that they need information in several countries in order to

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successfully investigate cases. For instance, in the Vitamin case investigated by the US Department of Justice (DOJ), firms from five countries were involved: Canada, Germany, Japan, Switzerland and the US, and the effects of their price fixing were felt globally. It is important to note here that attitudes towards international cartels have changed over time and that, earlier in the century, they were legal and supported by governments. However, their harmful effects were increasingly recognised in the 1970s and 80s but, even then, it was believed that they were inherently unstable and, as such, there was no need to take action against them. During the 1990s, however, there was increasing recognition of their persistence, stability, and pervasiveness, and the need to take strong action against them (OECD 2000; Evenett, Levenstein and Suslow 2002). According to the OECD report on Hard Core Cartels (2000), work in the OECD Competition Law and Policy Committee since the early 1990s was largely responsible for the current focus on the issue. It is here that the term “hardcore cartels” was coined and defined as anti-competitive agreements by competitors to fix prices, restrict output, submit collusive tenders, or divide or share markets. Out of studies done in OECD countries on regimes governing cartels came recommendations that these countries should improve the effectiveness of their anti-cartel programmes and their international cooperation. This was formalised in the 1998 Recommendation of the Council Concerning Effective Action Against Hard Core Cartels, and non-members of the OECD were also invited to implement the recommendations. Impressive action was taken in OECD countries to strengthen domestic laws against hardcore cartels and to apply criminal penalties. There followed increased and aggressive enforcement, both in the US and the EU, though much more successfully so in the US where a Leniency Programme was revised to automatically give, full immunity to the first cartel member to come forward with information, rather than retain discretion in the grant of immunity. This programme has proved to be very successful since its reform as firms feel more confident about protection if they blow the whistle. It is estimated in the OECD report (2000:12), that there have been billions of dollars of total global overcharges by recently exposed international cartels. The average illegal gain from price fixing is estimated to be 10 per cent of selling price. Investigations in OECD countries reveal that: • • •

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Cartels are operating in many developing countries With increased enforcement in industrial countries, cartels are increasingly restricting their operations to developing countries The vast majority of firms involved in international cartel activity are from industrialised countries.

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Indeed, a study done by Levenstein and Suslow (2001, Table 1) shows that of 39 cartels studied, only a few developing countries’ firms were involved, and this was mostly in the shipping cartel (South Korea, Malaysia, Zaire, Angola, Senegal, Cameroon). The only other cartels in which developing countries’ firms were involved were in Brazil and India (aluminum phosphide), S. Africa (diamonds and newsprint), Mexico (Tampico Fibre), and S. Korea (Lysine). All other cartel members came mainly from Europe, the US and Japan. Of the 39 cartels examined by Levenstein and Suslow, 16 are known to have had harmful effects in developing countries’ markets and 3 are under investigation, so the affected countries are not yet known. This information is incomplete, however, since it is only in cases that are successfully prosecuted that the knowledge becomes public. Thus, the extent of the impact on developing countries, while known to the competition authorities that carried out investigations, is not known publicly. This issue is taken up later in the paper. Cartels employ various strategies to gain competitive advantage and extract rents from markets. Such tactics include price fixing, bid rigging, market allocation, predatory pricing, blocking entry of newcomers, limitations on transfer of technology in order to maintain cartel power (e.g., Heavy Electrical Equipment Cartel; Steel Beam Cartel; Graphite Electrodes Cartel) and use of strategic alliances and joint ventures to limit or control entry (tactic used after cartel broken up). Because of cartel activities, developing countries’ consumers pay more for goods and services and pay more for inputs into production. This has a widespread impact, given the high level of import content into production. Cartel activities therefore render developing countries’ exports less competitive. This is more ominous, since international cartels are increasingly operating in developing countries in order to avoid being caught given the stringent enforcement of the law in developed economies. Opportunities for transfer of technology are also reduced by cartel activities. Given the power asymmetry between TNCs and most governments in developing countries, the question of how to stop these cartel activities in developing economies is a very difficult and pressing one and one which underpins discussions in the WTO WGTCP. SOME EVIDENCE OF HARDCORE CARTEL ACTIVITIES A brief description of some of the hardcore cartels that were successfully investigated and sanctioned recently would give more insight into the extent of their activities and the accompanying damaging effects. The International Heavy Electrical Equipment Cartel operated from 1930 to the 1980s. The cartel was never prosecuted, but its existence and rules were exposed publicly by the US Senate and at the OECD. The membership included 50 European and Japanese firms. Firms from the US were charged in

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1947 and enjoined from further participation. All types of heavy electrical equipment were involved (turbines, generators, condensers, switchgear, rectifiers, rolling mills). The annual sales value of the cartel was US$2 billion and prices were increased between 15 and 25 per cent above the competitive price. Overcharges ranged from US$300 to 500 million per year. The cartel’s activities involved price fixing, market allocation and bid-rigging with compensation for those who opted out of the competition. It applied penalties for non-compliance. The cartel operated in all countries except the US, EU, Japan and those regions in their traditional sphere of influence. The countries that were most affected were developing countries with little or no domestic manufacturing capacity for heavy electrical equipment. Jamaica is listed amongst the countries that were victims of the bid-rigging. The cartel had a collective agreement never to tender in collaboration with developing countries’ firms, and imposed limitations on transfer of technology to developing countries in licensing contracts. It also indulged in predatory practices, keeping out US firms from export markets which discouraged them from developing products to meet the norms and standards of other countries (Jenny 2002). In path-breaking studies, Levenstein and Suslow (2001) and Evenett, Levenstein and Suslow (2002) unveiled the pernicious activities of international hardcore cartels. The Seamless Steel Tubes Cartel operated from 1990 to 1995, fixing bids on seamless steel tubes and line pipes. These tubes are used in the transmission of oil and gas from wells, and therefore impacted on Trinidad and Tobago’s petroleum industry. There were eight firms involved, four European and four Japanese. They did not sell in the domestic markets of their coconspirators and restricted competition in certain third markets. The EC Commission has information about restrictions on competition in developing countries as a result of this cartel’s activities, but under current laws and agreements they do not have the permission, let alone the responsibility, to share information with affected parties. The Global Lysine Cartel operated from 1992 to 1995, fixing prices on feed additive for poultry and swine. The membership included all five of the world’s significant lysine producers. Production facilities were located in the US, France, Hungary, Indonesia, Italy, Japan, Korea, Mexico and Thailand. Over the life of the conspiracy, the cartel raised prices on over US$1.4 billion in global sales, overcharging by some US$140 million. The Graphite Electrodes Cartel operated from 1992 to 1997, with a membership of nearly every major worldwide producer. Graphite electrodes are used in mini steel mills to generate the high intensity of heat. Prices were fixed with over 60 per cent increase on the market price. Between US$5 and 7 billion in sales worldwide were affected. Trinidad and Tobago’s steel mill operations would have been affected. The US antitrust authorities sentenced six corporations to pay fines in excess of US$300 million. Three executives of the

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companies were convicted and have been sentenced to pay fines up to US$10 million and to serve prison sentences ranging from 9 to 15 months. The Global Vitamins Cartel operated from 1990 to 1999, fixing prices and allocating market share for sale of certain vitamins used in food processing or taken as supplements. The members of the cartel were three European and three Japanese firms, together controlling 80 per cent of the global market. The firms involved spent millions of dollars and thousands of employee hours to implement and hide their cartel. Fines in the US exceeded US$1 billion and, in Canada, was US$85 million. This is an interesting case since several other countries are investigating the cartel as a result of the initial conviction (Brazil, the EU, Australia) (Levenstein and Suslow 2001; Evenett, Levenstein and Suslow 2002). Table 1 below summarizes some information on hardcore cartels that have been successfully prosecuted and that are known to have had harmful effects on developing countries’ economies.

Table 1 RECENT INTERNATIONAL CARTELS Life of Cartel

1991-95

Price Rise

Product

Global Citric Acid

30%

Overcharge Estimate

US$1.5bn

Food additive for enhancing flavour and preventing spoilage Used in mini steel mills to generate the enormous heat necessary to melt scrap metal and convert it back to a marketable steel product. No substitute

1992-97

Graphite Electrodes

50%

?

1992-95

Lysine Cartel

100%

US$140m

1990-95

Seamless Steel Tubes

Use of Product

Feed additive for poultry and swine

Fixing Bids

Tubes, pipes, and casings (Oil Country Tubular Goods (OCTG) used in the transmission of oil and gas from wells. More used in natural gas because wellsare aredeeper deeper

1990-99

Vitamin Cartel

?

?

Used in food processing industry and also on its own. Vit. A, B2, B3, B4, B5, B6, Beta-carotene, C, E, and Vit. Premixes used to enrich processed foods

1930min.1980s

Heavy Electrical Equipment

15-25%

US$300-500 per annum

Turbines, generators, condensers, switchgear, rectifiers, rolling mills

Source: Levenstein and Suslow 2001; Evenett, Levenstein and Suslow 2002; Jenny 2002.

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EXPORT CARTELS A brief word on export cartels is merited. These cartels are exempted from the competition laws of most countries. However, recently, Germany and France have revised their laws to make export cartels illegal. Other EU countries are considering following suit and the EU, in submissions to the WTO WGTCP, oral and written, have proposed prohibiting export cartels. The country that will find it difficult to accept this proposal will be the US. It was in the US that export cartels were first legalised by the US Webb Pomerene Act of 1918 which exempted export cartels from some US legal provisions against cartels. According to Evenett, Levenstein and Suslow (2002: 17), the US was then a relatively small player in many international markets and those markets were effectively controlled by legal international cartels dominated by large European producers. Foreign cartels took action to bar entry from non-members, but US firms were not allowed by US law to join these international cartels, hence the exemption, to facilitate market access. This was followed in 1982 by the US Foreign Trade Antitrust Improvements Act which prevents foreign firms and consumers from invoking US law against US firms for anti-competitive activities, and the Export Trading Company Act of 1982 establishing a procedure for US exporters to obtain a limited immunity from anti-trust laws for collaboration provided there is no harmful impact on competition in the US market. An interesting export cartel case is the Soda Ash case, in which six US companies formed an export cartel named Ansac. This cartel does not sell soda ash in the US, but exports to Europe and elsewhere. The cartel was investigated in the EU and banned from operating in the EU. However, the individual companies were not banned, and continued to export to the EU. India also investigated Ansac, after complaints of dumping by Indian producers when, in 1996, a 23,000 tonne shipment was exported to India by Ansac. India also banned Ansac from exporting to India. At the same time, India reduced the tariff on soda ash from 48.8 per cent to 38.5 per cent in an attempt to open up the market further. Like in the EU, the individual US companies were free to export soda ash to India but chose not to do so. Instead, the US threatened to withdraw GSP benefits to India’s exports to the US unless Ansac was allowed to export to India (CUTS 2001). Why, then was there this differential treatment as per the EU and India, when both applied exactly the same penalty? MEASURES TO DEAL WITH INTERNATIONAL CARTELS

Multilateral Agreements The UNCTAD Set of Mutually Agreed Equitable Principles and Rules for the Control of Restrictive Business Practices (RBPs) were negotiated during the 1970s

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and were adopted in 1980 by the General Assembly of the United Nations. The negotiation of these rules to proscribe restrictive business practices of TNCs was part of the whole movement to create a New International Economic Order, which was the platform upon which developing countries negotiated in that era. The objectives of the Set are to ensure that: 1. RBPs do not impede realisation of benefits of trade liberalisation 2. Competition is protected in the market and concentration of capital and economic power are controlled in order to encourage innovation 3. Social welfare is protected 4. Disadvantages to trade and development resulting from RBPs are eliminated. The Set proscribes anti-competitive agreements that restrict competition in the market, abuse of a dominant market position and calls for merger control regulation. Despite that fact that these extensive and clearly articulated rules have been in existence since 1980, there has been very little action, primarily because the rules are voluntary. UNCTAD cannot bind governments to adopt and enforce the rules, and they have been largely ignored. The OECD countries have agreed upon guidelines for Multinational Enterprises (MNEs). This is part of the OECD Declaration on International Investment and Multinational Enterprises. These guidelines include a competition section which requires MNEs to refrain from entering into or carrying out anti-competitive agreements among competitors to fix prices, make rigged bids, establish output restrictions or quotas or share or divide markets by allocating customers, supplies, territories or lines of commerce. They are also required to conduct their activities in a manner consistent with all applicable competition laws, cooperate with competition authorities in other jurisdictions providing prompt and complete responses as practicable to requests for information and promote employee awareness of the importance of compliance with all applicable competition laws and policies. The OECD guidelines therefore provide voluntary principles and standards for responsible business conduct consistent with applicable laws. All entities, including parent companies, local subsidiaries and intermediary levels of organisation are expected to cooperate and assist. Once again, the guidelines were largely ineffective until they were followed up in 1998 by the recommendation of the OECD Council Concerning Effective Action Against Hardcore Cartels. ENFORCEMENT OF DOMESTIC COMPETITION LAW Since competition law has applicability only in national jurisdiction, then

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it is necessary to get cooperation/assistance from the authorities in the jurisdiction of the firms involved in international cartels if they are to be successfully prosecuted. In this area, too, one can see an evolution of attitudes. As recent as the early 1990s, attempts by the US to investigate cartel activity in other countries have proved to be difficult and have invited criticisms as an improper application of domestic antitrust law. Indeed, some European countries even passed “blocking statutes” in order to prevent their antitrust authorities, police and other national investigative agencies and firms from cooperating with US enforcement actions outside American borders. For instance, the US case against General Electric which, along with De Beers and several European firms, was thought to be cartelising the market for industrial diamonds, collapsed because of the inability of US enforcement authorities to secure the necessary information from abroad (Evenett, Levenstein and Suslow: 17-18). These authors concluded that: aggressive prosecution of cartels can deter collusion, but only where sufficient international cooperation exists to gather evidence and prosecute offenders so that cartel participants actually have something to fear. Therefore, cooperation and information sharing are essential to the successful prosecution of international cartels. The OECD Report on Hardcore Cartels strongly recommends sharing of confidential and non-confidential information and the use of compulsory process where necessary. It recognises, however, that each member had the right to choose whatever form of cooperation suited its needs. The OECD Report cited some serious and endemic problems with cooperation for exchange of information among OECD countries. They all point to the fact that the laws of OECD countries place severe restrictions on competition authorities as to the extent to which they could share information. 1. The laws of most countries forbid their competition authorities from exchanging confidential information, or even non-confidential information that is not in the public domain, that they acquire in a law enforcement investigation 2. The very vagueness of the law leads to barriers to access to information being broader than is necessary to protect sensitive information 3. When information obtained in an investigation indicates that illegal conduct is occurring in another country, some competition authorities are barred from providing any warning to their foreign counterparts, even through a tip that does not reveal the basis for the tip, or any other potentially confidential information. So, even in cases where OECD countries know of international cartel activities that harm developing

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countries, and there is evidence available, this cannot be shared with the affected countries. For example, in the Seamless Steel Tube Case, the EU competition authority did not reflect on restrictions in third markets because there was no evidence that they had a restrictive effect on the EU market. 4. Most competition authorities are denied the authority to gather and exchange confidential business information in appropriate circumstances. In addition to these constraints, countries also cannot share the information provided by squealers under the leniency programmes, because a condition of acquiring the information is confidentiality. So, valuable information about cartel activities in developing countries remain unused. The Nordic countries experienced serious difficulties in obtaining information to prosecute cartels because of their inability to get information from each other. They have decided to deepen cooperation to allow for exchange of confidential information. They decided that it was impossible to successfully prosecute international cartels without access to confidential information. The problem of getting information is compounded by the fact that TNCs have plants everywhere. For example, in the graphite electrodes case, firms involved were from Germany, Japan and the US, but they had plants in Brazil, Mexico, South Africa, Russia, Poland and they sold throughout the world. There is a lawsuit pending in the US against a US company that purchased graphite electrodes on behalf of its Turkish affiliates, initiated by 27 international Electric Arc Furnaces (EAF) steel producers who claim damage from the cartel arrangements for graphite electrodes. Basically, producers of every country that has mini steel mills (Trinidad and Tobago, Mexico, Middle East countries, Indonesia, Venezuela, Brazil) would have been affected by the cartel as producers of steel, and every country purchasing steel produced in mini mills would have paid higher prices for the steel as a result of the cartel action. A point to note is that the OECD report states that the Competition Law and Policy Committee

• • • •

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Has never found any reason why confidential information could not be protected and shared Has never found any reason to ban the sharing of information that is not confidential but is given confidentiality protection simply because it is obtained in a law enforcement investigation He found that, where shared, the record is one of improved enforcement and proper protection of confidential information Has stated that in securities, taxes, customs and criminal areas, it is common for enforcement authorities to be able to use compulsory

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•

process on behalf of foreign authorities and to share highly confidential information Argues that the type of information needed for investigating hardcore cartels is not business secrets or forecasting, but evidence of collusion, e.g., meetings between the cartel members. This is not sensitive business information and could easily be shared without putting businesses at risk.

The Australia/US Mutual Legal Assistance Treaty is one of the most farreaching agreements on cooperation in investigation of cases. CURRENT EFFORTS TO DEEPEN INTERNATIONAL COOPERATION ON COMPETITION ISSUES There has been a spate of activities initiated by the industrialised countries to extend the rules of competition to developing countries. The IMF and World Bank have required, as part of conditionality for loans, that applicants introduce competition law. This was the case in Zambia and Tanzania. It has become a trend in Free Trade Agreements (FTAs) that provisions on competition law and policy are included. Such is the case with the Canada-Costa Rica FTA, and CanadaChile. As a result of pressure from industrialised countries, a Working Group on Trade and Competition Policy was set up in the WTO to evaluate the interface between trade and competition policy with a view to determining whether there should be negotiation of a multilateral framework on competition policy. The EU included provisions on competition policy in the Cotonou Agreement, which will be negotiated with the ACP countries. Finally, there is a draft chapter on competition policy being negotiated in the FTAA Agreement. The FTAA chapter, most of which is bracketed, requires that all members adopt competition laws and institutions, apply those laws to state enterprises, legal monopolies and regulated industries and cooperate with other competition authorities in dealing with cross border issues. It provides for technical assistance and transition time for small economies and countries without competition laws. The level of cooperation being considered in the FTAA is also limited by the rules of confidentiality. Proposals for cooperation include notification, negative comity, positive comity, joint investigation and coordination in related matters. The proponents of a multilateral framework on competition policy in the WTO have proposed that all members, at the minimum, prohibit hardcore cartels, develop the institutional framework to enforce this, apply the principles of national treatment and due process to the regime, and develop modalities for cooperation. Proposals are also made for the establishment of a Competition Committee in the WTO with voluntary peer review. This paper addresses only

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hardcore cartels and modalities for cooperation. The EU paper tabled in April 2002 (WT/WGTCP/W/184) emphasises the cross border nature of the operations of hardcore cartels and the fact that-while bilateral deep cooperation exists among industrial countries, and much informal cooperation is occurring, developing countries are not party to such cooperation. They emphasised, in previous papers, the harmful effects of hardcore cartels on developing countries producers and consumers, citing the findings of the study by Levenstein and Suslow (2001) that some US$81 billion worth of imports into developing countries in 1997 have been affected by cartel pricing. They propose that cooperation modalities would apply to all anti-competitive conduct, not just hardcore cartels, and would include •

• • •

Assistance by home countries in cases where foreign firms may be engaged in anti-competitive practices with an impact on developing countries’ markets, including their imports or export trade Case specific cooperation on anti-competitive practices having an impact on international trade A willingness to consider provisions addressing specific cooperation needs of developing and transition economies Specific provisions for least developed countries (no mention of smaller economies)

They argue that a WTO based multilateral forum constitutes the only way to ensure that all WTO members effectively benefit from international cooperation and exchanges of experiences regarding trade-related competition issues. They agree that a major obstacle to cooperation is the issue of confidentiality, but offer that there could be exchange of non-confidential information that is not in the public domain. ISSUES FOR CONSIDERATION BY DEVELOPING COUNTRIES

Comments on the Proposals It is true that international cartel agreements are having tremendously adverse effects on developing countries’ economies, possibly rendering some industries in developing countries uncompetitive internationally given the high import of inputs to production. Developing countries are largely unaware of these cartel agreements which affect them and are largely powerless to investigate and prosecute the cartels. It is equally true that developing countries are not benefiting from cooperation in the way that OECD countries are benefiting and that a multilateral framework for competition policy will improve this situation and allow for learning by experience. However, we need to be realistic as to

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what is possible within the given structure and modalities for cooperation, and to analyse the proposals in this light. The following points should be considered: 1. The EU has put forward the most extensive proposals, offering assistance from home countries of TNCs engaged in anti-competitive conduct and case specific cooperation. The question is what exactly would be involved in such cooperation given the legal constraints under which they operate and the fact that, so far, only exchanges of non-confidential information are in the offering. a. We must remember the conclusion of the Nordic countries that they could not successfully investigate and prosecute hardcore cartels without exchange of confidential information, and their move to change their laws. b. We must also recall that the US antitrust authorities were unsuccessful in prosecuting GE in the Industrial Diamond case because they could not get sufficient information from the EU and South Africa. If the US could not do it in this case, how could developing countries successfully prosecute international hardcore cartels with only non-confidential information? It has been accepted that hardcore cartels cannot be successfully prosecuted without deep cooperation modalities and extensive investigative capacity and skill. 2. Further, the law in OECD countries requires that all evidence be ignored if it does not have an effect on the domestic market. So, evidence of effects on developing countries’ markets is ignored and the information is not transferred, not even in a hint, to these countries. Surely that is a very Machiavellian approach when rhetoric is that there is a genuine desire to root out international hardcore cartels because of their harmful effects not only on OECD countries’ economies but also in international trade and developing economies. Much of this information is not business sensitive. In the Seamless Steel Tubes case (EU) and the Vitamin Case (US), there was clear evidence of harmful effects on developing countries’ economies. Both the EU Commission and the US DOJ were inhibited from pursuing any further investigation than the effects on their own economy and from sharing information except that which was in the public domain as a result of the court case. 3. Export cartels are specifically allowed in many countries. Yet, the times have changed and prohibiting export cartels would benefit international

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trade given the globalisation of the world economy. Germany and France have led the way in doing so. 4. Why do the developed countries want prohibitions against cartels in developing countries? Cartels block entry to markets. It was to get market access that the US passed the Webb Pomerene Act of 1918. It is in the interest of developed countries to break up international and domestic cartel activities in their export markets since these cartels employ various strategies to reduce the ability of non-cartel members to compete in the markets they control. For instance, in the Heavy Electrical Equipment Cartel, US suppliers had difficulties getting export orders since they were not part of the cartel. Interestingly, the US companies were charged by the US FTC in 1947 with violation of the Sherman Act by illegally conspiring to restrain international trade and were enjoined from further participating in any international cartel. As a result, US companies could not compete on international markets. According to the Report Prepared for the Use of the Committee on Interstate and Foreign Commerce, United States House of Representatives (June 1980. Quoted in Jenny 2002), developing countries’ markets are the fastest growing markets in the global economy for that product at the time and “No leading manufacturer can afford to be foreclosed from these [developing countries] markets and still expect to retain its long-term position of technological leadership.” The point here is that developing countries’ markets are important for the proponents, and this can give these countries some leverage. 5. Approaches to dealing with hardcore cartels have evolved over time, particularly in the last decade, and presently there are open spaces for promoting changes because of the growing concern over the prevalence and harmfulness of these cartels and the need for effective tools for investigating and sanctioning them. Hence the strong recommendations and arguments in the OECD report. Law is not static but evolves with the changing needs of society, and the industrialised countries need to re-examine and update their laws governing cartels and the sharing of information, to be more in keeping with the needs of the time. Further, developing countries have been required, repeatedly, to change their domestic laws to facilitate the needs of and effects of globalisation. The developed countries can do the same.

IMPLI CATI ONS FO RS MALL ECO NOMIES IMPLIC TIO FOR SM ECON Small economies are probably the most affected and the least capable of being able to take action against international cartels. With open economies,

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highly dependent on imports of consumer and intermediate goods, these countries are exposed to the activities of international cartels. It was seen that cartels are limiting their activities to regions and countries where there is no competition law or where the regime is weak. For instance, at present only one CARICOM country is enforcing competition law that is, Jamaica. Barbados enacted its law late 2002 and is proceeding with the early phases of implementation. However, it takes years for a competition authority to develop the expertise and resources to investigate and sanction antitrust cases. Jamaica’s law was enacted in 1993, but most of the cases which were investigated were consumer protection cases, rather than antitrust because of lack of capacity. The Fair Trading Commission has investigated only a handful of antitrust cases and does not have the capacity to investigate an international cartel. A CARICOM competition regime has been agreed upon as part of the process for developing a CARICOM Single Market and Economy. It is now chapter 8 of the Revised Treaty of Chaguaramas. The process of implementing this chapter is under way. However, competition laws and institutions are being introduced into a vacuum, that is, an environment in which the stakeholders are still largely uninformed about the provisions, and in which there are no human resource skills available to undertake the task. The level of training required is phenomenal. Realistically, then, how can one expect these countries to be able to investigate and sanction international cartels that are so adversely affecting the performance of the economies and the livelihood of the consumers? Power asymmetry between the governments of CARICOM countries and the large TNCs that operate in these economies is a very important point to consider when assessing the ability of these countries to investigate international hardcore cartels. These small and micro economies are severely constrained in the face of the power and resources of the TNCs whose annual income may exceed the annual GDP of all CARICOM countries combined. How are they to reach an international company and demand information with any success? A TNC would only provide information if it is afraid of the investigating authority. Even if the companies are established in the domestic market, it would still be difficult to successfully extract information from them, either because they would simply refuse, threaten to withdraw from the economy, or bypass the Competition Commission and go directly to the political directorate to kill the investigation. This happens frequently in other developing countries. Indeed, developing countries, and small economies in particular, need more than the average cooperation with the industrialised countries. They need assistance from mature competition authorities, particularly the home countries of the misbehaving TNCs, to extract information from cartel members and get assistance in the investigative process.

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PO LI CY RECO MMENDA TI ONS POLI LIC RECOMMENDA MMENDATI TIO The EU has repeatedly stated in submissions that it is willing to consider proposals from developing countries. If the proponents of a WTO regime were genuinely concerned about dealing effectively with hardcore cartels, then they would be willing to consider the following proposals. 1. A thorough examination of legal impediments to the exchange of information and a revision of their laws to make it more relevant to current circumstances. This could be done only in respect to hardcore cartels and given that the information needed is, in most cases, not business sensitive. Sharing of information that surfaces in investigations and which show harmful effects on developing economies is particularly important as this is one of the few ways that these countries could be alerted to cartels that are causing harmful effects in their economies. It is very difficult to understand why competition authorities cannot even give a hint to the affected countries. 2. Modification of the effects doctrine to include investigations of hardcore cartel activities that affect developing countries when evidence arises of these effects in the course of an investigation. Such help would probably be the best avenue through which the EU proposal could be realised. There should be special and differential treatment for small economies based on their inability to challenge large TNCs. Therefore special assistance in investigation should be provided in agreements. 3. It would be good if the WTO Working Group could examine the Vitamin Cartel as an example of when a cartel is caught and confessed, how other countries could follow up with investigations using cooperation with the successful investigating authority. If a cartel is caught, can there be a mechanism developed to allow other countries to follow through with investigations and sanctions?

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REFERENCES CUTS 2001. Compendium on Cross Border Issues. Monograph. Consumer Unity and Trust Society, Jaipur, India. Evenett, S., M. Levenstein, and V. Suslow. 2002. “International Cartel Enforcement: Lessons from the 1990s.” Forthcoming in World Economy. Jenny, Frederick. 2002. “ A Tale of Two International Cartels”. WTO Symposium on Trade and Competition Policy: Looking after Doha. Geneva, April 2, 2002. Levenstein, M.C. and V.Y. Suslow. 2001. “Private International Cartels and Their Effect on Developing Countries”. Background paper for the World Bank’s World Development Report. US Government. 1980. Report Prepared for the Use of the Committee on Interstate and Foreign Commerce, United States House of Representatives. Washington. Quoted in Frederick Jenny , “A Tale of Two International Cartels,” WTO Symposium on Trade and Competition Policy: Looking after Doha. Geneva, April 2, 2002. OECD. 2000. Report on Hard Core Cartels for the Meeting of the OECD Council at Ministerial Level, 2000.

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PART 3 GOVERNANCE: THEORETICAL ASPECTS

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C H A P T E R

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S E V E N

DesIgnIng anD ImplementIng Development polIcy: the shIft to holIstIc approaches anD Development polIcy frameworks CLIVE THOMAS

Introduction

I

n recent years, there has been a marked shift towards a more long-term holistic methodology and approach in designing and implementing development policy, programmes and projects. This seeks to integrate concerns about economic growth; social policy, social development and social capital; governance and political development; institutional and organisational restructuring; legal reform; human resource development, science-technologyinnovation-change; and environmental protection, on the premise that they are linked interdependent elements of development and thus intrinsically multidimensional in their scope. This shift encourages strategic thinking and a focus on the sequencing and pacing of policy reforms. Pertinent examples of this new approach are: the Sustainable Human Development Framework (SHDF) of the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP); the World Bank’s Comprehensive Development Framework (CDF); the Second Generation Reforms of the IMF; and the donor agencies’ Partnerships and Sector Wide Approaches (SWAPS). Integral to these innovations is an accompanying shift that situates poverty reduction strategies (and more broadly social policy) in Social Policy Frameworks (SPFs). This new approach is exemplified in the recently published United Nations’ Millennium Goals which followed half-a-decade after the historic Copenhagen Summit for Social Development (1995). In keeping with this trend, the UNDP and the governments concerned (in relatively short succession) requested my assistance to design appropriate SPFs and make suitable institutional and policy recommendations for the OECS, St Vincent and the Grenadines, and Barbados. It is my view that the theoretical and analytical challenges posed by these tasks may have a wider salience for researchers and policy makers, both within the Caribbean and further afield. This article presents these issues to this larger audience. For fuller details on the

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policy and institutional recommendations in these studies readers are invited to consult the following three reports: 1) Social Policy Framework: A New Vision for Social Development in the OECS, OECS/UNDP, May 2001; 2) St Vincent and the Grenadines: Social Policy for Poverty Reduction and Social Development, OECS, December 2001; and 3) A Green Paper on Social Policy for Barbados, UNDP, February 2002. In this article therefore, the following section (section 2) will examine the rationale behind the SPF approach. Section 3 will characterise the region’s social welfare regimes while section 4 elaborates the SPF proposed for the region. Section 5 will offer some concluding remarks.

Why A Social Policy Framework (SPF) There are a number of considerations that would seem to favour the shift towards the SPF approach. One is the important conceptual advance achieved in the discourse on social policy. Starting from earlier instrumentalist views of social policy as the “mid-wife” or “hand-maiden” of development, through debates about safety nets and privatised social provisioning, the literature now recognises the centrality or “equal partner” status of social policy when designing and implementing development policy. In recent years, this has coincided with a number of systemic domestic and external pressures on social welfare systems (discussed later) and a public policy orientation biased towards the continuous re-evaluation of forms of governance and state-society relations. As might be expected, this shift to a more holistic approach has introduced a mix of elements of risk, basic needs, rights, entitlements and citizenship in the design of social welfare systems. Another consideration is that, on its own, the systemic domestic pressures referred to have also created the need for a new approach. Chief among these pressures are rising expectations about the nature of the statesociety “contract”, governance, participation, and inclusivity; increasing instability generated by growing inequalities; the emergence of new social forces, movements, and actors beyond the traditional state-market or state-community duality the region has experienced; budgetary pressures on the affordability of social safety nets; and the issue of firm competitiveness and the affordability of social benefits. Thirdly, the international context has similarly produced a number of multidimensional pressures that favour this shift. These pressures flow through several channels, firstly, through the impact of economic globalisation/liberalisation and the need this has created for the region to reposition itself in an emerging global economic order in which survival depends on international competitiveness; secondly, through the growing number of international agreements, conventions, targets and obligations which bind governments to specific social policies and programmes. These have resulted in an expanding class of global public goods that, over time, all societies will have

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to provide for their citizens; thirdly, through the holistic approaches introduced by donor countries, IFIs, and global NGOs to development assistance, as they seek to promote more local ownership and popular direction of reforms, programmes and projects in contra-distinction to the patron-client models that were formerly used; and, fourthly through the demonstration effect on the region of cultural and behavioural practices developed elsewhere. The remainder of this section of the paper elaborates on some of these issues.

Domestic Context: Economic Performance On average, compared to other developing regions, CARICOM countries have performed well over the long period, 1960–2000. Most countries have had robust economic performances which can be attributed to: 1) comparatively successful macroeconomic management; 2) significant diversification of economic structures; 3) continuous improvements in the quality and productivity of the work force; 4) similar improvements in organisational, managerial and entrepreneurial efficiency; 5) the maintenance of good governance and exemplary political and social stability; 6) sustained, but modest, inflows of official concessional resources and private FDI; 7) the maintenance of preferential access for key products; and 8) on balance, supportive integration arrangements. This favourable economic outcome now faces serious challenges that threaten the reversal of the gains made. Each of these challenges is multi-layered and multi-sectoral in scope, requiring solutions that are strategic, long-term, multi-dimensional and holistic. The response to these challenges has so far been, segmented, ad hoc, reactive and strongly reliant on external policy guidance. Consider these challenges. First, economic growth has slowed in the late 1990s and into the new millennium. It has been further affected by September 11 and its aftermath. Resulting from that event, several countries now face the most serious economic depression since the 1930s. Not only are important economic sectors under threat, but the highly unstable growth pattern exhibited by the region since the 1960s has also been further reinforced. Thus the studies referred to earlier show high coefficients of variation for GDP growth among countries, ranging from 0.3–1.1 for the period of 1981–2000. Second, even those countries with the best growth rates have still fallen well short of the required 6 per cent per year real growth that ECLAC has established as the target for bridging existing social and technological gaps in the Latin AmericanCaribbean region. Third, significant levels of unemployment, poverty, and income inequality still exist, revealing that governments have failed, despite the good overall performance of the past, to reconcile macroeconomic policies with equity. To make matters worse, the present slowing-up of economic growth combined with rising costs place enormous pressures on the affordability of social services and the welfare of the poor. Fourth, the region’s economic

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structures still have embedded in them a number of systemic constraints, limitations and weaknesses. Chief among these are: the common problems facing small island developing states with their complex intertwining of environmental, geographical (spatial) and other elements such as limited markets, small populations and highly open economies; high import dependence and an extreme concentration of exports in industries with very high cost structures; high resource intensity of economic activity, which puts a premium on environmental balance; low national savings rate; significant reliance on trade taxes; high levels of vulnerability as measured by standard international indicators; and, weak state-led economic redistributive mechanisms.

Domestic Context: Social Performance Social indicators reveal a similar pattern for social performance and outcomes. On the positive side, for a developing area, the region has attained: 1) good human development indicators; 2) a “demographic transition”, with life expectancy, fertility rates, death and birth rates, family size, and urbanisation features close to typical developed areas; 3) a “health transition”, having met all the Alma Ata Goals that established the Health For All By The Year 2000 targets (e.g., decline in death from communicable diseases, improved nutrition, increased life expectancy, etc.); 4) striking educational improvements in the areas of public and national expenditures on education, staff-pupil ratios, gross enrolment ratios in primary, secondary and tertiary education, textbook/ teaching resources availability, and so on; 5) good leisure and recreation indicators; 6) improved attention to gender equality; 7) safety nets for elderly care, provision for the indigent, housing programmes, child feeding programmes, national insurance, youth and community programmes. Alongside this, however, as in the economic domain, many complex, multilayered and multi-dimensional social challenges have emerged that have not received adequate responses. These include persistent poverty, unemployment, widening income inequality, health challenges (HIV-AIDS, an increase in “preventable” mortality indicators among young people such as: accidents; murder and suicide; providing for mental health; weak legislation and regulation of pharmaceuticals; allied health services and environmental toxins; wastage in health systems; weak institutional coordination; low consumer influence in the health delivery system; lack of professional staff; and so on), educational challenges (staff shortages, need for curricula reform, low school achievement and pressures reversing school quality, gender disparities, limited special needs education and so on), a weakening of social security provisioning and continued weakening of community development programmes.

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The International Environment All of the above has occurred while the wider international environment has impacted both positively and negatively on the region through four main channels: first, through its direct economic impact and thereafter the indirect effects of this economic impact on the social system; second, through a series of inter-governmental agreements, protocols and commitments that bind governments to social obligations within the international community; third, through the evolution of international “good practice” and state-of-the-art measures for social development; and fourthly, through its impact on culture and behaviour. These four channels are briefly reviewed below.

International Economic Effects Globalisation, defined as “the widening and deepening of international flows of trade, finance, and information in a single global market” (UNDP 1997), has resulted in cross-border activities of historically unprecedented magnitude, scope, speed and intensity. Following Thomas (May 2001), we now find inter alia: a) international production and the sales of transnational firms (TNCs) exceed the growth of both global trade and global GDP; b) a remarkable technological and organisational revolution especially in the areas of information, communications, biotechnology, new materials and social organisation; c) the expansion of global trade at a rate that exceeds that of global GDP which makes economies generally more open; d) within this occurrence, the rate of growth of trade in services exceeding the growth of trade in goods; e) a shift from traditional “intra-industry” to “inter-industry” trade; f) the increasing linkage between trade in goods and services and such “trade-related activities” as technology, property rights, and the “social” basis of trade; g) the emergence of a rules-based authority, with enforcement capability (WTO) to regulate trade; h) a veritable explosion of private financial and cross-border capital flows; i) a heavy concentration of private capital flows in mergers and acquisitions (M&As), particularly in the latter, with these overwhelmingly concentrated among the already developed economies; j) the unprecedented explosion of cross-border financial flows, much of which is of a speculative nature and seemingly unrelated to the financing of trade in goods and services; and, k) a preponderant shift in policy in favour of market-led development, liberalisation and private sector initiatives. The close integration of global financial markets has led to three particular concerns for the region. One is the global reaction to the rise of illegal financial activities (tax evasion, money laundering, and the financing of terrorism). Recent controversy over the activities of the Financial Action Task Force and the Financial Stability Forum signifies this threat. Another is the emergence of a

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regular pattern of global financial crises developing on average every 2-3 years, which has impacted adversely on the region’s economic growth. The third concern is the emergence of a new liberal trade order being built under the aegis of the WTO. This undermines the traditional patterns of the region’s trade flows because of its emphasis on reciprocal multilateral trading arrangements; the shift away from state interventionist practices, to private sector, market-driven economic imperatives and performance-based results; the pressures on CARICOM to conform to the non-discriminatory patterns of “open regionalism”; the growing linkage of trade liberalisation to other trade-related areas, especially intellectual property issues, investment, finance and the movement of skilled workers and management; the creeping linkage of trade to “non-economic” concerns such as environment and labour standards; and the establishment of a strong rules-based regulatory regime to secure the predictability and certainty of trade arrangements (Davis et al, 2001). In summary, therefore, the economic impact of globalisation has been multidimensional in its character, creating both increased opportunities for the region’s engagement in the international economy, as well as exposing it to increased economic insecurity, widening gaps between countries, and a growing asymmetry in the distribution of the gains and losses linked to globalisation.

Evolving International Norms and Standards The latter half of the last century has witnessed a dramatic expansion in the number and range of intergovernmental conventions and agreements in the area of social development. These include a number of United Nations conventions such as human rights; economic, social and cultural rights; protection against discrimination; the protection of the rights of migrant workers and their families; the elimination of violence and discrimination against women; and, conventions protecting the rights of the child and the status of refugees. There are also declarations, other instruments and programmes on social progress and development, for example, those coming out of the World Summit for Social Development. A functional breakdown of the matters covered in these documents and the policy actions agreed, covers many important areas including security of person, democratic participation, civil society, minimum livelihood, productive employment, labour standards, service provision, social integration and accountable institutions. As signatory to these agreements, the region has signalled its support for the continued evolution of global norms and standards in these areas, applicable to all member states. With time, it is certain that these obligations may permit legal petition of one kind or another in international, if not domestic law. For our purposes, this development presages the expansion of the “rights-based approach” to social development, which is in keeping with the United Nations framework:

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The UN framework is constructed upon the concept of human rights, which acknowledges the entitlements and needs of all people on the basis of their common humanity and the legal obligations of all governments to respect, protect and promote those rights (Ferguson, 1999: 1).

International “Good-Practice” Donor countries and the IFIs have separately, and in consort with each other, sought to provide to donor recipients what they term as “state-of-the-art benchmarks” to guide their contribution to social development in the region. In effect, these are “conditionalities”, linked to concessional flows. Paradoxically, this has occurred even as the share of concessional flows to the region declined relative to private FDI. Some of these state-of-the-art benchmarks are indicated below (see Schedule 1). The capstone for these benchmarks is the UN Millennium Goals and Targets for the year 2015.

Schedule 1: Goo d-Prac ti ce, St ate-o f-the-Ar t Good-Prac d-Practi tice, Sta te-of-the-Ar f-the-Art Benchmarks for Social Policy

•

Cooperation by donor agencies throughout all stages of programmes and projects

•

Partnership with local stakeholders

•

Widening of local stakeholder coverage and the creation of opportunities to work jointly with them, without requiring government “permission”

•

The promotion of “local ownership” of the process

•

Sector-wide approaches (SWAPS)

•

Participatory methodologies to be followed throughout all stages from design to post-implementation evaluation

•

Clear and precise targeting of beneficiaries, with the focus on their empowerment

•

Improved coordination between economic and social ministries

•

Stress on good governance and the soundness of social, political, and economic institutions

•

The need to reconcile equity with growth and social reform with economic change

•

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International: Culture and Behaviour The human experience is basically one of culture. Culture is socially constructed at different levels of society, i.e., the family, the community and the nation state. It inculcates a consciousness and awareness of language, history, race, customs, institutions, social practices and norms of society. It also shapes individual and social behaviour. Globalisation has accelerated communication, intensified relations and brought cultures into closer contact with each other. In this process, it has supported the tendency towards the standardisation of global cultures, thereby bringing both loss and gain to cultures. Overall, the benefits have favoured Western culture where, because of its highly developed media, arts and forms of entertainment, it has been able to exercise disproportionate influence in shaping global cultural outcomes. For small Caribbean societies where the building of national identity and culture is still being forged, these pressures are enormous. Of note, however, throughout the region’s history exposure to international events has been a major factor shaping the evolution of its culture and the characteristic forms of social behaviour. For the purpose of this article, the important conclusion is that globalisation offers both risks and opportunities for culture and social behaviour. The major risks are that some of the cultural and behavioural influences will be pernicious, especially those associated with social pathologies such as certain types of crimes, drug use and trafficking and HIV/AIDS. The opportunities mainly stem from the increased access to the world at large that is now possible. The main vehicle for this access is the Internet, and so it is important to ensure that the digital divide does not widen.

Implications In relation to the SPF, the foregoing review has two major implications. First, globalisation has a dual effect on social policy. For example, on the one hand, economic pressures and heightened economic insecurity have created budgetary pressures which have worked against the provision of public social benefits. On the other, it favours social policy, as when the region commits to international obligations to meet global targets. The second implication relates to the frequent assertion that globalisation dampens the prospects for social policy because it is not budget neutral as it raises the private costs of business activity. This view is a “static/hand-out” view of social provisioning, which focuses narrowly on the public cushioning of households whose own coping mechanisms are inadequate. Because the SPF adopts a broader approach to welfare, it can be shown for example that social policy directed at labour market improvement (health insurance, education, and work-place safety) not only provides welfare but also adds to the productivity of the labour force and therefore

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competitiveness. In a similar manner, public assistance that enhances social capital, protects persons and property and improves community life generally, also promotes global competitiveness.

The Social Welfare Regime While the circumstances in Section 2 support the priority given to SPF, the specific construction of the SPF has to be guided by an appreciation of what is termed the prevailing “welfare regime or paradigm”. This task will be taken up in this section. Unfortunately most of this type of analysis has been so far conducted for the OECD countries and more recently East Asia. The Thomas Report (May 2001) is the first known attempt to apply this analysis to the region.

Theory Empirically, social protection/welfare has been offered through specific regimes or paradigms. Following Gough (1999) these may be defined as the way welfare programmes, outcomes and effects are conceptualised, shaped, and in turn shapes the interests, ideas, beliefs, expectations and perceptions of welfare in society. Social policy also tends to reflect, simultaneously, both its historical antecedents and the prevailing political conditions. In this formulation the welfare regime comprises three elements: the social welfare mix; welfare outcomes, and stratification effects. The welfare mix is the particular combination of, and interaction between, the major institutional domains through which these are provided: state, market, household, family and community sectors in the provisioning of livelihoods, the social policies and programmes they pursue, and the way they distribute welfare benefits. This mix is affected by both domestic and international factors. The welfare outcomes are captured in several indicators. However, these can be combined into two indexes, namely the degree of “de-commodification” in the society (i.e., the measure of the extent of the insulation/protection afforded to households in event they are threatened by adverse situations in the labour market) and the degree of “de-familisation” (i.e., the extent to which a person’s standard of living is independent of family or household membership). The stratification effects indicate the manner in which the various institutions providing social welfare protection are embedded in the social structure and their influence therefore in shaping economic, political, and social relations, in order to secure the reproduction of the social system. Welfare regimes, therefore, shape the perception of equity and in turn are influenced by these perceptions. Thus, in some societies equity may be seen as an end in itself, while in others it may be viewed as more of an instrument to promote efficiency and development.

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The literature recognises a typology of social welfare regimes. In the developed economies these are classed as liberal (USA), conservative (Italy) and social-democratic (Nordic countries). Among the leading developing economies of East Asia, the typology includes: “developmentalist-universalist” (where the state underpins market and family provision of social protection with some universal programmes, e.g., Taiwan and South Korea), “developmentalparticularlist” (where the reliance is on compulsory individual programmes alongside partial state regulation of the welfare situation of families e.g., Singapore); and “minimalist-facilitative” (welfare capitalism e.g., Hong-Kong). Such types of welfare-regimes make obvious the crucial roles that politics and therefore, “political will” play in shaping social policy. Indeed, a major conclusion is that without political commitment to pursue a course of social policy, its successful implementation is highly unlikely. Table 1 below shows one attempt to reconcile the typologies to the situation of developing countries. Alongside the four central institutional domains, the domestic and international dimensions of the welfare mix are identified. Table 1: Co mpo nents o f the E xtend ed Welf are Mix Compo mponents of Ex tended Welfare Domestic

Supra-national

State

Domestic Governance

International Organisations, National Donors

Market

Domestic Markets

Global Markets, TNCs

Community

Civil Society/NGOs

International NGOs

Household

Household

International Household Strategies

Source: Gough, (1999) p.4.

Application: Antecedents In exploring this concept of the social welfare regime/paradigm in the Caribbean, the major historical antecedents are first identified. These are: 1) Marks of centuries-old experiences of slavery and colonial rule remain embedded in its social policy, despite efforts since Independence to erase or modify these. From the very first time that social welfare came to be accepted as a public responsibility, and not primarily individual charity, the authoritarian and hierarchical features of colonial society led to top-down, command and control, institutional approaches to social provisioning. 2) The early utilitarian view of the poor as the “disadvantaged” still prevails in many quarters, where more often than not they are “blamed” for their own poverty.

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3) Poverty reduction and social welfare programmes are often promoted as “hand-outs”, structured around patron-client relationships. 4) The perception of the “disadvantaged” precludes rights or entitlements to social provisioning, derived from citizenship. 5) There has been, however, a religious input into addressing poverty which introduced a moral and ethical imperative in favour of the “deserving poor”. This, however, does not embrace notions of individual and community involvement and participation in the design and implementation of social policy. 6) The Royal West Indian Commission of the 1930s, and the later emergence of a social-democratic Labour Party Government in Britain after World War II, saw the introduction of state-welfarist approaches to social policy in the region. This blended with the state-led developmentalist approach to economic development that was also widely practised in the 1950s, 1960s, and most of the 1970s. These influences have had an indelible impact on the more “radical” approaches to social policy, which developed in the early post-Independence years. Barbados stands out with the region’s most complete social protection system, which includes a modest unemployment insurance facility and a Ministry of Social Transformation. These historical antecedents leave social policy at a critical juncture. While its historical origins have created path-dependency, since the 1980s, domestic pressures and globalisation have emerged as a formidable counter-force.

Application: Welfare Mix (Caribbean) Schedule 2 depicts a prototype construction of the Caribbean welfare mix (Thomas 2001). Schedule 2: Welfare Mix: Institutional Domains and Social Provisioning Area

State

Market

Community

Family/ Household

Education

High

Low +

Low

Low

Health

High

Medium +

Low

Low

Pension

High

Medium +

Low

Low

Low +

Medium +

Medium Safety Nets Public Assistance

High

Low

Low+

Medium

Low Income Housing

High

Low

Low

Low

Note: + means tending to increase.

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From the schedule it can be observed that the level of state provisioning is considered high in all areas, except safety nets, where it is medium. Government is, therefore, the most important institutional domain for both the formulation and implementation of social policies. The state’s roles cover not only resource transfers and direct provisioning, but the regulation of social services delivery as well. This regulation takes many forms, including the determination of which services should be provided; their level; and, the manner of their delivery. The magnitude of some of the social gaps portrayed earlier along with the limited capacity of the other institutional domains further augments the role of the state. This makes “political will” and the “election-cycle” crucial determinants of the level of effort directed at social provisioning. In the institutional domain of the market, the labour market is obviously the most important vehicle for social development. For example, it is the primary source for combating poverty and producing sustainable livelihoods. The labour market, however, is relatively inflexible and segmented. Information flows are inadequate, raising transaction costs of job-seeking. There are also systemic defects associated with high unemployment and under-employment. The institutional domain of the market remains of “medium-plus” significance in health and pensions, but low and growing in safety nets and educational provisioning. Because the private sector is now portrayed as the “engine of growth”, it is expected that a significant share of the responsibilities for poverty reduction and social welfare provisioning will eventually go to it, with the regulatory role of the state rising commensurately. In many societies the private business sector already provides the bulk of support. The community as an institutional domain is weak. However, it is likely to increase in importance because of the recent thrust favouring enhanced roles for communities and civil society in social development. External agencies have given strong signals of their movement in this direction, and as providers of resources for social investment their influence in this regard will be considerable. The civil society sector has many advantages which need to be brought on board. For example, it is usually more participatory, less bureaucratic, more flexible and cost-effective than other alternatives, while being able to target vulnerable communities better. It remains, however, institutionally very weak, chronically lacking in personnel and resources to carry out their responsibilities satisfactorily. There is also a noticeable absence of appropriate legislation governing the establishment and operation of NGOs and CBOs. In the absence of this, there is no assurance that acceptable public standards of transparency, accountability and good performance operate in these institutions. This inhibits collaboration with other partners (particularly the government), and much of what exists is individual, ad hoc, and un-systematised. It also appears that the informal family/household domain (sometimes linked to local communities) provides a crucial, but overall low level of social

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provisioning. The family/household is both the first and last line of defence for many when faced with severe deprivation and want. It is important to note however, that this domain faces formidable limitations. It is typically underresourced for the tasks at hand and whatever it does offer (for which there are no reliable estimates) remains insecure and reliant on intra-family/household dynamics. While necessary, dependence on this is not only insecure but it marginalises the role of rights and entitlements in social development. This is a matter of long-term concern, particularly as an important indicator of the “capacity” of a social welfare system may well be the extent to which the security of an individual’s livelihood can be considered to be independent of the fortunes of his/her family or household. Clearly, all four institutional domains operate in both the domestic and external sectors. It is important to note at this stage the role that the external sector has played, particularly through the domain of the state. Traditionally, much of this has occurred by way of subsidised resource transfers for hardware and infrastructure to support social services delivery. This is the route through which inter-governmental obligations as well as global good-practice are usually transferred today. In the family/household domain, the external sector plays two vital roles particularly in addressing poverty and the well-being of the population. One is that migration is a major “safety net” for the poor and, indeed, for the population at large. The resultant remittances (estimated to be as high as one-fifth of household consumption, in some cases) are also of great importance to many households. The other is that as donors re-think their development programmes, it can be expected that an increase in the level of experimental programmes will occur. This will add to the already high transaction costs to the region, of carrying a policy system that is so heavily dependent on itinerant consultants, because local institutions remain under-resourced and under-equipped. This situation may well turn out to be an important source of tension, if the present roles of the political directorate, senior public service managers, and donor agencies, is not skilfully handled. Schedule 3 summarises some of the major external and internal pressures on the region’s social welfare regime. As the schedule reminds us, these pressures are complex, far-reaching and closely inter-connected.

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Schedule 3: Major External and Internal Pressures on the Social Welfare System Source

Types of Pressure

I: External A. Donors and

Change of vision to suit donors’ perspectives. Social adaptation to innovative and experimental social practice leading edge for civil society and private sector involvement. Reduced “ownership and control” over social policy – outside leadership and the potential for government-donor tension. Increased role of itinerant consultants as against local public services. Increased transactions costs.

Intergovernmental

Increased role of international obligations, standards and norms. B. Globalisation

Economic uncertainty. Transformation of labour markets and work process. Pressures on competitiveness and innovation. Reduced concessional flows and increased reliance on private FDI. Loss of preferential market access. Harmonisation of costs of social protection to global farms. Growing number of international conventions and agreements e.g., human rights, child rights, women, ILO labour conventions, population policy, migration and remittances.

II: Internal

Demographic changes. Health status and recent developments e.g., HIV/AIDS, teenage pregnancies; obesity. Unemployment and underemployment. Poverty and other deprivational deficits. Gender and family issues. Youth in crisis. Crime and justice. Marginalization. Weakening educational indicators e.g., dropout rates, school quality and performance. Pension benefits. The elderly. Informalisation of safety nets. Political will and the election cycle

Budgetary pressures.

Implications for the SPF What inferences can be drawn for the construction of the SPF? First, the view of social policy as an investment in people and institutions (building social capital) and therefore productivity enhancing has gained only limited acceptance in the region. Social policy is still largely perceived as the “poor cousin”, with its emphasis on “welfare” and “hand-outs”. The persistence of path-dependency in the social sector is therefore considerable.

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Second, there is insufficient coordination among social institutions, even at the level of the state. And, where this coordination exists, it has been found to be very dependent on the perceptions and actions of individuals within the process, rather than institutionally driven. Third, the central role of the worker or the core breadwinner in formulating social policy is not adequately recognised. This is perhaps best symbolised in the traditional “collective-bargaining” role to which the region’s Ministries of Labour are confined. Fourth, institutions across all the major domains of state, market, community and household remain severely deficient in their capacity, flexibility and adaptability. Fifth, the legal basis for modern poverty programmes and social services delivery systems is weak. For example, there is dire need to modernise local labour laws, to update laws relating to the rights of children; to systematise laws against discrimination and violence against women; and, to provide legal foundations for NGOs and CBOs. Sixth, the importance of social relationships and shared values as resources for effective social action, promoting social cohesion and integration, and in addressing development problems, is not sufficiently recognised. Seventh, redistributive policies have been weak and seem to have receded into the background of public discourse. Eighth, the institutional approach to social services has been based on the “universal” principle of state provisioning to all citizens through line ministries. This approach has linked service financing with provisioning and very often as well, with its national regulation (e.g., health and education). However, development problems are frequently associated with particular communities, suggesting that better responses may well be directed at communities, using multi-functional interventions.

The Social Policy Framework The creation of a framework within which to locate social policy as development requires certain logical steps. In this section, these steps are identified and described. The task begins with a working definition/description of social policy. The premises behind this formulation and the overall objective it seeks to pursue are then described. From this overall objective, certain strategic objectives are identified and then the various modalities for operationalising policies are discussed. The final step is to draw attention to some basic concerns, which operate as cross-cutting themes in the presentation. We therefore have the following:

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[Definition/Description .. Premises .. The Overall Objective ..The Derived Strategic Objectives .. The Modalities for Operationalising Policies .. The Basic Concerns as Cross-Cutting Themes]

Definition/Description The literature recognises that there is a persistent challenge in defining what constitutes social policy in the developing country context (Kabeer & Cook, 2000). Some of this may be attributed to the origin of social policy in the industrialised countries, where it evolved in response to threats to the social order and social stability and its continuing strong association with these economies. Some definitions seem to locate social policy exclusively in the domain of public policy, interpreting social policy as meeting those goals of society which cannot be achieved through private initiatives. This view provides, as it were, a rationale for government action. Others are broader, emphasising the social element and seeing it as actions that individuals or families cannot pursue on their own. In the context of the region, it is proposed that an appropriate definition of social policy should embrace the following elements: -

-

-

The premises (theories and ideas) that underpin it should be explicitly identified for the reader (this is done in the next sub-section). It should encompass both evolving domestic experience and the norms and standards within the international community (these were identified in sections 2 and 3 above). Sufficient coverage to ensure it embraces all areas of society, including non-traditional areas of social action (beyond welfare), such as redistribution of income and assets, macroeconomic regulation, employment policy and the labour market, the justice system, gender equality, governance, leisure and the arts. Sufficient flexibility to cater for all possible methods of social action, including regulatory, taxation, spending, the direct provision of services and benefits and facilitation. That definition therefore is: Social policy refers to: 1) those aims, objectives and declared intentions of a range of organisations in the public, private/ business, civil sectors and international community that are intended to reduce poverty and to meet the needs of the population, both male and female, in order to improve their well-being or welfare, and to promote the development of the country; 2) the way these declared aims, objectives and intentions are translated

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into specific programmes and projects for change; and, 3) the monitored outcomes of these programmes and projects (Thomas, 2001).

Premises Social policy is guided by principles that express its general purpose. In turn these principles are underpinned by theories and ideas. In practice, social policy is dynamic and changes in response to domestic experience and the development of global norms and standards. Four key premises underline the definition given above: 1. That the population of the region, both male and female, is seen as actors, owners and initiators of social policy. Persons are expected therefore, to have (and demand) increasing agency over the development of society, economy, polity and culture. More specifically, the population is not conceived as “objects” of social reform or purely “economic agents” operating in the market place. 2. That because of the underlying economic, political, social, and cultural situation discussed earlier, it is premised that the necessity/imperative for social reform and change is a widely shared value among the population. More specifically, it is not conceived as the singular property of elites, whether political, social, or economic. 3. That while social change can be measured in many ways; it is best measured by the nature and quality of the social relations, inter-connections, and shared values among the population. More specifically, sustainable social change is not conceived as being possible if it is led from above in a topdown commandist structure of social relations and interconnections. 4. That social development is treated as a “public good” in that it is part the “commons” or common heritage of all citizens and, therefore, the responsibility for its provision is collectively shared by all members of society.

Overall Objective Based on the above, the overall objective of social policy may then be described as: The creation of more secure and functional social relations (or as it is also termed social capital); these relations (social capital) would enlarge the capability of the population, both men and women (and in particular the poor and vulnerable groups), in meeting their own needs and interests through effective participation in the activities of the

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four central institutions of society: state, market, community and household. The overall objective emphasises “shared values” among the population. It also stresses the systematic development of their rights and entitlements to social development, both as expressed locally and internationally.

Strategic Objectives With the overall objective in mind, two strategic objectives follow, namely: - Development objective - Social protection/welfare objective. The development objective is to enable the population as a whole (men and women and specifically the poor and vulnerable groups) to: 1) address their needs and interests; 2) secure greater “livelihood security”; 3) strengthen social relations (social capital). For social planning purposes, this can be disaggregated into specific development goals, all of which focus on investment in peoples and communities as they seek to promote “high-quality” economic growth and avoid large scale budgetary transfers of a primarily social-type protection. These nine goals are: poverty eradication; building social capital; securing family/ household relations; gender equity; participation/empowerment; institutional sustainability; environmental sustainability; international competitiveness; and macroeconomic stability and balance. The development goals focus on investment in peoples and communities. They avoid large-scale transfers of primarily a primary social protection type. The social protection/welfare objective addresses those principles that guide the distribution of welfare benefits and provisioning and, consequently, the specific means or “welfare mix” through which these are provided. Experience has shown that there are several routes toward attaining this particular objective. In some societies the emphasis is placed on coping with some of the “social risks” which individuals are likely to encounter. Following Esping-Andersen (2000) we can say that, within the region, these social risks are: universal, for example, death; group-based, for example, the risk of poverty in households with poor education and skills; life/cycle risks, for example, divorce and separation within families; and, inter-generational, for example, they are transmitted from parents to children. This social risk-based approach informs a variety of policies in Barbados, with insurance services constituting the best example of this approach. The social risk-based approach has guided certain types of social monitoring, such as the head count poverty measures, estimates of life expectancy, calculating the probability of unemployment, projecting school enrolment, and so on.

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Clearly, the main purpose of this approach is to estimate the probability of an occurrence of the risk in order to design measures to respond to it. This approach is very useful for situations where risks are easily identified and well ordered. However, for “stochastic” events, such as natural disasters, global financial crises, civil disorder and so forth, it is not the best approach, simply because these are neither common nor easily predictable occurrences. Finally, it should be noted that this approach is premised on an individual view of social protection. For this reason, it has been criticised for being too “individualistic,” “unhistorical” and “static” in its approach to social protection. It nevertheless continues to play an important role in social policy and is recommended as one element of a larger package. A second approach is the capability or resources approach developed by Sen (1981). This approach focuses on the household and the community and their ability to mobilise resources to satisfy their needs and interests. Here, the main concern is with the maximisation of the individual’s, household’s, and community’s potential and capabilities as the best approach to social protection and the maximisation of social welfare: with a bias towards multidimensional resource monitoring. The focus in this approach is on social units, rather than on individuals as in the risk-based approach. This approach is also recommended, because it has certain distinct advantages when dealing with such problems as social exclusion and the marginalisation of groups. The approach also conforms well to changes in individual roles over the life cycle of the family, household and community. Further, it supports a community-based approach to social policy design, implementation and monitoring. The third approach is the rights-based approach to social policy. This prioritises individuals, households and communities as active agents with claims/ entitlements to promote their own development. It is, in essence, participatory and recognises all rights, whether economic, social, political or cultural. Because it is citizen-based, it strengthens the development of the tendency already recognised in some countries in the region, e.g., Barbados, of citizen-entitlement to social development. For all these reasons, it is highly recommended.

Operationalising Social Protection Just as there are nine primary development goals, the social welfare/ protection objective can similarly be met in a variety of ways including: · · ·

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Employment (e.g., work programmes, training) Income supplements (e.g., cash transfers or insurance) Consumption provisioning (e.g., targeted food and nutrition programmes)

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· ·

Direct services (e.g., the provision of health and education services or work in public projects) Regulation (e.g., state regulation of non-state provisions such as insurance, private pensions and redundancy payments)

In the above classification, it is necessary to distinguish between beneficiaries who are the acutely dependent poor and the other poor. This distinction permits us to treat with the latter group as having the potential to be transferred out of poverty and need support only in the short-term through social action, because they are at present resource poor. The acutely dependent poor, however, are not capable of this transition even in the medium-term. Consequently, transfers to this group will have to be maintained for a considerable period. Because of the low probability of emerging into a situation of sustainable livelihood, it is this category of the poor that runs the risks of social exclusion and marginalisation. For this category, therefore, social protection is a social, ethical and citizen obligation. The distinction shows that, while in both instances social protection is necessary, one is time-bound and capable of a productive resolution in the nearterm, and the other is not. This perspective also reveals the complex, multidimensional nature of poverty. In the region, such poverty is as much about income and consumption levels (the traditional basis of headcount measures) as it is about relationships and processes in society as a whole. Investigations have shown that poverty, both objective and subjective, is multi-faceted and reflects deprivations of resources, capital and opportunities in several areas of social life, including the: personal (e.g., health, legal rights, recognition, voice); social (e.g., gender disparities, household-family relations, community networks); economic (e.g., assets, opportunities, availability and access of economic services); cultural (e.g., religion, race); and political (e.g., exclusion from political participation or denial of political rights).

Social Policy: Scope and Basic Concerns Based on the definition above, the scope of social policy embraces all the major areas identified in the literature (Devereux and Cook, 2000). It includes the social sectors (health, education, water and sanitation); social insurance (pensions, unemployment benefits and disability allowances); social protection (food subsidies, targeted safety nets, public works projects, feeding programmes and cash/in kind transfers); social services (care for vulnerable groups such as the indigent, orphans, the elderly, people with disabilities, the homeless etc); and social rights (labour and employment codes, women’s rights, children’s rights etc.). These are in addition to the other social policy-related areas identified elsewhere, i.e., macroeconomic policy, environmental policy, governance and culture.

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The main criteria for assessing the provision of social services are: 1) access (are the services provided accessible in terms of coverage and cost?); 2) quality (do the poor get poor services or are they of an adequate and appropriate standard?); 3) relevance (are the services provided relevant to the actual needs of the vulnerable population and so provide solutions to their problems?); and, 4) fit (are the services sensitive to the local context and circumstances?) (Devereux and Cook, 2000). The basic concerns that social policy addresses as cross-cutting themes are centred on four clusters of activities: -

-

-

Empowerment: this is the enhancement of the abilities of persons, households and communities to participate and share in decisionmaking in all spheres of life. Livelihood security: that is, ensuring that individuals, households and communities do not suffer from severe deprivation and want and are able to function effectively in society. Social services provision: especially in such critical areas as health, education, social care and social security. Social integration: that is, including all groups in the basic processes of society and the avoidance of their exclusion based on characteristics such as gender, age, race, politics or income.

These basic concerns can be addressed through three types of social policy, namely: -

Investment in human capital: directed through policy areas like health and education Social protection/compensatory policies: directed at groups adversely affected by change and crisis Social integration policies: directed at the prevention and/or overcoming of the marginalisation and exclusion of communities, social groups, households and individuals.

Typically, there are alternate policy routes toward the same goal. Thus, if the government wanted to make provision for those in the poorest decile of the population it could do so directly through cash transfers or more indirectly through taxation and expenditure policies to provide such services as training, squatter regularisation or credit. Taxation and spending seems to have the strongest, most direct and immediate impact on social welfare provisioning. Next to this comes the provision of productive and remunerative jobs. Macroeconomic policies such as inflation control, exchange rate management, credit availability and cost are also powerful determinants of growth, income

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distribution and equity and cannot therefore be separated from social policy. Emphasis on “equalizing opportunities” appears to be the most effective means of fundamentally shaping outcomes. There is a strong consensus in some CARICOM countries against extreme inequality in the distribution of income and assets. This notion of equity, that seems acceptable, simultaneously embraces poverty reduction programmes; equity in the quality of life, which embraces such indicators as the HDI; equity in opportunity among social-classes and between generations; equity across social groups; protection against uncertainty; and fiscal equity. Equity, in this sense, should be promoted as both an instrument of public policy and an end in itself. However, the policy link between equity, social cohesion and the reduction of political conflict varies in strength across the region. FigURE 1:

Definition/Description of Social Policy and its Ontology THE SOCIAL POLICY FRAMEWORK

PREMISES

Specific Assumptions and Values

People as Actors, Owners, Initiators of Social Policy

Social Reform and Change as a Widely Shared Value

Non-Coercive Non-Commandist Pro-Participatory Pro-Partnership

DEFINITION/DESCRIPTION

Aims, Objectives and Declared Intentions to Improve Well-being/ Welfare

Programmes [Expanding Areas] and Outcomes

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Principles and General Purpose

Underlying Theories and Ideas

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Dynamic and Change Driven

Internal and External Experiences

Welfare Mix

Patterns, Institutional Domains, Livelihood Security, and Social Stratification

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Figure 2:

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The Social Policy Framework Schema Overall Objective • • • •

Social Capital & Social Relations Participation Capability Key Institutional Domains (market, state, HH, Community) Shared Values and “Rights”

Development Objective

Social Protection Objective

Poverty eradication, Building Social Capital, Securing Family/HH relations, Gender, Participation/ Empowerment, Institutional Sustainability, Environmental Sustainability,

• • •

Welfare Paradigm/Regime Welfare Mix Welfare Outcomes Stratification Effects

Operationalised through: Employment, Income Supplements, Consumption Provisioning, Direct Services, and Regulation.

Basic Concerns

Empowerment

HH Livelihood Security

Social Services

Social Integration

Types of Social Policy • • •

Investing in Human Capital Compensatory Social Integration

Related Issues In concluding this section, attention is drawn to some related issues which derive from the policy framework described above. First, the framework goes well beyond traditional social sector budgetary analysis. It seeks to create the context within which social policy and poverty programmes and projects, whether originating in the state, private, civil,

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household, community, domestic, or international sectors, can be conceived, assessed, implemented and evaluated. The emphasis of the SPF is on process, relationships and structures. The framework is intended to accommodate changes that are radical and innovative as well as incremental. It also permits the best use of resources as an indicator of achievement when focusing on programmatic interventions. Second, the framework focuses on the involvement of all the key levels of decision-making in the society. It deliberately eschews a top-down, commandist approach to social policy design and implementation. It supports democratic governance and, therefore, recognises the importance of leadership and political will. Third, the framework is iterative. Even though it is guided by fundamental principles and the assumption of shared values among the population at large, it is expected to evolve over time in response to changing circumstances, both within the region and the broader international community. This allows for possible synergies with on-going programmes, as the framework offers a principled basis for working together with development partners. Fourth, the framework stresses the inseparable linkage between social development and economic growth in the reduction of poverty. The development objectives, as elaborated above, make this clear. Thus, investment in human capital, while a social end in itself (e.g., it promotes empowerment and social integration), also enhances domestic competitiveness. Similarly, social programmes that modernise the labour market or promote rural transformation also simultaneously reduce poverty and enhance the prospects for economic growth. Fifth, in the region most economies are viewed as functioning more or less in a self-regulatory manner, largely because of the operations of the “invisible hand” of the market. The intended objective of the policy framework is to promote a similar view of society, functioning through a set of self-regulatory processes. This would only be possible if there are: 1) widely shared goals and values among the population; 2) a participatory social framework; 3) democratic governance; 4) transparency; 5) accountability in all institutional structures. It is for this reason that much emphasis has been laid on these considerations in the proposed framework. Above all, however, the responsibility of the elected government and state in the fulfilment of this objective is paramount. The state remains, in the region, the most important institution in the battle against poverty and in the promotion of social development. Its responsibilities cannot be confined to purely regulatory and “market support” activities. Sixth, the framework treats the fundamental concern of gender equity as a cross-cutting theme. And the framework is intended to provide the basis for further dialogue and consultation.

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Finally, the framework clearly takes a long-term perspective. It opts for holistic, multi-faceted, and multi-dimensional approaches to social policy and social development. It explicitly seeks to embrace interactions between the social, political (governance), cultural (behavioural), institutional, structural (environmental) and economic spheres.

Conclusion In conclusion, the attention of readers is drawn to two important implications for governments and policy makers. One is that country responses to the recommendations for an SPF should be guided by an awareness of the institutional capacities/weaknesses of the country concerned. Thomas’ evaluation of the OECS region (May 2001) in this regard highlighted a number of systemic weaknesses that can be categorised under two broad headings. The first is in the areas of policy and planning and social services delivery. The former covers weaknesses in planning and evaluation, databases, personnel, resources, priority setting, “turfdom”, size and the balance between centralisation/de-centralisation, as well as uneven capacities of the various development partners. The latter includes segmentation/ fragmentation/ duplication; limitations of the “universalist” approach of line ministries; absence of reliable indicators; little consumer choice/influence; marginalisation of “social partners”; weak-standing of social sector ministries; high transaction costs; excessive “outside-leadership”; and political manipulation. These are shown in schedule 4. Arising from this was the identification of certain needs in support of institutional reform and the recommendation of several priority actions (see Thomas May 2001). These ranged from social sector line ministries coordination to more systematic participation by all “social partners” in constitutional and public service reform. The second implication is that, if the region does not respond quickly to the developments covered in this paper, the situation will worsen and international agencies/researchers/scholars will frame the discourse and set the agendas for designing and implementing development policy/reforms. Regrettably, this would leave the region with only the option of reacting to these developments.

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Schedule 4: Issues From Institutional Review

Issues

Items

1. Evaluation: 1.I Systemic Weaknesses (Policy and Planning)

• • • • • •

• •

1.II Systemic Weaknesses (Social Services Delivery)

• •

• • • • • • •

Weak capacity for policy implementation and evaluation. Weak databases and ad hoc interventions to generate data. Acute personnel shortage and lack of a "critical mass". Severe resource constraints and underfunding. Uneven capacities of various development partners affecting participatory approaches. Priority setting. Resource shortages have elevated Ministries of Finance to the position of the “final arbiter” with regard to priority setting. These Ministries are forced to adopt a "fire-fighting" stance toward resource spending and acquisition, thereby abandoning longer-term concerns. "Turfdom" is a serious and insidious threat in the public service, limiting the scope of long-term planning objectives and vision. Small size and relative homogeneity of the population make it difficult to determine the appropriate balance between centralization and decentralization, local execution and bottom-up approaches to development.

Significant segmentation, fragmentation, and duplication in delivery of some social services. Line Ministries are premised on the "universal principles" of non-discrimination, nonselectivity, and homogeneity in the provision of social welfare, while many problems require a complex multi-sectoral response. Reliable indicators of social processes and outcomes only now being developed. Minimal consumer preference exercised over the form, content, and manner of delivery of social services, which perpetuates dysfunctionalities. Peripheral involvement of “social partners”. In the struggle over resource access in the public sector, social sector ministries as a rule seem to be placed at a considerable disadvantage. High transaction costs in social service delivery. Too much "outside" leadership from the donor, inter-governmental, and IFI communities. Political influence over social policy and in particular, the influence of "election cycles", vary considerably across the Region and indeed overtime.

Source: Thomas (2001).

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References Aizenman, Joshua. 1999. “Economic Reform and Governance”. Paper presented to the 4th Annual Conference on Development, of the Eastern Caribbean Central Bank, St Kitts, October 14-15. Bevan, Philippa. 2000. Programme Approaches, Space and Entry Points for Social Development. Centre for Development Studies, University of Bath, January. Camdessus, Michel. 1999A. Strengthening the Link Between Economic and Social Policies Within the Framework of a Globalised Economy, IMF, Washington, October 26. —————(1999B). “Second Generation Reforms: Reflections and New Challenges,” Opening Remarks to the IMF Conference on Second Generation Reforms, Washington, November 8. Commonwealth Secretariat. 2000. Small States: Economic Review & Basic Statistics, Annual Series, Vol 5, Spring. London. —————1998. Small States: Economic Review & Basic Statistics, Annual Series, Vol 4, London, December. Davis, C. et al. 2001. “Trade Liberalisation and Small Economies: The Case of the Caribban Community.” In Agricultural Globalisation, Trade and Environment, edited by C. Moses et al. Kluwer Press. Devereaux, Stephen and Cook, Sarah, “Does Social Policy Meet Social Needs?” IDS Bulletin 31: Vol 4, October 2000. Doyal, L & I. Gough. 1991. A Theory of Human Need, London: Macmillan. ECLAC. 2000. The Equity Gap: A Second Assessment, United Nations, CEPAL/ECLAC. —————1997. The Equity Gap: Latin America, The Caribbean and the Social Summit, United Nations, Santiago, Chile, December. ECLAC/CDCC. 1996. “Survey of Administrative Structures For Social Development in the Caribbean With Particular Emphasis on Poverty Eradication”. Paper prepared for the Caribbean Ministerial Meeting on the Eradication of Poverty, Trinidad, October 28–November 1. Esping-Andersen, G. 2000. Social Indicators and Welfare Monitoring, UNRISD, Geneva, May. Ferguson, Clare. 1999. Global Social Policy Principles: Human Rights & Social Justice, DFID, London, April. Gough, I. 2001. “Globalisation and Regional Welfare Regimes: The East Asian Case”. Global Social Policy 1 (2). Girvan, Norman. 1995. Report on the Caribbean Symposium on Social Development, Consortium Graduate School of Social Science, UWI, Mona, Jamaica, May 4. Kabeer, N., and S. cook. 2000. Editorial Introduction: Re-visioning Social Policy in the South (Challenges and Concepts) IDS Bulletin, Vol. 31 No.4, pp. 1-10. Kothari, Uma. 2000. Developing Guidelines for Assessing Achievement in the Eight Focal Areas of Social Development Work and for Assessing Outcomes: Assessment Procedures, Institute for Development Policy and Management, University of Manchester, London, January.

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LeFranc, Elsie. 2000. Poverty and Social Policy – Draft Symposium Report, ISER, Cave Hill, Barbados, March 1-4. Ryan, Selwyn. 1996. Democratic Governance and the Social Condition in the Anglophone Caribbean, ECLAC, UNDP, New York. Sachs, Jeffrey. 2000. “A New Global Consensus on Helping the Poorest of the Poor”. Address to the Annual Bank Conference on Development Economics, World Bank, Washington, D.C, April 19. Sen, Amartya 1981. Poverty and Famines: An Essay on Entillement and Deprivation, Oxford: Oxford University Press. Thomas, C.Y. 2002. A Green Paper on Social Policy for Barbados, UNDP, Barbados, February. ————— 2001. St Vincent and the Grenadines: Social Policy for Poverty Reduction and Social Development, OECS, December. ————— 2001. Social Policy Framework: A New Vision for Social Development in the OECS, OECS/UNDP, May. ————— 2000. “The Economic Development of the OECS in the Newly Emerging International Economic Order”. Journal of Eastern Caribbean Studies. 25.1. (March). ————— 2000. “Persistent Poverty and CARICOM’s Responses” CARICOM Perspective, Vol 21, July. ————— 2000. “CARICOM and the New Liberal Trade Order”, in Transition 29, IDS, University of Guyana. Wood, Geof. 2000. Concepts and Themes: Landscaping Social Development, Institute for International Policy Analysis, Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences, University of Bath, January. World Bank, 2000. Comprehensive Development Framework: Questions and Answers, World Bank Group, Washington D.C. ————— 2000. Poverty Reduction and Human Resources Development in the Caribbean, World Bank, Washington.

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governance In the context of globalIsatIon anD regIonalIsatIon ANTHONY PAYNE

t

he central argument of this paper is that the governance of the international political community at the beginning of the 21st century is more complex than ever before. It has become so as a consequence of several, intersecting developments within the structure of the inter-national, inter-state, intereconomy order which grew out of Europe to spread across the world on the basis of the widespread attractiveness of the national-statist model of human destiny. For all the genuine turbulence of this order, generated by economic and political conflict between states, it was structurally relatively stable. Analytically, we knew how it was organised and governed and what were its core dynamics. In the current era, we are no longer so sure where we stand. We can easily enough define governance, as James Rosenau has done, as connoting “spheres of authority. . .at all levels of human activity....that amount to systems of rule in which goals are pursued through the exercise of control” (Rosenau, 1997: 145); we can certainly recognise the greater complexity of contemporary governance arrangements, as averred earlier; and we can seek to map these arrangements, as will be attempted. But we also know that we are still in the middle of intensive processes of economic and political change which are far from slowing down, let alone coming to a finish. These changes have generated equally intensive intellectual debates within international political economy. Four such debates stand out, each focused around a widely used, but inevitably contested, concept: namely, globalism, globalisation, regionalism and regionalisation. These are all concepts which we cannot avoid using, but which we must specify and clarify if they are not in the end to obfuscate analysis and understanding. In particular, globalism and globalisation as a pair and regionalism and regionalisation as a pair are sometimes deployed interchangeably, which is to miss an important opportunity to draw extra subtleties of analysis out of the available vocabulary. The approach of this paper will therefore be to take up positions in respect of each of these debates as a necessary, ground-clearing prelude to discussion of some of the key,

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emerging characteristics of the contemporary governance of the international political community. A brief concluding section will then endeavour to draw out some of the policy implications of the foregoing analysis.

Deb ate 1: Gl obalis m eba Glo alism Globalism is best understood as a state-led political project designed to organise the global order along defined economic and political lines (Gamble & Payne, 1996). It aspires to, but does not necessarily have to achieve, global hegemony, which in turn is best understood in the neo-Gramscian usage of that term, as classically set out by Robert Cox. For Cox, hegemony means “more than the dominance of a single world power”. Instead, it is understood as dominance of a particular kind where the dominant state creates an order based ideologically on a broad measure of consent, functioning according to general principles that in fact ensure the continuing supremacy of the leading state or states and leading social classes but at the same time offer some measure or propsect of satisfaction to the less powerful (Cox, 1987: 7). Thus “there can be dominance without hegemony; hegemony is one possible form dominance may take” (Cox, 1981: 153). Crucially, in this perspective hegemony is seen as bringing together both coercive and consensual elements of power. Although the novelty of the neo-Gramscian approach to international political economy compared to mainstream (neorealist and neoliberal) analysis lies in the attention it gives to the role of ideology in establishing and maintaining a hegemonic global order, it does also theorise the objective, material elements of power which lead to the capacity for the exercise, ultimately, of coercion. Power is conceived, in short, as a centaur, part man, part beast, with different elements employed in different political situations. This understanding of globalism as a putatively hegemonic project helps to unlock many features of the current phase of the global order. It identifies two hegemonies in modern history: (i) that of Pax Britannica, broadly the period from 1789 to the 1870s when the British state transmitted the norms of liberal economics and politics to much of the rest of the world; and (ii) that of Pax Americana, broadly the period from 1945 to the early 1970s when the United States presided over the “golden years” of post-war growth and peace. Each in turn came to be undermined. US hegemony could not, in the end, survive the combination of enormous expenditure on the war in Vietnam, the most ambitious expression of its globalist ambition, and the unwillingness of its politicians to tax their people sufficiently to cover the costs of the global operations of the US state. President Nixon”s devaluation of the dollar in August 1971 and

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the suspension of its convertibility into gold has thus to be understood as the moment which signalled the end of an era. From this perspective, the political economy of Reaganism in the 1980s was but a footnote to this story – a bold, but ultimately unsuccessful, attempt by the US state to resist hegemonic decline and rebuild its globalist project under the twin ideological prospectuses of “militarism” and “monetarism”. Recalling the Coxian definitions offered earlier, this account of the post1945 world order implies that US “hegemony has given way to domination” (Cox, 1987: 299). Such a claim does not necessarily contradict the standard (neorealist) assertions that the US is the “sole superpower” post-Cold War, because it is made in a different conceptual vocabulary, but it does at least place the emphasis of the argument differently. It fully acknowledges that, within a nonhegemonic world order, the power of the US unquestionably remains preponderant – certainly, as implied, in the military sphere given the demise of the Soviet Union, substantially too in the ideological domain given its continuing leadership of old and new organs of international management such as the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the Group of Seven (G7) summits, and also, not least, to a very considerable degree in economic matters. The size and technological vigour of the US economy, the origins of much international capitalist enterprise in the US and the continuing centrality of the US dollar as an international currency are all factors which have come together to generate the “Clinton boom” and render the US still the most formidable single national player in the world economy. What is different is that the US is no longer powerful enough to shape, on its own, the rules of a consensual hegemonic order. It has not been willing or able to initiate a new Bretton Woods; it has not even consistently sought to use the G7 process to shape the economic policies of the leading Western states; and although it did succeed in putting together a powerful coalition to fight the Gulf War in 1991, it had to rely on German, Japanese and Arab funds to pay for its military effort. In short, the US no longer possesses that self-reinforcing and largely unchallenged primacy across all the necessary constituents of hegemonic power. Without this, it is reduced to mortal status, increasingly likely to behave in the same fashion and be constrained in the same way as other leading states in the world. It is important not to be misled here by continuing US rhetoric and policy pronouncements, for at that level globalism can appear to be alive and well. But deeper analysis of recent and current US foreign policy debates suggests otherwise (Aysha, 2000). Moreover, this has been grasped by some close to the centre of power in Washington. For example, as early as 1993, former State Department official, Jonathan Clarke, was deriding what he called, in the title of an article in The Atlantic Monthly, “the conceptual poverty of U.S. foreign policy”. In his view, foreign policy dialogue in the US had lately been based on “embracing stale concepts from the bygone era” of hegemony in an attempt to avoid the fact

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that the US “stands at a historical crossroads” (Clarke, 1993: 54). Aysha himself asserts that the US today is essentially in the same position it was during the Nixon administration: he quotes economic journalist Hobert Rowen”s claim that what Clinton and all US presidents since Nixon have done is to “reach for the same solutions or semi-solutions time and time again” (Rowen, 1994: 18, cited in Aysha, 2000). From a hegemonic perspective, there no longer exists an organising intelligence at the heart of US global strategy. Foreign policy has been reduced instead to a reflex of the balance of internal political forces, unable to develop a national consensual vision. These are, in a phrase, the manifestations of the ending of US globalism. This has already created huge problems for the US, which are only just beginning to be worked through in that society, but it has also removed from the architecture of the international political community the central pillar of post-war governance.

Deb ate 2: Gl obalisa ti on eba Glo alisati tio Globalisation has been overdefined, with the term now used to launch a myriad of popular and academic analyses of the current global order. In deliberate contrast to the conceptualisation of globalism as a state-led project conceived at the global level, it is best understood as a social process unfolding also at global level but driven forward by a mixture of forces (public and private, political and non-political) of which states are only one and by no means the most important or influential. This sense of globalisation as a wide-ranging process is well captured in the initial working definition adopted by David Held, Anthony McGrew, David Goldblatt and Jonathan Perraton in their magisterial overview of the globalisation debate. They say that globalization may be thought of initially as the widening, deepening and speeding up of worldwide interconnectedness in all aspects of contemporary social life, from the cultural to the criminal, the financial to the spiritual (Held et al., 1999: 2). From this conceptual starting point they have gone on to identify and distinguish three broad schools of thought which they refer to as the “hyperglobalisers”, the “sceptics” and the “transformationalists”. The latter “transformationalist” account of globalisation, which they derive particularly from the work of such as Anthony Giddens and James Rosenau, is much the most nuanced and persuasive and can be set out briefly as follows. It begins from the assumption that globalisation, as a concept, draws attention to the recent emergence of what Held and his co-authors describe as “a powerful transformative force which is responsible for a ‘massive shake-out’ of societies, economies, institutions of governance and world order” (Held et al., 1999: 7).

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Importantly, the direction of the shake-out remains uncertain, since globalisation is understood as a long-term historical process characterised by contradictions, shaped by conjunctures and contested by increasingly aware and hostile political forces. There is thus no defined end-game, no single idealtype of what a “fully globalised” world would look like. Of course, certain trends can be picked out, at least up to the present point of analysis. “Transformationalists” do generally argue that there now exist historically unprecedented levels of global interconnectedness in trade, finance, production, culture and much else. They believe that virtually all parts of the world are now functionally part of a global system in one or more respects, although they do not suggest that this is bringing about global convergence or a single world society since they are struck by the force of new, emerging patterns of stratification in which some states and societies, or rather parts of some states and societies, are becoming enmeshed in the globalising order whilst others are being marginalised (Hoogvelt, 1997). In the same, uneven way the spread of global cultural forms is also having the paradoxical effect of revitalising various highly local values and ways of living. Any sense of a clear distinction between international and domestic, external or internal affairs also collapses in this vision of the process of change. As Rosenau puts it, politics takes place more and more “along the domestic-foreign frontier” (Rosenau, 1997). In short, we are offered by these various writers “a dynamic and open-ended conception of where globalization might be leading and the kind of world order which it might prefigure” (Held et al., 1999: 7). This is an attractive way of proceeding in its own right. But, in adopting this particular formulation of globalisation as the basis on which to take forward our overall argument, it is useful too to survey quickly the essential elements of the other two widely-articulated accounts of globalisation identified by Held et al. and to note why each offers too rigid a view of the process. The problem with the “hyperglobalist” account is that it exaggerates, both in the form offered by neoliberals who effusively welcome the triumph of the market over states and by radicals or Marxists who bemoan what they see from their persepctive as the ultimate victory of an oppressive capitalist system (Ohmae, 1995; Greider, 1997). For all the difference of mood, they are agreed that globalisation signals the arrival of a new era in human affairs which they see as largely created by a technological revolution in communications which has massively accelerated the exchange of people, ideas and money. A “borderless world” has thus been brought into being, characterised by the establishment of proliferating transnational networks of production, trade and finance which operate according to a genuinely global dynamic. More generally, the “hyperglobalisers” share a conviction that economic globalization is constructing new forms of social

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organization that are supplanting, or that will eventually supplant, traditional nation-states as the primary economic and political units of world society (Held et al., 1999: 3). They thus foresee the inexorable rise of global governance, global civil society and global cultural motifs. As we shall see, especially in respect of the first of these, there are trends in that direction which need to be taken seriously. But they are not problematised sufficiently by the “hyperglobalisers” and that is par for their course. The “hyperglobalist” account of globalisation is too determinist, too sweeping, too apolitical. The “sceptical” thesis has different faults. It is associated particularly with the critique of Paul Hirst and Grahame Thompson and has been designed explicitly to bring globalisation into “question” (Hirst & Thompson, 1996). Their analytical way into this debate (their “trick”, if you like) has been to propose a highly demanding definition of the end-state of globalisation, namely, a perfectly integrated global economy, against which evidence relating to the contemporary period, unsurprisingly perhaps, falls short. What it suggests, according to the “sceptics”, is no more than “heightened internationalisation” – in other words, intensified interactions between predominantly national economies, the conventional units of analysis. Even these do not significantly exceed the levels of economic interdependence witnessed historically at the end of the 19th century. In other words, globalisation is more myth than new reality; the true “global corporation” is still a rarity; national governments are far from immobilised, although they may have experienced a loss of nerve in the face of the powerful ideology of globalisation; global governance, if it is anything, is a facade behind which the most powerful Western states continue to dominate the traditional international economic and political system. The line of argument is fairly trenchant and sufficed as a counter to some of the hyperbolic (and populist) early claims about globalisation. However, the globalisation debate has also unfolded in a series of waves and the “sceptical” account has, to a considerable extent, been overtaken by events and is now in real danger of appearing as if it has an irredeemably closed mind on the matter, regardless of how much or how fast economic and political events still seem to move in a globalising direction. It is better, as indicated, to proceed on “transformationalist” terrain.

Debate 3: Regionalism In direct comparison with globalism, regionalism is best understood as a state-led or states-led political project designed to reorganise a particular regional space along defined economic and political lines (Gamble & Payne, 1996). It is thus a different kind of state project from globalism, but it is similar and

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comparable in that such a theorisation of regionalism assumes that states and state actors are a key level of explanation in understanding the contemporary global political economy. In this way, an important connection is again made to the national level of analysis since state projects (of all sorts) generally emerge as the outcome of detailed bargaining and negotiation among domestic political actors and then proceed, at least initially, via traditional notions of inter-state or international political exchange. The calculations that state actors make of their interests and the costs and benefits of alternative courses of action thereby emerge as the most appropriate starting point for grasping the essence of regionalism. That said, regionalism as a set of state projects cannot but intersect with any existing or putative globalist project; less obviously, but just as importantly, it also necessarily interacts with wider social processes described either as globalisation or regionalisation (of which more shortly). Indeed, state projects like regionalism typically seek to accelerate, to modify or occasionally, to reverse the direction of social change represented by processes such as globalisation and regionalisation. These theoretical arguments help to illuminate the trend towards a “new regionalism” in international politics detected by many observers during the 1990s (see, for example, Hettne & Inotai, 1994, and Fawcett & Hurrell (eds), 1995, as well as Gamble & Payne, 1996, and much else). At the centre of this debate were the commonalities and the differences that were seen to exist between the European Union (EU), the North American Free Trade Area (NAFTA) and Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC), viewed as the three major regionalist projects of the time. For a period, much was made of the fear that these projects might become exclusive and protectionist (along the lines, say, of “Fortress Europe”) and it is manifestly the case that the creation of a regional leadership and regional institutions that can express a regional political will means that the potential is there for that to happen. But, in practice, one of the most striking common characteristics of the way that the EU, NAFTA and APEC have operated has been their commitment to “open regionalism”. Simply defined, this means that policy has been directed towards the elimination of obstacles to trade within a region while, at the same time, doing nothing to raise external tariff barriers to the rest of the world. The rationale for contemporary regionalism has, in fact, been found, not in the doctrine of protection, but rather that of strategic trade. Instead of insulating the regional economy from foreign competition the aim has been to expose it to that very competition while at the same time ensuring, via various measures, that it is able to meet it. In a similar illustration of a continuing fundamental commitment to international cooperation, the leading states involved in the EU, NAFTA and APEC have still maintained their involvement in the overall management of the global political economy through membership of the G7, the IMF, the World Bank and the World Trade Organisation (WTO). Regionalism has not been conceived as a

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rival to the core purpose of the old post-1945 US globalist project, but rather as the best available means to help meet that globalist need in a world where there is no longer a single state with the authority and capacity to impose its leadership as of old. It is also necessary to stress, however, that the “new regionalism” is far from monolithic: the three major regionalist projects under discussion here are different from one another in several important respects which reflect both the varied histories of the regions and the uneven impact of globalisation. The US governing elite”s turn to regionalism in the shape of NAFTA was born largely out of a combination of its own perception of its declining ability to act as a global hegemon and its growing awareness of the closeness of some of the economic and social connections that had developed within the Americas, most notably between the US and Mexico. The end of the Cold War facilitated the building of a new “partnership” founded on widespread hemispheric acceptance of the basic assumptions of economic liberalism and democracy, a vision yet to be realised but set out in the final communiqué of the 1994 “Summit of the Americas” which called for the establishment of a full Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA) by 2005. By comparison, Europe is not dominated by a single state: indeed historically the EU has been a political construction designed to manage inter-state rivalries within Europe, notably between France and Germany. For a period from 1985 onwards, the EU seemed to gain a new political momentum, marked by the creation of a single European market, the adoption of qualified majority voting as the decision rule in many policy areas and the subsequent development of plans for full economic and monetary union. Yet the EU still lacks a unified political core to give overall direction to the regionalist project. Member states will not allow the European Commission to play this role, while the latest summit of EU heads of state held in Nice in December 2000 showed only the intensifying difficulties of establishing that core as enlargement into Eastern and Central Europe is at last embraced. For its part, East Asia is different again, possessed of two potential regional hegemons in Japan and China and complicated by the involvement of two other major states, the US and Russia. It is still divided ideologically and there are unresolved security issues. The state currently best equipped to lead a regionalist project, Japan, is characterised by a controversial modern history, weakness in decision-making and an unwillingness to assert itself politically. Japan has hitherto shied away from proposed regional bodies based on a closed Asian membership and has given priority to APEC, in large part because it also includes the US. The main political function of APEC has thus in effect been to head off other kinds of regionalist projects in East Asia. As has been seen, regionalism as an economic and political strategy has been examined primarily at what might be called the macro level, namely, the collective projects of the largest and leading states on the world stage. But,

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conceptually, it can and has also been applied to “lower” levels of regional action. In elaborations of the original Sheffield-based project on “new regionalism” as manifested in the examples of the EU, NAFTA and APEC, Hook and Kearns (1999) have focused on “sub-regionalism”, defined as the projects embarked upon by weaker states in the global political economy in attempts to strengthen cooperation in more circumscribed spaces than the “macro-regional” level, and Breslin and Hook (forthcoming) have addressed “micro-regionalism”, understood as the types of regionalist projects developed between national states and parts (“regions”) of other states or indeed just between different parts, often adjoining, of different states. The former study thus incorporated consideration of bodies like the Central European Free Trade Area (CEFTA), the Common Market of the South (MERCOSUR), the Association of South East Asian Nations (ASEAN) and the East Asian Economic Caucus (EAEC) and showed how such “sub-regionalist” projects often grew up in close interaction with, and indeed to some extent reaction against, the three larger macro-level regionalist entities. The latter study embraced schemes such as the so-called “growth triangle” linking Singapore with the subnational economies of Johor in Malaysia and Riau in Indonesia and the Japan Sea Zone concept linking the Japan Sea prefectures with parts of the Korean peninsula, the Russian Far East and China. It demonstrated that such arrangements were growing in number and significance but should be understood more as evidence of “microregionalisation” than “micro-regionalism”.

Deb ate 4: Regi onalisa ti on eba Regio nalisati tio Again in the same manner as regionalism was compared with globalism, regionalisation can be compared with globalisation: it, in turn, is best understood as a social process unfolding at the regional level and similarly driven forward by a mixture of forces of which states are only one and by no means the most influential. In other words, regionalisation refers to those processes which deepen the integration of particular regional spaces. There are many ways of measuring it, but particularly important are flows of trade, investment, aid and people. Conceptualised in this way, regionalisation can thus develop prior to any cultural or political unification; it may indeed by the spur to such unification, as the neofunctionalist theory of European integration has always predicted. Regionalisation may also equally occur within a region that has achieved political union after the event of the union. The underlying rationale of the concept is to separate out the subtle and often subterranean processes by which regional interconnections are built from the “high politics” by which regional organisations are shaped and created. As one might imagine, research on regionalisation is much more difficult and time-consuming than research on regionalism and, for that reason, there is

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much less of it to assess. Sweeping claims about what is defined here as regionalisation are often made on the flimsiest of empirical bases. Nevertheless, two important arguments have been mounted within this debate which contribute to our wider discussion. One derives from a critique of the globalisation hypothesis and emanates from the “sceptical” school of thought identified earlier. One of its arguments has been to assert that much of what passes for globalisation in conventional analysis is, more accurately, evidence of regionalisation. In particular, studies of changes in the flow of trade and of foreign direct investment (for example, Ruigrok & Tulder, 1995, and Hirst & Thompson, 1996) have argued that what has occurred is actually a growing concentration of these flows between the “triad” regional economies of Europe, North America and East Asia. From this perspective, the striking consequence is the exclusion of certain parts of the world (e.g. Africa) from what is incorrectly dubbed globalisation. In similar vein, as briefly indicated earlier, global corporations are believed to be misnomers since evidence can easily be assembled to show that most again originate from, and still predominantly operate within, the “triad” economies. In these analytical hands, regionalisation can easily be presented as just as much a contradictory, as a complementary, tendency to globalisation. The other argument that has developed around the concept of regionalisation concerns the fact that, like globalisation, it has normally proven to be uneven in its impact. This applies within regions as well as within the global political economy as a whole. Certain places and sites tend to be integrated while others are marginalised. Unless the regionalist project itself explicitly addresses the issues of inequality and uneven development, the process of deepening integration (i.e. regionalisation) is likely to be a process of increasing polarisation. The core areas within a process of regionalisation also act as powerful magnets which drag other areas and societies into their orbit. Indeed, this is a trend which has become more pronounced as alternative models of development have collapsed in the aftermath of the Cold War. The increasing incorporation of Mexico and the Caribbean into the US economy is one illustration; so too is the network of relationships which have been built up in East Asia through aid, investment and exports by Japanese companies. The result is an economic structure in which an increasing amount of Japanese production is located in other parts of East Asia, but the technology remains Japanese and the business strategy is firmly controlled from Japan. Actors within particular countries are eager to interact with their counterparts in the core areas of the region because they perceive it as a means to advance their own particular goals, however unequal the overall nature of the regionalisation process may become. Exactly the same phenomenon has also lately occurred within Europe as trade, investment, aid and people have started to flow much more freely between Western Europe, on the one hand, and Eastern and Central Europe, on the other. In sum, there is no evidence at all that regionalisation works to bring the different

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parts of a region together: the opposite, in fact, appears more normally to be the case. Finally, it should again be noted that regionalisation processes take place just as fluently at “sub-regional” and “micro-regional” levels as they do at the “macro-regional” level emphasised here. Indeed, they are perhaps most striking of all at the “micro-regional” level precisely because they are less easily confused with regionalist activity which often does not exist at this level in respect of formal bodies and organisations. A case in point relates to relations between the US and the neighbouring Caribbean territories off its southern coast. In other publications, I have suggested that the entanglement effected by trade, investment, narcotics and migration flows across state boundaries in this part of the world is now so extensive that one can speak of the emergence of a conjoined political economy best described as “Caribbean America” (Payne, 1998 and 2000).

Contemporary Governance: Key Features These four debates connect with each other not only substantively but also methodologically. This latter point relates to the familiar methodological discussion of agency and structure. As indicated, the concepts of globalism and regionalism assume that states and state actors are a key (but not sole) level of explanation in a theory of the global political economy and that consideration of the calculations they make of their interests is the necessary starting point for understanding the wider context of their behaviour. This wider context is constituted by two kinds of structure – the historical residues of past social interaction and the emergent patterns of current social interaction. Globalisation and regionalisation are precisely that – combinations of historical and emergent structures, an articulation of established institutions and rules and distinctive new patterns of social interaction between state and non-state actors. Together they provide both constraints and opportunities. For agents do not act within structures; rather they cannot act without reproducing structures, confirming or modifying them through the intended and unintended consequences of their calculations and actions. In short, by drawing upon all of these debates it is possible to give due weight in all subsequent analysis to both agency and structure. Such a methodological framework is needed in order to open up discussion of the diverse aspects of the contemporary governance of the international political community. This is a formidably large topic and there is no ambition here to do more than highlight briefly some of the key features of the new governance as generated by the trends identified in the four debates so far reviewed. Again, attention will be focused on four such characteristic features. (i) The Reorganisation of the state. One of the most common and damaging analytical mistakes made in analysis of the new governance has been to write the state out of the script. What is actually required is a more perceptive

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grasp of what has lately happened to the state in relation to the process of global restructuring. An early systematic review of this lively debate set out three broad schools of thought. The first, initially dominant, conceptualisation viewed globalisation as “seriously undermining the basis of the nation-state as a territorially bounded economic, political and social unit” (Amoore et al., 1997: 185). The second view argued that the decline of the state had been hugely exaggerated and emphasised continuity above change. A third, more nuanced, view suggested, in the words of Amoore et al., that the usual understanding of a dichotomy between the state and globalisation is an illusion, as the processes of global restructuring are largely embedded within state structures and institutions, politically contingent on state policies and actions, and primarily about the reorganisation of the state (Amoore et al., 186). This last phrase is the most significant, for the point being made here was precisely that the changing nature of the state is at the very heart of the process of globalisation. The state is neither transcended nor unaltered in some overarching, all-encompassing fashion: instead each state is finding that its relationship to key social forces, both inside and outside of its national space, is being restructured as part and parcel of all the other shifts to which globalisation as a concept draws attention. The claim that the state has been reorganised has now been taken forward in a variety of forms. Jan Aart Scholte, for example, has suggested that globalisation has yielded a different kind of state. . .[which has]. . . on the whole lost sovereignty, acquired supraterritorial constituents, retreated from interstate warfare (for the moment), frozen or reduced social security provisions. . .and lost considerable democratic potential (Scholte, 1997: 452). From the left, Peter Burnham has highlighted the widespread shift in the politics of economic management in advanced capitalist societies from “politicised management (discretion-based)” to “depoliticised management (rules-based)” (Burnham, 1999: 43-4), the latter being characterised by attempts to reduce the former political nature of economic decision-making and re-position it as far as possible at one remove from government. Peter Evans, reflecting on “stateness” in an era of globalisation, has stressed the centrality of the hegemony of AngloAmerican liberal ideology in limiting belief in the efficacy of state action and charted the “project of constructing a leaner, meaner kind of stateness” (Evans, 1997: 85) which has lately become associated with the “Third Way” thinking of the Clinton, Blair and Schröder administrations in the US, the UK and Germany

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respectively. Linda Weiss, in her work, has similarly insisted on the variety of “state capacities” and argued that “adaptation is the very essence of the modern state by virtue of the fact that it is embedded in a dynamic economic and interstate system” (Weiss, 1997: 17). Although in some states, certain policy instruments, particularly those associated with macroeconomic adjustment strategies, may be enfeebled by globalisation, others, such as those related to industrial policy, may and do change in a manner of creative ways. One should therefore always look to a country”s governing institutions and expect differences according to national orientation and capability. The latter cautionary point is especially well taken. In his survey of what he called “the rise and rise of the nation-state”, Michael Mann rightly insisted that states have always varied greatly in their degree of democracy, level of development, infrastructural power, national indebtedness and regional location. He has asked: “can contemporary capitalism, even if reinforced by environmental limits, ‘cultural postmodernity’ and demilitarization, render all this variation irrelevant, and have the same effects on all countries?” (Mann, 1997: 474). His answer – emphatically in the negative – provides a warning against over-generalisation, even about the thesis of the reorganisation of the state. The patterns of change and continuity are simply “too varied and contradictory, and the future too murky, to permit us to argue simply that the nation-state and the nation-state system are either strengthening or weakening” (Mann, 1997: 494). Nevertheless, what one can see through the gloom is that the state remains crucial to contemporary governance and that one of the key research agendas of the present must be the comparative analysis of state forms and the way they are being reorganised in different ways in different parts of the globe in response to the differing impacts of globalisation (and regionalisation) on their modes of operation. (ii) Multilevel Governance. In a somewhat exaggerated depiction of “the defective state”, Susan Strange once asserted that “state authority has leaked away, upwards, sideways, and downwards. . .[and]. . .in some matters. . .seems even to have gone nowhere, just evaporated” (Strange, 1995: 56 and, for full exposition, Strange, 1996). As we have seen, the latter observation was excessively glib, but her first point was acutely made. As part of the process of the reorganisation of the state its traditional authority has widely been seen to have been diffused: “upwards” to international institutions, supranational bodies, regionalist organisations and transnational corporations; “sideways” to global financial markets and global social movements; and “downwards” to sub-national bodies of all shapes and sizes. Put differently, governance has come to spread itself across several different levels of political action beyond that of the nation-state, giving birth to the notion of emergent multi-level governance. This turn of phrase has already gained a certain currency within studies of the EU with several scholars coming explicitly to depict the EU as a unique

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multilevel structure of governance within which state and sub-state, public and private, transnational and supranational, actors all deal with each other in complex networks of varying horizontal and vertical density. Their argument does not necessarily contest the claim that state executives and state arenas are still important or even that they remain the most important parts of the EU decision-making system. But it does firmly suggest that the state no longer monopolises either in European-level policy-making or in domestic interest aggregation in member states. As a consequence, a new kind of “polity creating process” has been discerned by Gary Marks and his co-authors “in which authority and policy-making influence are shared across multiple levels of government – subnational, national, and supranational” (Marks et al., 1996: 342). In this vision, the EU is thus presented as a dynamic, evolving arena of political interaction, not a stable order which can be reduced to either of the conventional intergovernmental or neofunctionalist logics. Such analysis carries no implication that other regionalist bodies like NAFTA or APEC must move in the same direction as the EU. As we have already seen, the leading regionalist projects are highly varied in their history and character. What it does suggest, though, is that global governance can also helpfully be construed as a form of multilevel governance. The essential features of such a system – principally, the sharing of decision-making competences across actors at different levels – are clearly to be seen within the international political community as a whole. “Above” states are to be found organisations such as the IMF, the World Bank, the WTO, not to mention regionalist bodies like the EU itself, as well as private structures like corporations and banks and civil associations like international non-governmental organisations (NGOs); “below” states are equally to be found a plethora of sub-national bodies representing districts, “states of the union”, “regions”, länder and the like, all increasingly ready and willing to act directly in national and supranational arenas. The resulting mix of actors and interactions is fiercely complex, but its essence can be grasped by reference to the notion of multiple levels of governance. (iii) Privatised Governance. Reference was briefly made in the preceding discussion to the involvement of public and private actors within the EU governance system. That point can now be emphasised, for one of the analytical merits of the concept of governance (as opposed to government) is that it allows us to see more clearly the way in which private actors do contribute to the “systems of rule” which Rosenau placed at the centre of the new governance debate. Strictly, privatised governance is not actually new (it is rather that it has been ignored in the past). Nevertheless, it has been frequently claimed that it has grown in influence and reach under conditions of globalisation and regionalisation. Privatised governance is thus now said to be effected through business associations, commercial arbitration bodies, credit rating agencies, NGOs, foundations, think-tanks and so on. It is far from clear, as yet, whether

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such activity sustains or challenges public governance and it is certainly not straightforward to compare the relative powers of private and public governance in relation to each other. All that can be said for the moment is that contemporary modes of governance now manifestly extend beyond official public agencies and instruments. (iv) Continuing bureaucratism. A last, and more familiar, feature of the new governance, noted by Jan Aart Scholte, is that none of the changes depicted above have displaced bureaucracy as the underlying principle of modern (public and private) administration. He has pointed out that “the post-sovereign state, substate bodies, suprastate organs and nonstate regulatory agencies have all in the great majority of cases reproduced rather than challenged” what he dubs bureaucratism (Scholte, 2000: 133). By use of this phrase he means that governance is still mainly conducted through “large-scale, relatively permanent, formally organised, impersonally managed and hierarchically ordered decisiontaking procedures” (Scholte, 2000: 133). Plus ça change. . .

Conclusions It is an obvious and unoriginal point to make to say that conclusions can only be tentative, but it is nonetheless valid, given the tenor of the core argument of the paper, that globalism and globalisation, regionalism and regionalisation are all manifestations of intensive processes of economic and political change which continue to accelerate. It is possible that the present period of flux will, as it were, pass into calmer waters whereby we can once more recognise and become comfortable with the architecture of a new world order. Such a presumption is held by adherents of the stagist view of world history who believe that the cyclical patterns of the past (order, breakdown, order) will necessarily reassert themselves. The idea that world history is always moving to a stage which is in some sense “higher” than the previous one, more complex, more integrated, more comprehensive, is hard to abandon. But it is also possible that what we may be witnessing is the emergence of a global political economy whose basic structures will no longer change or develop very much beyond their present character. Its governance will be characterised neither by a world government nor a renewed globalist hegemony and certainly not by a return to “international politics”. Instead, its political nature may well be more suggestive of what some have called the “new medievalism” (Bull, 1977, Ruggie, 1993 and Cox, 1996). The point is that the need for new forms of governance for the global political economy continues to expand as global interconnectedness develops. These are being provided by new kinds of agency and network, as well as reorganised states. Yet their provision still necessarily involves political negotiation and decision. It is just that, instead of political authority being

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defined relatively neatly through sovereignty and territoriality, there have emerged more and more cross-cutting identities and authorities. In this mosaic, allegedly reminiscent of the medieval world, local, national, regional and global agencies all thus play their part in contemporary governance. It is messy, but it is probably the picture with which we have to come to terms and within which specific consideration of Caribbean processes of governance has necessarily to take place.

References Amoore, L., R. Dodgson, B.K. Gills, P. Langley, D. Marshall, & I. Watson. 1997. “Overturning “Globalisation”: Resisting the Teleological, Reclaiming the “Political””. New Political Economy, 2.1: 179-95. Aysha, E.E. 2000. “The Changing Place of Globalism in the American Post-Cold-War Foreign Policy Debate: A Perspective in the Neo-Gramscian Approach”, unpublished Ph.D. thesis, University of Sheffield. Breslin, S. & G. Hook, eds. Forthcoming. Microregionalism and World Order, London: Palgrave. Bull, H. 1977. The Anarchical Society: A Study of Order in World Politics. New York: Columbia University Press. Burnham, P. 1999. “The Politics of Economic Management”. New Political Economy, 4.1: 37-54. Clarke, J. 1993. “The Conceptual Poverty of U.S. Foreign Policy”. The Atlantic Monthly 272.3: 54-66. Cox, R. W. 1981. “Social Forces, States and World Orders: Beyond International Relations Theory”. Millennium: Journal of International Studies, 10.2: 126-55. Cox, R. W. 1987. Production, Power and World Order: Social Forces in the Making of History. New York: Columbia University Press. Cox, R. W. 1996. “Global Perestroika”. In Approaches to World Order, R.W. Cox, with T. J. Sinclair, 296-313. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Evans, P. 1997. “The Eclipse of the State? Reflections on Stateness in an Era of Globalization”. World Politics, 50.1: 62-87. Fawcett, L. & A. Hurrell, eds. 1995. Regionalism in World Politics. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Gamble, A.M. & A.J. Payne, eds. 1996. Regionalism and World Order. London: Macmillan. Greider, W. 1997. One World, Ready or Not: The Manic Logic of Global Capitalism. New York: Simon Schuster. Held, D. & A. McGrew, D. Goldblatt, & J. Perraton. 1999. Global Transformations: Politics, Economics and Culture. Cambridge: Polity Press.

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Hettne, B. & A. Inotai. 1994. The New Regionalism: Implications for Global Development and International Security. UNU World Institute for Development Economics Research, Helsinki. Hirst, P. & G. Thompson. 1996. Globalization in Question: The International Economy and the Possibilities of Governance. Cambridge: Polity Press. Hoogvelt, A. 1997. Globalisation and the Postcolonial World: The New Political Economy of Development. London: Macmillan. Hook, G. & I. Kearns, eds. 1999. Subregionalism and World Order. London: Macmillan. Marks, G., L. Hooghe, & K. Blank. 1996. “European Integration from the 1980s: Statecentric v. Multi-level Governance”. Journal of Common Market Studies, 34.3: 341-78. Mann, M. 1997. “Has Globalization Ended the Rise and Rise of the Nation-state?”. Review of International Political Economy, 4.3: 472-96. Ohmae, K. 1995. The End of the Nation State. New York: Free Press. Payne, A. J. 1998. ‘The New Politics of “Caribbean America”’, Third World Quarterly 19.2: 205-18. Payne, A. J. 2000. Rethinking US-Caribbean Relations: Towards a New Mode of Transterritorial Governance’, Review of International Studies 26.1: 69-82. Rosenau, J. 1997. Along the Domestic-Foreign Frontier: Exploring Governance in a Turbulent World, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Rowen, H. 1994. ‘Self-inflicted Wounds of U.S. Economic Policy’. Challenge 37.6: 18-25. Ruggie, J. G. 1993, “Territoriality and Beyond: Problematizing Modernity in International Relations”, International Organization, 47.1: 139-74. Ruigrok, W. & R. van Tulder. 1995. The Logic of International Restructuring, London: Routledge. Scholte, J.A. 1997. “Global Capitalism and the State”. International Affairs 73.3: 427-52. Scholte, J.A. 2000. Globalization: A Critical Introduction. London: Macmillan. Strange, S. 1995. “The Defective State”. Daedalus. 124.2: 55-74. Strange, S. 1996. The Retreat of the State: The Diffusion of Power in the World Economy. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Weiss, L. 1997. “Globalization and the Myth of the Powerless State”. New Left Review. 225: 3-27.

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C H A P T E R

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governance In small socIetIes: the Importance of strong Democracy NEVILLE DUNCAN

Introduction

I

t is with sadness, it is being asserted, that successive Caribbean governments have tried with due deliberation to create an economic and social environment that facilitates personal security and growth, production and trade, and yet have not succeeded as well as anticipated. Indeed, their critics have felt that it is the government itself and its regulations and layered procedures that contribute to roadblocks and inefficiencies and even corruption. So government is said to remain the biggest threat to the achievement of the good life for all. On the other hand, it is plain to see that the corporate world, in rich and poor countries alike, when allowed to self-regulate, have themselves become mired in counterpart problems that leave shareholders, the state and private citizens destitute. The crash of the financial sector in Jamaica, soaring real estate prices throughout the Caribbean (putting property out of the reach of poorer people), hostile company takeovers which plunder unwitting shareholders, private corruption of public officials, and the like, create their own awesome national disasters and cost ordinary citizens much anguish. One clear finding is there are several things which governments have done well over the years and should be strengthened. On the other hand, there are several disastrous outcomes which mar government’s performance in which, perhaps, the state should never have been a prime mover. Regrettably, some of these failures are also obviously areas in which the state should be involved, such as in education where our schools still seem to fail us (using several output measurements). As Daniel Blatt noted, in speaking on the weaknesses of democracy: “we must clearly recognize those weaknesses and make democracy work in spite of those weaknesses”.1 There should be no doubt that the state has the responsibility to ensure that the public good is achieved for all and to ensure the best provision of public goods and services. Blatt also noted that:

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Government must have the powers needed to perform its essential functions, but limitations on the powers of government are essential if individual interests are to be provided a practical level of protection from majoritarian excesses and the excesses of power.2 People are not well informed, politically responsible, or actively attentive to matters of governance. Thus, democracy (so it seems) must always involve political inequality and minority rule with majority acquiescence, apathy and distraction – and an array of interest groups contesting for influence. Only with respect to particular issues – or when a ruling minority proves disastrous – will the majority pay attention and play an active role.3 It is the belief and it is so argued that Caribbean democracy has survived and is surviving many challenges and has managed to remain sufficiently peoplecentred. Nevertheless, we must not ignore its many deficiencies – certainly in the liberal democracy version. The challenge for us is to make democracy work in the CARICOM region in spite of weaknesses, some of which will be identified herein. Caribbean peoples have long accepted that only political freedom will work for us. Although it is a commitment to “weak democracy”, multi-party forms of democracy have provided the flexibility and encouraged grassroots initiatives required by an environment undergoing rapid change. We might not have liked the underground (or informal) economy. In addition, many countries where this was a significant dimension had to act to bring this economy back into the formal sector. Nevertheless it was “permitted” because the state was unable, for a considerable period of time, to prevent its emergence or deliver the goods and services that would have forestalled its emergence. This was a necessitarian outcome. Unfortunately, the current and most serious threat to democratic functioning, which has already generated dangerous authoritarian responses is crime (narcotrafficking, gang warfare, gang controlled communities, murderous responses to personal problems, etc.). Regrettably, despite some genuflection to the contrary (special crime fighting units, combined military/police operations, arming of the police, etc.) peace in communities is secured by active state withdrawal and a concession to the criminal and political gangs which dominate certain areas. Certainly, and with potentially damaging consequences, there is the continued effort to seek political refuge in ethnic and racial “garrisons” in which politically pluralist values do not flourish. The “out-of-many people one people” notion is not as well-established as it should be in thought and practice. In Suriname, there is the hope and some experience that the multi-ethnic political arrangements under a special electoral and governmental system can present a good example of a political/administrative future to Guyana and maybe Trinidad and Tobago – all distinctly multi-ethnic societies.

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In Trinidad and Tobago, after 25 years of rule by Dr Eric Williams, his successor, George Chambers was given one 5-year term in office by the electors, and so too the successor NAR government of Robinson. Since then, serious uncertainty of rule has palled the Republic’s political outlook with alternation in power after a brief rule. Maybe the decision of the Trinidad and Tobago electorate in 2002 to give the PNM a majority of seats may help to stabilise the republic. In Guyana, although the state had apparently acquired awesome power under Forbes Burnham and Desmond Hoyte, civil society generated its illegal currency operations and the “underground economy” which, in effect, left the government with little to rule over, in spite of its threatened use of all state powers. In the end, the government had to “legalise” these operations in order to be able to formally preside over the real economy. Duncan had presented a serious picture of several Caribbean states: Violent crime and murderous gang contestations, illegal drug trafficking and money laundering, criminal armies bristling with superior fire-power than the police and security forces, garrison constituencies and drug-baron controlled communities, have been dangerously testing the state’s supposed monopoly of the use of violence. The value and normative systems of the church and law courts have come under considerable challenge not only from criminal gangs but also corporate marauders who prey on and use the financial system (banking, insurance, currency exchange rate and stock exchange), at the expense of powerless customers. Urban decay is becoming chronic as the utilities and transportation systems under-provide and chaos oftentimes marks their operations. The governments seem extremely weak in dealing with challenges to the retention of preferential markets for export of sugar, rum, bananas and rice, which loss would compound the governability crises increasingly manifesting themselves. The absence of a national consensus around a shared vision of a renewed society based on nationalism, sovereignty, independence and self-sufficiency points to a high potential degree of ungovernability in anglophone Caribbean societies.4 Selwyn Ryan5, too, had noted a series of democratic deficits and warning signs: These have been identified in relation to the functioning of the Westminster/ Whitehall model of liberal democracy in the Caribbean. He articulated a perspective on the challenges which exist threatening the survival of the particular liberal democratic form. These included the progressive loss of jobs in manufacturing; agriculture and in some parts of the private sector; a persistent leakage of capital; a decline in the quality of the social services; a growing “coarseness” in the social order (a strong decline in civility);

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dramatic declines in trade union and political party membership, along with the growth of political cynicism and voter disaffection; stresses in the system of public bureaucracy; crisis in the judicial system; dramatic decline in the standards of parliamentary behaviour – no civil discourse and the “carnivalisation” of the people’s business; political anarchy in inner cities; among others. These lead to a perception of the growing lack of viability – politically and economically – of the Anglophone Caribbean region.6 Government must have the powers needed to perform its essential functions, but limitations on the powers of government are essential if individual interests are to be provided a practical level of protection from majoritarian/sectarian/ ethnic/racial excesses and the excesses of power. Governments must be fully sensitive, also, to its massive responsibility to widen and deepen democracy in a context where large segments of the electorate are not well informed, politically responsible, nor actively attentive to matters of governance. A new governance arrangement at the national and subnational levels is simply not going to be possible in the Caribbean without the appropriate active state sponsorship and support. Majority acquiescence, apathy and distraction and not so much interest group domination of the political and economic process represent the greatest threat to Caribbean democracy.7 Only rarely in Caribbean electoral and political history has the majority really paid positive attention and played an active role in fomenting change processes. In spite of that rarity, nearly all the actions and activities seemingly initiated by the “masses” lost intensity rather quickly as they quickly subsided and allowed “representatives” to do what they could to bring about reform and revolution. The labour revolts of the 1930s saw the masses quickly conceding foreground political power and authority to middle strata leaders. The political depositions of elected parties in Dominica, Grenada and St Lucia in the 1970s simply allowed for electoral transitions without reforms in the governmental structures. When the US military “restored” democracy to Grenada after the Maurice Bishop interregnum, the country quickly returned to the governmental arrangements which existed ex ante as if nothing much had happened before. The long drawnout constitutional reform process in Jamaica and the twice-established constitutional commissions in Barbados have not generated changes which in effect deepen and widen democratic participation and not improved accountability and transparency. At the start of the 21st century government leadership of political reform has remained stalled. How easily, too, has the electorate and the sizeable non-voting public accepted political parties winning all or nearly all the seats in general elections with a non-existent or weak official opposition. How easily alternation in power has been de-emphasised as an important feature of majoritarian democracy!

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Weak democracy8 has evidently been the order of the day, with Antigua and Barbuda, Jamaica, Barbados, and Grenada having formally truncated oppositions. Stable government seems at serious risk in Guyana and Trinidad and Tobago based on underlying ethnic tensions. Haiti has stumbled from one disastrous situation to another with successive governments being unable to rule effectively. Acknowledging these weaknesses of democracy, and bringing to mind what Caribbean governments do right, what then is needed to ensure effective democratic governance in the Caribbean? The challenge is a bi-directional one, although in each direction there are multifaceted aspects. The government of a state has a responsibility and the resources to transform the nature of governance. It is being invited to do something that does not come naturally to those who wield formal power. It is being invited to give up control over some of those levers of power – those which conduce to good governance and sharing the decisional load down below. The reverse directional flow relates to the readiness, capacity, competence of persons in groups, localities and communities to participate effectively and with commitment and transparency in new governance structures as well as in the political process generally on a more attentive and consistent basis. This certainly is a function of the quality of political education. All our governments have been concerned about public security and safety. These are needed not only to provide social peace but also to allow for successful economic activities. Multi-party competition, supported by a reasonably free press, has allowed a certain measure of responsible government. Most governments, not all, have struggled in various ways to achieve monetary integrity and fiscal balance and thus laid an effective foundation for development. At times, these efforts seem so frustrating. There is a growing cacophony of noises from various quarters, positing the inherent inefficiency of government. As Blatt noted: A certain amount of favoritism, waste and even fraud is inherent in government programs. With each inevitable scandal, the situation gets worse. Additional safeguards designed to reduce fraud and waste usually entail extra planning, authorization, appropriation, reporting and inspection procedures that cost far more than the waste and fraud that they are meant to prevent. Regulations proliferate constantly as each new regulatory fix induces a variety of responses requiring further regulatory efforts. Indeed, it is not the waste and fraud that is so devastatingly expensive – it is the regulatory responses and multileveled bureaucratic cycles of planning, appropriation, authorization, reporting and inspection procedures themselves that drain funds and vitality from government programs and reduce efficiency to ludicrous levels. The multiple levels of government continuously generate additional wasteful regulations and procedures at a rate far faster than any

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administration could possibly come to understand them and appreciably cut into them.9 These charges tend to stick because Caribbean governments simply do not have the managerial tools necessary for efficient administration of the various tasks entrusted to it. The accounting and oversight procedures have been notoriously slow and oftentimes ineffective. While it may be conceded that efficiency and effectiveness may be somewhat different to measure in the public sector, the instruments hardly parallel those in the private sector. So it is extremely difficult to identify and judge true outcomes at any time. Governments do not seem to learn anything from the frequent failures and serious deficiencies of their programmes and projects. The same and successive government(s) seem doomed to repeat in another programme or project the old errors. This implies intractable or endemic weakness in government capabilities, however the system is reformed. Decentralised decision making processes are being advocated by leading international donor agencies and countries and are being implemented by Caribbean governments. Privatisation of state-owned enterprises continues. In some Caribbean, states the activity to introduce more effective local and regional governance seems somewhat serious. Social contracts, social partnerships, between the state, business and labour have been adopted in Barbados. Nonstate actors, certainly NGOs and CBOs, have been interfacing with government along a wide-ranging spectrum of activities at all levels of state activity. The relationship had always had its ups and downs but the Civil Society Dialogue held in Guyana on July 3, 2002 at which, on the second day, all the non-state sectors present interacted with the region’s prime ministers, may be a sign of better days to come with more systematic and less dependent ties emerging.

The Governance Response The understanding of the meaning and purpose of “good governance” has been elusive, and even now there is hardly common agreement across the groups and interests who find in the concept a set of ideas considered to be extremely important. There has been, of course, among economists and planners in international financial institutions, an emerging consensus on the concept.10 Other types of international development agencies have also been seeking to establish the norm, and reveal some important variations on that consensus.11 National economists and planners, while buying into much of that consensus, translate and diffuse much of this through the prism of natural culture and political practices. Similarly, among non-state actors, the meaning varies and takes on contradictory connotations depending on whether the groups are business,

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labour or voluntary sectors. Within sectors, the variations are as important. It matters whether the group in the business sector is commercial, agricultural, or productive export-oriented, for example. Some degree of choice will therefore have to be imposed if action is to be taken.

Na ture o f the post co lonial st ate and a re vo ltin g Nature of postco col sta revo vol ting civic society The Caribbean has always been a weak state. This is partly manifested in the regular use of cooptation and reward in the bid to obtain support (Hilaire, 1995).12 It was stronger when it had financial resources and weaker when these could not be marshalled. Additionally, with the relative absence of pre-existing loyalties, the colonial and contemporary state (while being populist) failed to secure popular participation in governance and is therefore less accountable and transparent to its citizens than it could have been. In this context, there have been a variety of challenges to governmental authority leading to demands for a new governance. Governance refers not merely to the shift, increasingly, from the public sector to the private sector, of the capacity for the efficient and effective delivery of collective services. It also refers to the shifting of the balance “towards a sharing of the tasks and responsibilities; towards doing things together instead of doing them alone (either by the ‘state’ or the ‘market’)”.13 However the new relationships are classified, it seems inescapable that, in the world today, their complexity, diversity and dynamism lead to the awareness of a new framework for governance. Creativity and inventiveness are required in order to construct a new, legitimate order of state relations. The design of new governance structures and processes needs to solve a number of problems. First, in a number of situations the existing and traditional structures of authority, methods and instruments have failed or have become eroded.14 Secondly, there has emerged new fields of sociopolitical activities in which the organisational forms and patterns of interest-mediation are not (yet) strongly established.15 Thirdly, there have emerged a number of issues which are of great concern to the public and private actors that are involved but for which, as yet, no real new structure has emerged.16 Finally, there is the existence of sufficient convergence of objectives and interests to make it possible to reach a synergistic effect or a “win-win” situation between government and civil society.17 To be responsive, a government would have to create a style of governance based on cooperation, trust and mutual understanding among the pluri-sector social partners. This, however, would not by itself suggest that strong democracy has been achieved. It is to this aspect that an argument is now presented.

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Par ti cip ati on in the new governan ce – a str ong arti ticip cipa tio governance stro democracy approach If we were to pragmatically seek a democratic form of government in which all of the people govern themselves in at least some public matters, at least some of the time,18 then we might achieve a sense of salience in the citizenry. This sense of salience might be achievable when we agree “that the majority of individuals stand to gain in self-esteem and growth towards a fuller affirmation of their potentialities by participating more actively in meaningful community decisions”.19 Barber distinguishes between “thin” and “strong” democracy and argues that a strong democratic practice requires a political programme and a political strategy.20 Furthermore, he states, neither ideas nor institutions are self-implementing.21 They demand a base: a political movement composed of committed democrats who understand themselves to have an interest in the realisation of strong democracy.22 As Barber indicated, rather than a piecemeal package of particularistic and unrelated modifications, our commitment to strong democracy requires a systematic programme of institutional reform.23 The participatory democratic base for good governance is hereby established on effectiveness, fairness and transparency of administrative procedures, rather than merely on efficiency. Good governance notions are aligned with selfgovernance notions. “Government is a plain thing, fit for many heads.” So said Thomas Paine. In a nutshell, people have within themselves all they need to participate effectively in a new structure of governance. These tools and this knowledge have been bottled up within them partly because they have conceded to the mystifications of professionals (politicians, economists, lawyers, engineers, bureaucrats) that the latter have both the language and the key to governance. This has to change and a Caribbean cultural way has to be allowed to emerge from our collective wisdom. People know exactly what they need, but ways through which they are able to expound on these needs and go for them (that is to say, to achieve their fulfillment as much as possible through their own actions) must be found. In this process, politicians and others must already be with people so that when such “leaders” come to power, the people are already deeply involved. There needs to be a basic change in the way our public institutions (churches, schools, political parties, local government, public bureaucracies, and the like) are organised and do their business. If a strong democratic state is good, the peak organisations in such a state should also largely reflect or be a microcosm of such an ideal. Barber provides a strong philosophical and practical argument for us viewing good governance as strong democracy. As he stated, “Strong democracy looks to wage a second war for suffrage; a second campaign to win the substance of

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citizenship promised but never achieved by the winning of vote”.24 The institutional reforms he has in mind revolve around: Strong democratic talk (deliberation, agenda-setting, listening, empathy), strong democratic decision-making (public decision, political judgement, common policy-making); and strong democratic action (common work, community action, citizen service).25 These provide both a justification and a blueprint for action. Giving substance to strong democratic talk means establishing neighbourhood assemblies, televised town meetings and a civic communications cooperative.26 Or, institutionalising strong democratic decision-making could mean establishing a national initiative and referendum process; providing for electronic balloting, election by lot (sortition, rotation and pay); and the use of vouchers and market approach to public choice.27 Finally, institutionalising strong democratic action could involve national citizenship and common action; neighbourhood citizenship and common action: local options; and democracy in the workplace.28

Conclusion Caribbean governmental efforts trying to achieve the good life for its peoples have not succeeded as well as anticipated. It has not been for the want of strenuous efforts on the part of the government or even a lack of imagination. Sometimes the inadequacy was just sheer bad luck. However, a constant theme was the need for good government, good governance, and in this paper the need for good governance based on a conception of strong democracy. The fault has not been entirely a governmental failure. The private sector has had its catalogue of failures as well. Nevertheless, this paper argues for a continued significant role for the state in partnership with a new governance structure incorporating labour, business and other non-state actors. Many examples of how traditional governance seem to be failing in too many respects were noted. These failures or challenges are addressed from a fairly sound base of democratic functioning in most of the region. The base, however, rests on “thin” democracy – liberal democracy of the Westminster/ Whitehall variety. Although its adoption has not led the states of the region into unredeemable breakdown or chaos, the uncertainties of its survival are stronger today than ten or 20 years ago. This paper proposed an explicit preference for a new governance structure emphasising strong democracy notions. The responsibility of the state to adopt and promote such a view is also matched by the need for political education to ensure grassroots responsiveness and preparedness. These two concepts of good

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governance and strong democratic processes are mutually dependent to achieve the successes needed to sustain the region in the face of a rapidly changing world order.

notes 1

Daniel Blatt, “21st Century Economic International Forecast”, Futurecast Online Magazine, 3:1, 1/1/01, www.futurecast.com

2

Blatt, “21st Century”.

3

Christian Bay noted “the fact that most of our citizens live too harassed lives or lack the education or opportunities for reflection to permit them the real satisfactions and full dignity of democratic citizenship”. Christian Bay, The Structure of Freedom (Stanford, California: Stanford University Press, 1958). See also, Blatt, “21st Century“.

4

“Community Governance and Participation”, Ms., p.4, August 1997.

5

Selwyn Ryan, Democratic Governance and the Social Condition in the Anglophone Caribbean, Caribbean Bureau, Regional Division for Latin America and The Caribbean (Washington: UNDP, 1996); and in Winner Takes All: The Westminster Experience in the Caribbean, (St Augustine, Trinidad and Tobago: ISER, 1999) had argued these points.

6

Summary by Neville C. Duncan in Voice, Participation and Governance in a Changing Environment: The Case of the Eastern Caribbean, CGCED, (Washington, D.C.: SALISES, UWI, and Ministry of Education, June 2000).

7

Yet Peter Bachrach is persuasive: “the majority of individuals stand to gain in selfesteem and growth towards a fuller affirmation of their potentialities by participating more actively in meaningful community decisions”. Peter Bachrach, The Theory of Democratis Elitism, (Boston: Little, Brown, 1967).

8

Benjamin Barber, Strong Democracy: Participatory Politics for a New Age, (Berkeley, California: University of California Press, 1984) distinguished between thin and strong democracy.

9

Futurecast, op. cit.

10 See, for example, Edgardo Boeninger, “Governance and Development: Issues and Constraints”, Proceedings of the World Bank Annual Conference on Development Economics, in Lawrence H. Summers and Shekhar Shah, editors, 1991), 267-287 Washington D.C., 1992). See also Pierre Landell-Mills and Ismail Serageldin, “Governance and the External factor”, in Proceedings of the World Bank. Oliver E. Williamson, “Institutions and Governance of Economic Development and Reform”, in World Bank Economic Review; World Bank Research Observer, Supplement, 171-197 Washington D.C., 1994. World Bank, Governance and Development, (Washington D.C., 1992). 11 See ECLAC, Social Equity and Changing Production Patterns: An Integrated Approach, Santiago, Chile, 1992. Also see, UNDP, Human Development Report 1994, (Oxford :

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Oxford University Press). The UNDP has a more fulsome definition. It sees governance as the exercise of political, economic and administrative authority to manage a country’s affairs. It sees it as the complex mechanisms, processes and institutions through which citizens and groups articulate their interests, exercise their legal rights and obligations, and mediate their differences. For UNDP, sound governance describes characteristics of governance that is, inter alia, participatory, transparent, accountable, effective, equitable and promotes the rule of law. 12 Max Hilaire. International Law and the United States Military Intervention in the Western Hemisphere, (The Hague: Boston, 1997). 13 Jan Kooiman (ed) 1993. New Government - Society Interactions. (London: Newbury Park, California: Sage, 1993), 1. 14 Kooiman, New Government, p.251 15 Kooiman, New Government 16 Kooiman, New Government 17 Kooiman, New Government 18 Benjamin Barber, Strong Democracy: Participatory Politics for a New Age, (Berkeley, California: University of California Press, 1984) xiv. 19 Peter Bachrach, The Theory of Democratic Elitism, (Boston: Litlle, Brown, 1967). 20 Barber, Strong Democracy. 263. 21 Barber, Strong Democracy. 22 Barber, Strong Democracy. 23 Barber, Strong Democracy. 24 Barber, Strong Democracy. 266 25 Barber, Strong Democracy. 26 Barber, Strong Democracy. 267-281. 27 Barber, Strong Democracy. 281-98. 28 Barber, Strong Democracy. 298-307.

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majorItarIan anD consocIatIonal systems of governance: paraDIgms In conflIct SELWYN RYAN

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o institutions matter more than agency or political culture?1 Do kings make constitutions or is the reverse the case? If the latter, what kind of institutional arrangements best facilitate good governance? Should powers be separated, or should one opt for institutions which share power as obtains in the American political system? Political systems come in many institutional varieties. Amidst the institutional welter, one discerns two broad paradigms. In the one, power is concentrated while in the other, power is shared. These two broad paradigmatic expressions of political power are informed by “visions” and epistemic assumptions about the nature of political man and his capacity for justice and good governance (Sowell 1987). One view is that man is basically good, that he is not the enemy of other men and that he or his political representatives should and could be entrusted with power. As such, one should not try to fetter man, and by extension his political institutions, with too many “iron cages” or checks and balances. Man, Rousseau complained, “is born free and is everywhere in chains”. Others, like William Godwin and the Marquis de Condorcet, shared the dominant Enlightenment view that man was basically good and capable of a great deal of human understanding. Natural man was not to be confused with existing man who was corrupted by prejudices, artificial passions, social and religious customs and institutions. Godwin felt that man was perfectible, and that the task at hand was to “wake the sleeping virtues of mankind”. Good governance does not therefore require prudential “trade-offs” between men with conflicting and mercenary interests which have to be reconciled. Godwin, Condorcet and Rousseau thus envisaged a political system in which the interests of each would become identified with the interests of all, i.e. the “general will”. Man will act in the interest of the collectivity and not in response to some ulterior motive or in terms of the workings of some invisible or hidden hand as Adam Smith claimed (Sowell 1987:25). The competing paradigm held that political man was egotistic and driven

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by selfish appetites, and that the political system and its formal expression in the state should be informed by this understanding of man’s true nature. This view of man was best articulated by Thomas Hobbes and later on by the American authors of the Federalist Papers. Hobbes’ formula for dealing with man in what he called a “state of nature” as he understood it was to create an absolutist state in which the sovereign was the “Mortal God” and all powerful. The sovereign “Leviathan” combined in his person the roles of the executive and the legislature and, in effect, defined what the consensus was. His role as sovereign definer was to maintain order and create the environment in which men went about the business of amassing wealth. He created civil society and not the other way around. He determined what was truth and what was false and subversive. Truth was contextual and nominal, not essential or foundational. For Hobbes, peace and order were the sine qua non for good government. If there is no one to wield the sword coercively, neither civil society nor state was possible. Covenants without the sword are but words. . . The bonds of words are too weak to bridle man’s ambition, avarice, anger, and other passions without the fear of some coercive power . . . without which there is neither state nor civil society but only a headless multitude . . .Nothing less than the chains of despotism can restrain men from destroying one another (cited in Frisch 1970:62). The fathers of the American Constitution, like Alexander Hamilton and James Madison, were in the main heirs to the Hobbesiam tradition in terms of how man was imagined. Unlike Hobbes, however, they opted for a system of governance which sought to control both man and the sovereign. They sought, as Madison put it, to find a “republican remedy for the diseases most incident to republican governance”. They were thus consensual as opposed to authoritarian or majoritarian democrats. Alexander Hamilton, for example, did not consider political man to be perfectible or driven by concerns for the public good. This notion, he felt, “was more ardently to be wished than seriously to be expected”. One thus needed political systems in which ambition could checkmate ambition, and in which greed would neutralise greed. As Hamilton put it: it may be a reflection on human nature that such devices should be necessary to control the abuses of government. But what is government itself but the greatest of all reflections on human nature. If man was good, if he was the angel he was said to be, government would not be necessary. As Hamilton asked rhetorically: why has government been instituted at all? Because the passions of men

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will not conform to the dictates of reason and justice without constraint. . . It is the lot of all human institutions, even those of the most perfect kind, to have defects as well as excellencies – ill as well as good propensities. This results from the imperfection of the Institutor, Man (cited in Sowell 87:2122). Madison felt likewise. Madison’s concern was to make sure that the new republic was not undermined and destroyed by “domestic convulsion” and “foreign war”. His aim was to reduce the possibility that majority factions, concentrated in certain strategic areas, and driven by considerations of class, could overrun other civic interests in the society. His “novel” strategy was to design a system which would ensure that policy decisions were made by nationally distributed majorities rather than ones that were narrowly concentrated. According to Madison, the problem of republican governance is “to secure the public good and private rights against the danger of majority faction and at the same time to preserve the spirit and form of popular government.” Madison’s classic formula for achieving this goal was best elaborated in Federalist No. 10 which we quote at length. The smaller the society, the fewer probably will be the distinct parties and interests composing it; the fewer the distinct parties and interests, the more frequently will a majority be found of the same party; and the smaller the number of individuals composing a majority, and the smaller the compass within which they are placed, the more easily will they concert and execute their plans of oppression. Extend the sphere and you take in a greater variety of parties and interests; you make it less probable that a majority of the whole will have a common motive to invade the rights of other citizens; or if such a common motive exists, it will be more difficult for all who feel it to discover their own strength, and to act in unison with each other. (cited in Frisch 1970:68) Social and regional diversity and institutional pluralism would reinforce each other and prevent factions, even majority factions, from prevailing. There is much here that speaks to the problem of democracy in small societies. The popular democrats however disagreed. In their view, there was no need for institutional counterweights or complicated institutional and social pluralism. Such institutions weigh upon people and render difficult their sovereign right to govern themselves without constraint. The “process costs” were too high. For Hamilton and Madison, these costs were however important, and had to be imposed. Form was as important as content. To be sure, the government might not be in a position to do many good things. By the same token, it may also not be able to do many evil things. The role of government

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was not to create the ideal society, but to “establish the best that people can bear”, i.e. to “satisfice” or optimise rather than to satisfy or maximise. As Smith argued, “the peace and order of society is of more importance than the relief of the miserable”. Not for him the radical Leninist view that one cannot make omelettes without breaking eggs, or the Jeffersonian view that the tree of liberty must be watered with the blood of “martyrs”. Smith, like Edmund Burke, argued that man was a creature of habit. He was not a rational man, but a reason giving man, and governments should respect those habits and prejudices. Condorcet and Rousseau for their part believed that governments should not genuflect to reigning political cultures or adapt institutions to the practices and superstitions of extant man. Government should be based on principles that were democratically “pure” and which left people free, unfettered and unconstrained. Condorcet’s optimistic view about the progress of political man was challenged by the Compte de Mirabeau who argued that there was no law which ordained unlimited secular progress. Instead, there is an “iron law” which leads to a cyclical reversion to barbarism and decadence after eras of wealth and civility. Civilisations and nations collapse as inevitably as they rise. These traditions as to what institutional arrangements were better suited to securing and sustaining the goal of good governance, the adversarial and the coalitional or the populist or the consociational, have come down to us through many political philosophers and analysts. They are to be found in many ideologies and many constitutions, written and unwritten. They are to be found in “purer” forms in certain constitutions while in others they co-exist, often uneasily. In the contemporary Caribbean, they have expressed themselves in the reigning Westminster model or in the consociational, consensus, or “polder” model which prevails in neighbouring Suriname (Ryan 2000, 2002a). The majoritarian view argues that the people should decide and the majority should prevail when they disagree. The consensualists argue that democracy ought to mean that decisions should be made by as many people as possible. Majority or plurality rule is a minimum requirement. One needs to maximise the size of the majority (Lijphart 1991). It is widely agreed that the Westminster model in which a majority or the largest plurality governs as a trustee or fiduciary on behalf of the whole society, has not worked as the model prescribes, and that what we have in the Caribbean is a caricature in which the political executive dominates and which has been dismissed derisively as “doctor politics” (Best 1969). But there is no agreement as to whether it should be reformed incrementally in order to strengthen the capability of parliaments and the fortitude of the judiciary (Ryan 1999, 2001), or whether it needs architectural restructuring in order to make it less exclusive or fairer in terms of the desideratum of social, gender, age and ethnic representativeness, and more accountable to the people. While the debate has been joined in the ethnically homogeneous island states of Jamaica and the

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Eastern Caribbean, it has been more intense in Guyana and Trinidad and Tobago, both of which are ethnically heterogeneous societies, there have been calls for “shared governance”, “power sharing” or even “rotational power sharing” in the context of governments of national unity. Mr Basdeo Panday, former prime minister of Trinidad and Tobago, expressed the view that the only way to deal holistically and meaningfully with the problems of alienation and justice for all ethnic groups was to abandon the Westminster model altogether and experiment with a more consensual formula. As Mr Panday declared while in opposition in 1988: . . .the Westminster model has proved inadequate to meet the hopes and aspirations of our people as a developing nation; we must [therefore] strive for genuine constitutional reform. We must create a political system that is more relevant to the nature of the society at this given juncture. (Ryan 1996a: 554) There are many who agree with Mr Panday that the Westminster paradigm was not suitable for ethnically plural or dual societies such as those to be found in Trinidad, Guyana and other Third World countries. Sir Arthur Lewis (1965:55), for example, argued that in such societies a “consociational” rather than a “majoritarian” model was more appropriate. As Lewis wrote: Britain and France are class societies, and their institutions and conventions are designed to cope with this fact. West Africa is not a class society; its problem is that it is a plural society. What is good for a class society is bad for a plural society. Hence to create good political institutions in West Africa one has to think their problem through from the foundations up... men who stand for elections represent groups with different interests, ideas and characteristics, and the real contest is between these groups. To exclude the losing groups from participation in decision making clearly violates the primary meaning of democracy. Lewis argued that the democratic problem in a plural society is to create institutions which allow all the groups to participate in decision-making since only thus would they feel that they are full members of the nation. Lewis was of the view that the Caribbean people have been brainwashed into believing that coalitions and other features of consensual democracies are bad. As such they may need much “unbrain washing” to grasp their problems in true perspective. Basically, the consociational or “concurrent majority” model argues that what affects all must be approved by all. This is particularly important in multiethnic states where no group has an effective as opposed to a mere numerical majority and, as such, is unable to govern meaningfully on non-routine matters

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without the active involvement or concurrence of other critical interests without having to use coercion. This school of thought argues that strict majoritarianism is a principle of exclusion and that one needs a multiple or overlapping mandate rather than a uni-layered one for plural societies if representative government on a sustainable basis is to be achieved. In such societies, ethnicity has to be formally recognised and even integrated into the electoral and, in some contexts, the bureaucratic and constitutional system. One of the most articulate advocates of the consociational model, Arend Lijphart (1984, 1990), argues that “the real choice of plural societies is not between the British (majoritarian) model and the consociational model, but between consociational democracy and no democracy at all”. As Lijphart writes further: The crux of the consensus model . . . is that it accepts majority rule only as a minimum requirement: instead of being satisfied with narrow decisionmaking majorities, it seeks to maximize the size of these majorities. Its rules and institutions aim at broad participation in government and broad agreement on the policies that the government should pursue. The majoritarian model concentrates political power in the hands of a bare majority – and often even merely a plurality instead of a majority . . . whereas the consensus model tries to share, disperse, and limit power in a variety of ways. A closely related difference is that the majoritarian model of democracy is exclusive, competitive, and adversarial, whereas the consensus model is characterized by inclusiveness, bargaining, and compromise; for this reason, consensus democracy could also be termed “negotiation democracy” (1991:2). Both the People’s National Movement (PNM) in Trinidad and Tobago and the People’s National Congress (PNC) in Guyana have come out against the concept of executive power-sharing in a national unity government. There must, they both argued, be someone “to tell the Emperor that he has no clothes”. Someone has to hold the executive to account and be ready to form an alternative government. That is the role of the official opposition. In the view of the PNM and the PNC leadership, the Westminster multiparty system “is still the best” in spite of all its acknowledged faults. The PNC, as we shall see, has since come around to the view that “the time for power sharing has probably come” (Hoyte 2002: mimeo). Given the ethnic heterogeneity of the population of Trinidad and Tobago and Guyana, and given that communal consciousness seems to be on the increase, a strong case could be made that the political system ought to be restructured to take account of this social reality. Several attempts have been

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made in the past in both countries to forge pre-electoral multi-ethnic fronts or coalitions, but these failed because one group or another came to feel that the balance of forces in the coalition did not accurately reflect their political strength, or that sufficient expression was not given to their desire to occupy more prominent positions in the state apparatus. The various coalitional efforts thus collapsed under challenge from constituent units for larger shares of material and symbolic resources. The inability of the leadership elements to manage the ethnic tensions that inevitably arise in coalitional politics creatively and with political sense as to what the limits were, was also a contributing factor (Ryan 1989). Notwithstanding these failures, demands continue to be made for powersharing or for the creation of a “party of parties”. Clive Thomas (1998) spoke for many AfroGuyanese when he observed that despite claims about cross-over voting, the 1992 and 1997 elections were ethnic censuses. Given the demographics of Guyana, free and fair elections would thus exclude AfroGuyanese from a meaningful share of political power, perhaps permanently, something which most AfroGuyanese regard as totally unacceptable. To avoid the political instability that this structural problem invites, Guyana had to find a constitutional formula that would permit power to be shared. As Thomas wrote: In so far as the legal and constitutional framework promotes political competition based on “winnertakesall” results, this exacerbates the insider/ outsider dynamic and heightens the feelings of insecurity among the losing groups. When, as in Guyana, the Constitution also concentrates immense power in an Executive President and representation in the Parliament is not based on local constituencies and/or communities, the situation becomes even more difficult. Constitutional reform therefore offers a . . . way forward in seeking to modify the excesses of political competition based on racial affiliation. In Thomas’ view, there was also need to promote national consensus among all the major political forces and key social partners over the main lines of economic strategy. Such a strategy can contribute not only towards protecting the national interest in relation to foreign investments, but also allow issues of equity, racial security, social balance, democratisation, participatory development and the flowering of civic society to emerge as alternatives to mutually selfdestructive racial competition.

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Similar views were expressed by David de Caires, publisher and editor of Stabroek News. De Caires (1998) put the case for consociationalism as follows: Because of our colonial inheritance, our elites have tended to assume that the British model. . . is the natural model of representative democracy. It is clear that the broad based national party many had hoped would emerge, will not. Our elites know each other; they have had a basically similar education; they are also by now surely aware of the dangers in the situation. Our future is not preordained, they have the freedom to choose. In a society plagued by ethnic division, one has to seek structures that provide incentives for accommodation and reconciliation.

Arguments in Favour of the Westminster Model The arguments most often heard in support of the Westminster model in the context of the Anglophone Caribbean are as follows:

• • • • • •

The system is part of our historical experience and is well understood by the Caribbean people. People know what they are voting for or against when they go to the polls. The system meets the basic test of effectiveness. Governments are based on a majority or plurality, and are easily formed. Policies are easily determined and mandates readily fulfilled. Governments can be held accountable for their performance or lack thereof. The theory of the mandate requires parties to govern or at least pretend to do so on behalf of the whole country and not a mere part thereof. The system formalises and legitimises the concept of the “loyal opposition”. Out elites have a constitutional right to expose the weaknesses of the policies being pursued by the ruling elite and the right and responsibility to articulate other perspectives and other policy alternatives. Alternation is a mechanism to fulfill the goal of representation even if this is done sequentially as in the game of cricket in which both teams get a turn at the crease.

Arguments Against the Westminster (FPTP) Model •

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What may work in the United Kingdom does not work in the small states of the Caribbean which have non-consensual adversarial political cultures.

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Small states are not the appropriate crucibles for the “winner take all” FPTP model in which material and human resources are either routinely wasted or not effectively mobilised. Parliaments in small states are too small to sustain “ins” and “outs”. Given their size, there can be no effective “back bench” or “opposition bench”. Most MPs on the winning side are in the government in one form or another. The system fails the test of fairness. FPTP exaggerates the strength of winning parties and under-represents minority parties. Often, a majority votes against the governing party, rather than for it. If one looks at the political experiences of the United Kingdom and the Caribbean, one in fact finds that the FPTP system produces “pluralitarian” rather than majoritarian.

Ar gu ments in F avour o f the Co nsensus M ode Argu guments Fa of Consensus Mo •

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States and political systems should strive to reflect the “general will” or the “will of all” and not a bare partisan majority. The idea of the “grand coalition” is the negation of party and partisanship in contradistinction to the unifying and all incorporating concept of the state. In consensus systems, coalitions broaden or maximise mandates and make them more complex and representative. Mandates are multilayered and overlapping. In Germany, voters often know in advance which parties will form coalitions with each other. Sometimes parties offer common programmes of government to enable the electorate to know that they stand collectively. Alliances or combinations frequently occur in Suriname, Ireland and Scandinavia. Alliances may be made on the basis of “left” vs “right” or “centre-left” vs “centre-right” tendencies or along some other axis of convenience. Consensus governments usually include a middle party which represents the average elector. In doing so, they might serve to reduce the importance of extremist factions. Admittedly, it may not always achieve this goal, as the cases of Israel and Austria show. Generally speaking, coalition governments better meet the test of representativeness: They are generally more likely to satisfy a wider concept of representation or voter choice than the classic mandate theory – particularly as the coalition will come closer to representing the choices of voters from parties excluded from government than single-party plurality rule. Further, formal electoral alliances of two or more parties do offer electors

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a clear choice between two different programmes and usually produce a government with a genuine majority. This is secured by party strategies and behaviour, not by formal constitutional arrangements (Dunleavy et al 1998: 22-23). •

•

It is often argued that parties in coalition systems do not always find it possible to deliver on their promises. Coalition governments in Europe in fact stick to their manifesto priorities more closely than single party governments in Britain, the USA and Australia have done (See Budge: Stability and Choice: A Review of Single Party and Coalition Government: 1998). On the question of effectiveness, studies of European politics claim that there is no prima facie case that single party governments are likely to be more effective than coalition governments. Indeed, if there is a prima facie case to be made, it is against the general effectiveness and efficiency of single-party government. Erring on the side of caution, however, it is probably best to say that there are only limited grounds for claiming greater effectiveness of one side over the other. (Dunleavy 1998:23; See also Appendix 1)

Case Against the Co nsocia ti onal M odel Consocia nsociati tio Mo •

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Parties in consociational systems often constitute themselves into an elite cartel which is more exclusionist and corrupt than the bare majority system. Systems of shared governance obscures political responsibility and make it difficult to allocate praise and blame. Transparency and accountability suffer in the interest of cartel survival. Policy-making and formation of governments are long drawn out affairs as has occurred in Suriname and the Netherlands where it takes weeks to decide on policy and to form governments (Ryan 2002). The consociational system empowers party leaders and weakens intraparty democracy. Reforming groups are disadvantaged in the system and may be tempted to overbid or take up anti-system postures in order to get access to the power loop. Consociational systems tend towards intra-governmental and party instability as seen in places like Italy, Israel, Northern Ireland, Belgium, Switzerland and Suriname. A premium is put on deal-making, horsetrading, and opportunistic behaviour. Ministries and state institutions become preserves of parties and inhibit “joined up government”.

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The system tends to breed cynicism and futility, especially among those who prefer coherent and “rational” as opposed to ad hoc policy-making and national as opposed to ethnic or sectional planning and policy making. Coalitional governments frequently collapse while in office as has been seen in the recent (2002) cases of Israel, Ireland and the Netherlands.

The issue of power sharing or shared governance is not an academic or theoretical one in the Anglophone Caribbean. It is a live issue in Guyana and Trinidad and Tobago, and it is an agenda item in Jamaica and the Eastern Caribbean. Elections held in Trinidad and Tobago in December 2001 produced a hung parliament, and many feared that in those scheduled for October 7, 2002, another hung electorate was a distinct possibility. If this were to occur, some form of rotational power-sharing would have to be put in place, even if on an interim basis.2 Concern was also expressed in Jamaica that the October 16 2002 election could result in a tie.3 The issue of power sharing also continues to be a burning agenda item in Guyana and debate about its desirability or its workability was sharply intensified following the street riots which erupted in July 2002 as thousands marched in protest from Buxton to Georgetown (Ryan 2002). The July crisis revealed starkly that Guyana’s economic, political, judicial and security systems are in a state of near collapse. The crisis also made it clear that civil society in Guyana is weak, atrophied and ethnically divided, and that the small middle class was impotent and unequal to the task of getting the parties to act sensibly and responsibly. It is also evident that Guyana’s political culture, like that of the Irish, nurtured as it has been over decades on a diet of struggle, strife and strike, paralyses its leadership. Any attempt at purposeful action triggers a sit-in, a strike, or a long march during which much damage is done to life, limb and property. Partisanship and political temperatures are also much too high, and incessant radio and TV talk shows continuously inflame the minds of the masses. Memories of political victimisation, past and present, real and imagined, are also much too vivid. Hard liners, who are in the ascendancy in both parties, talk past each other, much like the Israelis and the Palestinians. All of these cultural and conjunctural factors are aggravated by the structural poverty which exists throughout Guyana, though more particularly in the hinterland and the urban centres where a sense of alienation and hopelessness is pervasive. Everyone wants to migrate to Canada or the US, whether legally or illegally. In sum, the dense political jungle seems to be reclaiming the civic landscape. Attempts to broker political peace in Guyana following the collapse of the “dialogue” process in March 2002 (Ryan 2002) must take heed of the fact that Guyana is a deeply traumatised society in which the two major ethnic groups

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each have their chosen rituals, traumas and hurts (real, invented and imagined) which mark and sustain their identity as a group. These feelings of shared belongingness and of being besieged, which were nurtured over many years of silent and open conflict in and around the plantations and villages, are reactivated during periods prior to and following elections, when strikes or marches in the streets take place, or during ethnic festivals. Any attempt to build political bridges by the implantation of super-structural devices such as dialogue or power sharing must recognise the historical, social and psychological contexts in which these attitudes were developed. To be effective, social reconstruction must accompany efforts at political reconstruction, if not precede them. Power sharing cannot work in a vacuum. In traumatised societies, calls for power sharing and the empowerment of out groups are seen by the group or regime which is being asked to make the greater number of concessions or sacrifices as a prescription not only for material loss and deprivation, but for symbolic loss as well. Power is conceptualised as a zero-sum commodity, and calls for power sharing are seen as a threat to the ruling elite’s control over the commanding heights of the state apparatus, and also as a recipe for the loss of psychic income and social face. This is especially so if the new partner to the proposed shared arrangement is seen as being socially challenged or to have moral values that are more “flexible” than those claimed by the erstwhile hegemon. If one party thinks of itself as the party of god or virtue, and the other as ethically or religiously challenged, fears of contamination arise. Power sharing seems to work best with groups which have shared core values and past associations and, equally important, where the relationship between them is asymmetrical. Where the parties are roughly equal in terms of power, or one is seen as a threat to the political survival of the other, the chances of success are less than would be the case where one party is clearly dominant but needs the support of the other as a junior partner. Power sharing also seems to work best in societies where parties, though distinct, see themselves as part of a mosaic which must work together pragmatically to get public goals achieved. In certain political systems, people are accepted as being what they are and to hold the views they have; but are also expected to cooperate with others to get certain basic things done. Parties in these systems are also mature enough to accept the discipline of coalition. Caribbean politics is however not driven by a search for consensus, but by the notion that the winner takes all. Another problem with the power sharing concept in the Caribbean is that the word itself poses ideological problems for many. Desmond Hoyte, for example once described the word as a “shibboleth”. His complaint, and that of others, is that people use the term as a sort of party password but do not stop to give it any precise definition or think it through thoroughly. Hoyte, however, responded

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positively to an initiative taken by groups in civil society (the Private Sector Commission, the Trades Union Congress and the Guyana Bar Association) who presented him with a document titled “Shared Governance.”4 The document observed that the efforts which were being made to institutionalise a process of dialogue between the two major parties following the 2000 elections had collapsed because of several basic weaknesses. These were: •

•

•

•

the deliberations involved primarily the representatives of the two main political parties and understandably, resulted in attention being given to subjects aimed at resolving “their issues”. However, many of those issues were national in scope and therefore required consultation with, and involvement of, interest groups and people beyond the confines of those two parties; the deliberations focused on a set of specific matters without a clearly stated overarching context, and opportunities to apprise the population about the aims of the deliberations were not explored, thereby leaving popular expectations to define themselves; the implementation of agreed actions depended on traditional mechanisms in which the agreeing, or affected, groups had no representation; and, the opportunities to educate the population about the aim of the deliberations were not explored, nor were efforts undertaken to secure public participation in sustaining the intended outcomes of the deliberations.

The document proposed the following as alternatives: He told the 13th Annual Biennial Congress that the document seemed to provide a basis of discussion. Hoyte went on to tell the Congress that an adjusted system of governance for our country — whether we call it “power sharing”, “shared governance”, “inclusive governance” or any other “name – appears to be an idea whose time has come” (Hoyte 2002: mimeo). The PPP has not responded favourably, saying that the civil groups which brought forward the proposal were not neutral. The question, then is, how does one give the concept “traction” in a society where the political culture does not conduce towards consensual problem solving and pragmatic coalition building? How does power sharing work in societies where leaders believe that they must present themselves to their followers and to each other as “strongmen,” cocks of the political gayelle? Part of the problem is that Caribbean leaders generally have been programmed to see themselves as sabre-rattling maximum figures. Politics is seen as a phallic activity wherein macho men “cock” their rivals and monopolise the political

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stage. Power sharing also becomes a problem because the state and the spoils and patronage that are derived therefrom are considered the ultimate prize of politics, not to be shared with any competitor. Only one combatant can wear the golden crown. While power sharing or shared governance might thus be an antidote to the deep feelings of ethnic insecurity and deprivation, the prevailing tension in contemporary Guyana is much too high to accommodate any such entente. What is ideologically necessary might not be politically possible. Those less pessimistic argue that the fairest way to judge any model is not against some unattainable ideal but against what presently obtains. This iteration of the problems that attend power sharing does not mean that we in the Caribbean should not continue to experiment with inclusionary alternatives to the Westminster model. The Belgians did as much when their state was faced with imminent collapse under pressure from elites making linguistic and confessional demands. The Dutch also created what has been called the “polder” model when faced with a serious state crisis in the eighties (Visser and Hemerijek 1997: Also The Economist “Survey of the Netherlands,” May 4, 2002). While there are many power sharing models, there is no “bespoke model”. If we are to fashion appropriate models, we have to eschew constitutional plagiarism and invent something that is more in keeping with our demographic and historical realities. It might also require us to reimagine the states in question. Michael O’Neill (1998: 255-259) had the following to say in respect of the Belgian experiment: Adaptation of the principle of separated powers and shared rule to meet its particular circumstances is the real achievement of Belgian statecraft. After more than two decades of constitutional renewal, Belgium has been recast, by manageable degrees, in a federal mould. It was done by pragmatic political elites on all sides of the country’s fault-lines well versed in managing a multi-lingual polity, determined to resolve the crisis of the state without saundering it. The outcome is an imaginative response to Belgium’s cultural diversity. It shows what may be achieved by pragmatic steering and resolute action. Much is possible where well-intentioned elites, and the communities they represent, set aside sectarianism and dogma. And, in the process, to make bargains that better accommodate the interests of all those with a stake in the national project. To this extent, Belgian federalism offers a lesson to other states where current arrangements no longer reflect the identities of their citizens. Belgium is however a mature democracy with elites that are well versed in the politics of political accommodation. The question to be determined is whether

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Caribbean political elites can display similar characteristics or whether our politics would forever remain “phallic”.

APPENDIX I OPERA TI ONALISIN G POWER SHARIN G IN THE C ARIB BEAN ARIBBEAN PERATI TIO NALISING SHARING CARIB There have been a number of specific definitions as to what is power sharing, and specific suggestions as to how power might be operationalised in the Caribbean. Power sharing has been defined as: the formalised participation of the diverse segments of a plural society in the executive arm of government, the public service, the military, the business sector and in any other important component of the power structure of that society. Its foremost objective is to manage and resolve conflicts, to broaden democracy and thereby to promote the political stabilisation of the society. Suggestions as to how it might be operationalised include: 1. Joint holding of the office of the prime minister. This suggestion was advanced in 1961 by Esui Kwayana of the then African Society for Racial Equality (ASRE) of Guyana as a way to defuse the threat of violence and eventual partition which it was feared would materialise following the 1961 general election. Kwayana’s diagnosis was that Africans would not accept an Indian prime minister and Indians would not accept an African prime minister. The election result was PPP 43 per cent and PNC 41.2 per cent. People rejected the joint prime minister formula because it offered neither party the domination that they wished for. 2. Rotation of prime ministers every 12 or 18 months. This was proposed by the Committee of Independent senators following the 18-18 tie in Trinidad and Tobago in December 2001. 3. Select as executive president the person gaining the largest number of voters, and as prime minister the person with the next largest number. This proposal was made by the former prime minister of Trinidad and Tobago, Mr Basdeo Panday, whom the proposal appeared to favour since the voter turnout rate among Indo Trinidadians is normally higher than that of Afro Trinidadians. The proposal, which is a hybrid of the United States and the United Kingdom models, was also made in respect of Guyana. Those making the suggestion wanted the power of the prime minister increased. It was advanced that he should be allocated the Ministry of Home Affairs (the second most important ministry). Key decisions and appointments were also to be agreed to by both officials. Where no agreement was reached, Parliament should decide by 2/3 majority vote. In some cases, the majorities needed could be reduced to 60 or 50 per cent.

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4. Another option advanced provides for a non-executive president which would go to the second party while the winning party is given the prime ministership and leadership of the government. The president would however be more than a ceremonial head. He must have the power to delay and ultimately to veto any measure if it was opposed by 40 per cent of those voting. Some bills would attract the veto if not passed by 50 or 60 per cent of those voting. A variation of this model was suggested by the Wooding Commission (1974) in Trinidad and Tobago which gave the president the power to send contested bills back to Parliament for reconsideration. The president would act following the exercise of his own deliberate judgement. 5. In respect of the composition of the cabinet, Mr Panday advocated that each party should be given a proportionate share of the posts. Parties would make their choices in alternation. Party shares would reflect parliamentary strength. A related proposal coming out of Guyana recommended that the cabinet should be made to function as a cohesive whole and not as it does in Suriname, where ministries become party preserves. The Ministry of Finance was to be given the responsibility to coordinate, using as platforms the National Development Strategy (NDS) and the Poverty Reduction Strategy (PRS). Opposition concurrence was required for these documents (60 per cent majority). 6. Service Commission should assume full responsibility for selecting and managing the Public Service. It was argued that this would give civil servants more independence. Membership on commissions should be proportionate to parliamentary representation and chairmanships should rotate every two years with one of the minority parties getting it in the fifth year. 7. The role of Opposition must be maintained. This role however passes to Civil Society and to political parties which should assume a greater responsibility for scrutinising the activities of their representatives in the Cabinet. In the context of Guyana, it was claimed that both political parties are authoritarian. As Clarence Ellis and Eric Phillips contend (Power Sharing for Racial Harmony: Stabroek News, September 27, 2002): There are authoritarian biases in the PNC perhaps reminiscent of the house slave/field slave dichotomy of post slavery society. In the PPP, the exclusivist tendencies inherent in Hinduism that will make reform very difficult are of much more ancient antiquity. The Hindu religion justifies inequality. That makes equality of opportunity as an ideal between Hindus and non-Hindus almost impossible. Some acculturation of the Hindu inequality/exclusivity thinking has taken place but it surfaces all the time in everyday activities

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and is partly responsible for the visceral reaction of African Guyanese to the prospect of a never ending perpetuation of PPP rule. Afro-Guyanese know instinctively that such rule means dominance, and that for many Hindus, dominance of those perceived as subordinates is not unjust. 8. Senate should be the de jure and de facto House of Representatives. Corporate and other groups should be represented in an enlarged second chamber on principles to be determined by the groups. Voting is to be “free” of party dictation. 9. More vertical power sharing is required. Segmental autonomy is to be fostered as far as necessary. 10. The people masses must not be bypassed by politicians and special groups who seek to grab power and resources. Politics must become more “issue” based. 11. There is need to create Equal Opportunity Commissions/ Ethnic Relations Commission to address problems of ethnic and gender imbalances. 12. There is need to build trust. “Trust is the social capital that we have been denied for four decades.” As the Stabroek News (September 3, 2002) editorialised: Trust is not easy to build as we have seen in the case of Fiji. Without good faith, the whole business of negotiating new forms of governance can become little more that opportunistic manoeuvring to gain power. The other issue is the question of a minority and a majority. Shared governance does not “solve” or do away with that problem. For example, if there is a power sharing cabinet, decisions still have to be made after suitable deliberation. In some cases it may be possible to agree on what is to be done but in others this may not be possible, and the majority will decide. If the minority will not accept the majority decision the power struggle will reassert itself in the joint cabinet. One can overcome this problem by giving the minority veto rights on some issues, but if that is overdone, it can easily lead to gridlock, as has of course happened now with the appointment of parliamentary committees. In other words, without some level of cooperation and a good faith acceptance of rules, no system of governance will succeed. There have to be compromises in the national interest. If one party keeps moving the goalposts in its own interest, there will be ongoing instability, whatever form of government is temporarily agreed on.

APPENDIX II Those who oppose power sharing in Guyana argue that certain elements in the society are manufacturing ethnic insecurities for their own ends. The people do not want it. Prem Misir, who takes this view, claims that the Afro Guyanese

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and the Indo Guyanese have comparable socioeconomic status, and that there is no significant institutional discrimination (Guyana Chronicle, September 27, 2002). David Hinds’ reply to Misir was that marginalisation might well be a perception problem, but perception is reality. To quote Hinds: Marginalisation is the aggregate of institutional and non-institutional exclusion. It springs from an observation and interpretation of the verbal and non-verbal language of the group that holds power. It is the feeling that someone of the other race is spying on you at the workplace. It is when the symbols of power in the society don’t reflect your group. It is compounded when the basic facilities in your community do not compare favourably with those in the communities of the other group. This is what the vast majority of Indians felt during PNC rule. Even though the Indian commercial class did well, the African masses suffered similar indignities to those suffered by Indians. Marginalization in Guyana is essentially class marginalization. . .but given the fact that class identity in Guyana is smothered and compromised by racial identity, exclusion and alienation take on a racial twist. Power is exercised by one section of the elite at a time, which, true to its class instincts, maintain this exclusionary culture, including the exclusion of the lower classes of its own race from the decision making process.But because of the racial polarization and competition between Africans and Indians, there is a convergence of the attitudes of the elites and the masses on the question of racial dominance. Therefore, despite their exclusion from the political process, the African and Indian masses condone the excesses of their leaders, especially when they are in power. (Ibid.) Prem Misir’s retort was to accuse power sharers of being unrealistic idealists. “Power sharing crusaders believe that it will produce national unity and eliminate once and for all ethnic mistrust and ethnic insecurity. Let’s not delude ourselves as to its capacity for conflict resolution. The Westminster model has to be modified to incorporate greater structures of inclusiveness.” (Ibid.).

References Best, Lloyd. 1969. Leadership and Prophecy. Tapia. November 16, 1969. De Caires, David. 1998. Trinidad and Tobago Review, Port of Spain. Diamond, Martin “The Federalist”. In American Political Thought, edited by Morton J. Frisch and Richard Stevens, Scribner: New York, 1971. Dunleavy, Patrick et. al. 1998. Electoral Reform in Britain. London: Politico’s Publishing, Hoyte, Desmond. 2002. Speech to 13th Biennial Congress, Congress House, Sophia. August 16-18, 2002.

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Lewis, Arthur. 1998. “The Agony of the Eight.” Journal of Eastern Caribbean Studies 23.1. (March). __________. 1965. Politics in West Africa. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Lijphart, Arend. 1991. Patterns of Democracy. New Haven: Yale University Press. __________. 1994. “Electoral Systems and Party Systems: A Study of 27 Democracies, 1945-1970.” London: Oxford University Libraries. __________.1990. “Size, Pluralism, and the Westminster Model of Democracy: Implications for the Eastern Caribbean.” In A Revolution Betrayed: The Lessons of Grenada, edited by Jorge Heine. University of Pittsburgh Press. __________. 1984. Consociational Democracy. World Politics, 21 (January): 207-225. Oneil, Michael. 1998. “Re-imagining Belgium: New Federalism and the Political Management of Cultural Diversity.” Parliamentary Affairs 51.2 (April, 1998). Ryan, Selwyn. 2002. “Power Sharing in the Caribbean: The Search For Equity and Security.” Caribbean Dialogue 8. 1&2. Ryan, Selwyn & Anne Marie Bissessar. 2002a. Governance in the Caribbean. UWI, St Augustine, Trinidad: ISER. _________. 1999. Winner Takes All: The Westminster Experience in the Caribbean, UWI, St Augustine, Trinidad: ISER. __________.1996a. Pathways to Power. UWI, St. Augustine, Trinidad: ISER. __________.1996b. Democratic Governance and the Social Condition in the Anglophone Caribbean. New York: UNDP. __________.1989. The Disillusioned Electorate. Trinidad: Imprint. Sowell, Thomas. 1987. A Conflict of Visions: Ideological Origins of Political Struggles. Thomas, Clive. 1998. “Exception and Rule: Racial Constructs and Dynamics of the African Diaspora Experience.” Paper presented at Conference on Diaspora Studies, University of California, Berkeley. Visser, Jelle and Anton Hemerijck. 1997. A Dutch Miracle: Job Growth, Welfare and Corporativism in the Netherlands. Amsterdam University Press.

Notes 1. Lee Kuan Yew argued that good leadership and a civic society are more critical to the promotion of democracy and development than good constitutions. As he argued in his autobiography, we need good people to have good government. However good the system of government, bad leaders will bring harm to their people. On the other hand, I have seen several societies well governed in spite of poor systems of government. . . Many of the over 80 constitutions drafted by Britain and France for their former colonies have come to grief, and not because of flaws in their constitutions. It was simply that the preconditions for a democratic system of government did not exist. None of these countries had a civic society with an educated electorate.

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The nine (9) independent senators appointed by the president of Trinidad and Tobago were among those making such a proposal. It was also proposed that the Cabinet should consist of 14 to 16 ministers to be equally shared by the two parties. The senators also proposed that there should be an agreed interim agenda for the new government and that a Constitution Review Commission must be established within 3 months of the formation of the government which would report in time to allow fresh elections to be held under a new constitution.

3

The 2002 manifesto of the Jamaica Labour Party recommended that the size of the Parliament be increased to 61 members to avoid the possibility of a dead heat. Even numbers do not however provide ironclad guarantees against electoral deadlock as we have seen in St Kitts and St Vincent and the Grenadines. •

that a structured, ongoing and permanent consultative mechanism on shared governance be established by agreement among the Parliamentary Parties;

•

that this consultation should initially provide for the participation of the established social partners whose objectives focus on the rule of law, the conduct of business and the welfare of workers; that the measures for examination and implementation should be structured within an agreed timeframe and be categorised as “immediate”, “mediumterm” and “long-term”; that “immediate’ matters should include crime prevention; the end of extrajudicial killings; community relations in rural and urban areas; establishing criteria to define “disaffected” areas; food production; job creation through civil works and other programmes; youth development; printing and distribution of the revised Constitution and expeditious implementation of already agreed and assented to Constitutional Reform matters; that “medium-term” matters should include moving forward with the National Development Strategy; establishing appropriate machinery for further Constitutional Reform as foreseen in the Constitutional Reform Report for example, the standing Parliamentary Committee for Constitutional Reform (PCCR) and the arrangements for initial Local Government Reform; that “long-term” matters should include examination of, and attention to, the major outstanding governance reform matters such as the Constitution, the Judicial system, the Electoral system, the Local Government system and reorganisation of the Security Forces with a focus on both domestic and international issues; that a small secretariat of professionals should support the proposed mechanism on shared governance by monitoring implementation of all agreed measures and by preparing and distributing reports that should be made public in a timely manner and, in particular, should also be routinely made available to the leadership of the Security Forces as background information against which they can undertake their responsibilities to maintain a safe, secure and stable environment in which progress can take place.

•

•

•

•

•

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E L E V E N

engenDerIng governance: strategIes for promotIng genDer equalIty BARBARA BAILEY AND ELSA LEO-RHYNIE

Introduction Governance has been defined as the exercise of economic, political and administrative authority to manage a country’s affairs at all levels. (UNDP 2000, p. iii)1

t

his definition was extended by the Minister of Finance and Planning of Jamaica, Hon Dr Omar Davies (2002), who characterised governance as:

The traditions and institutions by which authority in a country is exercised. This includes:

• • •

The process by which governments are selected, monitored and replaced; The capacity of the government to continually formulate and implement sound policies; and The respect of citizens and the State for the institutions that govern economic and social interactions among them. 2

These definitions highlight the various dimensions of governance and the vital role of this process in all aspects of the direction, development, leadership, cohesiveness and culture of a country. The lack of involvement of women in this process of governance has been reported by the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC) in a document on participation and leadership in Latin American and the Caribbean. The document states: …the presence of women in decision-making is not commensurate with their contribution to society. . . [this] can be demonstrated by objective data. It is a fact that women in the region have been steadily leaving the domestic

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sphere and entering the labour market and different areas of public life. Nonetheless, their new participatory role is a subordinate one and does not extend to the social and political spheres where power is exercised. (p.19)3 The non-participation of women in the process of governance – their lack of representation in the political process and other areas of public decisionmaking, excludes a valuable source of human capital. The objectives of this paper are to examine the current state of women’s participation at decision-making levels in political and social life, to identify factors which relate to and explain their low levels of participation and to propose mechanisms for bringing about parity in this regard.

The Current Situ ati on Situa tio Women continue to be under-represented in positions of decision-making in both the private and public sectors and are still markedly absent from the sites of executive power where decisions affecting every aspect of the lives of both men and women are taken. The under-representation of women in decisionmaking and power sharing was identified as one of five of the most pressing issues facing Caribbean women in a report prepared by the Caribbean Community (CARICOM) Secretariat in preparation for the 4th World Conference on Women held in Beijing, China in 1995.4 The absence of women in these positions is further confirmed by a UNESCO Report on Education in the Caribbean coming out of the 1996 meeting of Ministers of Education of Latin America and the Caribbean where it is stated that: . . .despite the advances made by women in education. . . , when compared to men, they still have less access to opportunities and rewards and to the corridors and board rooms of political and economic power. (p.12)5 The lack of involvement of women in decision-making results in a lack of parity between men and women in matters of sociopolitical participation and governance at all levels. The levels for participation are identified as the microlevel of the home, the meso-level of community organisations and local government and the macro-level of national party, parliamentary and governmental politics.6 This paper looks specifically at governance at the meso and macro-levels. The Women and Development Unit of ECLAC has supplied a framework which can be used to analyse the extent to which women have achieved political autonomy particularly at these two levels of governance.7 Two types of indicators are identified: indicators of “results” and indicators of “political will”. The latter

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indicates qualitative measures which show the extent to which governments are committed to gender equity and to achieving parity in participation and provide information on the efforts being made to make good this commitment. “Results” indicators, on the other hand, are quantitative in nature and are concerned with the presence of women in the public spheres and events that are fundamental to the social and political life of a country and are attained through a range of social processes of change and through the application of measures to promote female participation. The goal is to achieve parity. The gap between the actual value of the indicator and parity therefore represents the distance that needs to be covered to achieve parity (ECLAC, 1999).8 “Results” indicators include a comparison of male/female participation in a range of state, political and social organisations. Information for Jamaica in respect of these institutions is presented in Table 1. Table 1: ale p ar ti cip ati on in po liti cal and social female par arti ticip cipa tio politi litic Male / fem organisa ti ons, Ja mai ca ganisati tio Jam aic Political Participation

Total

Male

Female

Governor General

1

1

-

Prime Minister

1

1

-

House of Representatives

60

52

8 (13%)

Cabinet

17

15

2 (12%)

Senate

21

16

5 (24%)

Local Government

227

173

54 (24%)

Custodes

13

12

1 (8%)

Political Party Executives: PNP

281

218

63 (22%)

JLP

134

111

23 (17%)

NDM

148

112

36 (24%)

245

122

52 (29%)

80

56

24 (30%)

Social Participation Trade Union Boards Professional Organizations (Junior Doctors, Bar Association. etc.(5) Boards of Registered Companies ( 31) Special Interest groups. (PSOJ, JMA, JAS etc.)

320

288

32 (10%)

113

97

16 (14%)

Compiled from: Vassell, L. 2000. Power, Governance and the Structure of Opportunity for Women in Decision-making in Jamaica. In The Construction of Gender Development, edited by P. Mohammed. Indicators in Jamaica. PIOJ/UNDP/CIDA. Kingston, Jamaica.

These data clearly illustrate that men dominate all areas of sociopolitical participation in Jamaican institutions. This lack of gender parity and the under

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representation of women in decision-making positions at the meso and macrolevels is often masked by the fact that, in a few instances, women hold high public office, for example as the president of the Senate and, until recently, the Speaker of the House of Parliament. A 2000 Report prepared by the United Nations Development Programme on women’s political participation points to the fact that gender equality has been inscribed on the political agenda of most of the countries of the world with the Beijing Platform for Action setting the goal as 30 per cent for women in decision-making positions but with the ultimate aim being 50 per cent representation in these positions.9 In the Report it is noted that five years after Beijing, however, the level of women in parliaments in the world has only increased from 10 per cent to 12 per cent with considerable regional variations, as with 37.6 per cent in Nordic countries and only 3.3 per cent in Arab States. In the same report Hamadeh-Banerjee and Oquist (2000) point to the consequences for achieving gender equality and for women in particular. They opine that: . . .until gender parity is reached in governance, women cannot reach full equality with men in any sphere. The absence of women’s voices in shaping the most fundamental political instruments – the most critical of which is the national budget – has ensured the preservation of gender inequity even with regard to women’s health and security in their own homes. (p.2)10

Barriers to ‘engendering’ governance Van der Aa (1995) claims that the primary reason for the exclusion of women from public life is the imbalance in gender relations between women and men and the day-to-day discrimination that women face in the public sphere.11 This gender inequality basically stems from the unequal distribution of power between the sexes and ultimately results in women’s lack of economic, personal and political autonomy. This lack of autonomy, particularly political autonomy, means that women have little say in decisions that influence and shape their public and private lives and therefore have little power to change the power base and situations of inequality in any radical way.

Lack of economic autonomy Van der Aa (1995) notes that while Caribbean women have always enjoyed a degree of “personal” economic autonomy in having control over their own economic resources, the gender division of labour and working conditions (wages) remain unequal and generally favour men.12 This lack of “public” economic autonomy of Jamaican women is borne out by data that indicate that,

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although more women have been entering the labour force since the 1970s, they represent the smaller proportion of the total and employed labour force and experience higher levels of unemployment than men. Data for 2000 indicate that females comprised only 44.5 per cent of the total labour force, 40.9 per cent of the employed labour force and accounted for 63.8 per cent of the unemployed labour force in spite of the fact that 54.6 per cent of all persons in the labour force without any training was male.13 These data suggest that in the job market unqualified males are displacing qualified females as is confirmed by the fact that females account for the greater share of the unemployed labour force. Data from this same source show that, in spite of their higher levels of education and qualification, almost one half (45.8 per cent) of all employed women were concentrated in the lowest paying sectors of the market in “elementary occupations” (22.0 per cent) and in the “Service Workers and Shop and Market Sales Workers” (23.8 per cent) which attract, for the most part, the minimum wage legislated by government. Comparative figures for men were 13.4 per cent and 11.2 per cent, respectively, which account for just about onequarter of all employed males. The Jamaica Employers Federation survey of salaries for 2000 shows that even those women who are fortunate enough to be employed are often at a disadvantage in terms of remuneration.14 The findings reveal that, although females were in a number of instances more qualified than their male counterparts, this was not always proportionately reflected in pay packages. The UNDP Report on Women’s Political Participation points to the fact that economic participation and political participation cannot be separated and that if an enabling environment is to be created to facilitate women’s political participation, then a better understanding of the barriers in labour markets and remuneration processes is a necessary precondition for women’s economic and political empowerment.15 Karam (2000) is therefore of the opinion that poverty is a major impediment to women’s political participation because the daily struggle for survival precludes time for women’s engagement in political activity.16 He posits that a number of women who might otherwise have embarked on political careers are discouraged by the lack of funds, not only for financing electoral campaigns but also to allow them to have access to resources that will allow them to participate and understand initiatives that are essential to political participation. In Jamaica, the Women’s Political Caucus has attempted to address this concern and, among other things, assists with financing for female political candidates and networking to promote their participation in decision-making at the political level. Karam (2000), however, cautions that a real danger of initiatives such as this is that women may end up confined to token funds and possibly cut off from access to other more substantial resources.17

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Lack of personal autonomy Participation in the labour market is not the only area in which women are at a disadvantage. Traditional expectations define their personal priorities in terms of their domestic or reproductive role primarily, whereas this is not so for men. Moser (1989) developed a framework within which to analyse the roles of women and this identifies women’s triple roles: reproductive, productive and community based.18 In this regard Van der Aa (1995) notes that: while Caribbean women are strongly involved in kin and neighbourhood groups they are manifestly under-represented or unrepresented at the higher decision-making levels of political parties, cabinets, legislatures, local government bodies etc. (p.39) For many women, their reproductive roles demand their presence in the home and, although their productive and community based activities may not be home based, they still have primary responsibility for the reproductive work of the family – household duties as well the care of children, the elderly and the sick. These demands leave little time for more than occasional involvement in the immediate community, often in church activities. Women’s commitment to home and family is often, however, incompatible with the demands of a political career and the kind of work beyond the community required for the development of political support and influence. The same constraints do not apply to men. Women also lack physical autonomy. Violence against women continues to be a major problem for Jamaican women of all social classes. This violence includes the rape and murder possible on the public streets, but is particularly problematic when it occurs within the private sphere of a woman’s life. Sexuality is intricately bound up with male-female power relationships, and women very often lack the power to confront and disagree with the demands of their spouses. When they do, they often pay the price in violent exchanges. The increase in domestic violence has been attributed in part to the economic crisis, which generates frustration, stress-related behaviours and illnesses and provides the method by which men “keep their women in line” and reinforce their position as head of household. Women whose self-esteem and self-worth are shattered by repeated instances of domestic violence do not posses the level of confidence and personal autonomy required to assume leadership and decision-making for a wider group. The problem in Jamaica is so grave that a number of international agencies and women’s organisations have joined forces to mount a media campaign and public education programme to counter violence against women. This in and of itself highlights the magnitude of the problem and the pride of place given to the eradication or reduction of this problem by all these groups.

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Lack of political autonomy Van der Aa (1995) posits that over time, political action has produced and perpetuated, fed and been fed by a form of social organisation in which the sexual division of labour (SDOL) creates norms, identities and institutions that stereotype and discriminate against women.19 This SDOL defines what is feminine and what is masculine thus reinforcing traditional stereotypes where women’s leadership capabilities and skills are undervalued, where they lack sociocultural autonomy and where males are therefore regarded as possessing the attributes required for political participation and leadership and so largely monopolise decision-making positions and processes. Complex power structures, which reflect gender, race and social class inequities, have evolved over time in all societies including those of the Caribbean. These inequities are evident in the leadership of the state, the legal system and ownership of the means of production. Over the past 40 years, there have been challenges to such power hierarchies and the challenge of the feminist movement has created an awareness of the need for change in gender inequity. Although some change is evident, these add up to mere token modifications and concessions while the power structures have remained highly resistant to the demand for transformation. Resistance to transformation has been attributed, in large part, to the reluctance of the “power groups” to surrender this power. Power has traditionally been viewed as a quality which resides in persons or groups and used to “control” other persons or groups. Schaef (1981) considers this to be a masculine perspective of power, conceptualised as a scarcity model based on domination and control of others.20 Power as domination and control is usually exercised in hierarchical structures which are typical of traditional models of leadership. Caribbean governance systems are hierarchical in nature. Leadership in the hierarchy is strongly associated with “position power”, that is the degree of power, control and influence that an individual’s position in the hierarchy confers. The leader is an authority figure at the pinnacle of a pyramid of power where all communication, control, responsibility and resources flow from top downward. Often, also, there is reluctance on the part of women to assume power, to exercise political autonomy, mainly because of their self-doubt and nonrecognition and acceptance of their own leadership capabilities. Fear of failure, a willingness to exert power invisibly, unwillingness to accept ultimate responsibility, may all play a part in the reluctance of some women to seek and assume leadership roles. Also, whatever power bases women are able to acquire tend to be exercised at the meso-level and are built from the bottom-up, through community involvement rather than position power, and through webs or networks of influence developed through team interaction rather than through

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hierarchies of command and control. Many women feel that the political autonomy they experience at this level is threatened when they become part of a traditional hierarchical structure associated with the macro-level with which they have very little empathy or experience.

Stra tegies fo r pr omotin g gend er equit y Strategies for pro ting gender equity Women’s under-representation in decision-making and governance has to be dealt with as a multifaceted problem where women’s need for greater economic, political sociocultural and personal autonomy is addressed as interrelated elements of a coherent whole. The proposed mechanisms do recognise this although education and training are seen as the major focus in all strategies for bringing about change.

The potential of education Over the ten year period, 1985 to 1995, some seven United Nations international conferences were held which focused on human rights, social issues and sustainable development and addressed a range of concerns related to gender inequalities and the actions required to redress these situations. A view emanating from many of these deliberations is that “Education is one of the most important means of empowering women with the knowledge, skills and self-confidence necessaryto participate fully in the development process.” (p.17)21 The notion that education can be used as the vehicle for empowering women to be equal partners with men in the economic, political and socio cultural spheres of life as well as in decision-making has been iterated in other documents. In UNIFEMs (United Nations Fund for Women) report on the Progress of the World’s Women the view is expressed that: Education is essential for improving women’s living Standards and enabling women to exercise greater “voice” in decision-making in the family, the community, the place of paid work and the public arena of politics. (p.66)22 This assumption that increased participation and performance in education will result in women’s empowerment and their improved position in society, particularly in relation to greater participation and leadership in matters of governance at all levels and in all sectors, needs to be critically assessed in relation to the Jamaican reality. The numerical dominance of women, compared to men, both in terms of participation and performance at the higher levels of the education system has already been well researched (Bailey 2000a23, 2000b24) and has been used to fuel

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a “male marginalisation” thesis. The fixation on numbers, however, obfuscates more essential issues of quality and equity and the ways in which cultural biases and stereotypes and a sexual division of labour (SDOL), which reinforce women’s subordinate sociocultural position, are reproduced. A major social institution responsible for reproducing accepted sociocultural norms and the SDOL is the school, so that instead of helping to break the cycle of subordination for women, schooling, through both explicit and implicit processes, actually socialises women to internalise beliefs and behaviours that contribute to their lack of economic, political and personal autonomy: fear of success, fear of competing with men, feelings of insecurity about their own capabilities and internalisation of stereotypes about sex-appropriate behaviours. In fact, women’s longer years of schooling very often only serve to ensure that these subjective factors are well assimilated and internalised. Education, instead of being the vehicle for women’s empowerment, as has been suggested, may actually be a major contributor to perpetuating the cycle of women’s subordination. The dialectical relationship between women’s education and their participation in decision-making is reflected in data presented in a paper prepared for the Education For All (EFA) 2000 Monograph Series which suggest that fewer males are gaining certification at the secondary level in the Caribbean Secondary Education Certificate (CSEC) offered by the Caribbean Examination Council (CXC) and at the university.25 This under-participation of males in the educational arena and the smaller numbers gaining certification do not, however, seem to affect their ability to succeed in other areas of life in the wider society: males have an overall lower rate of unemployment and higher representation in decision-making positions and in the governance of public and private sector institutions. Educational participation and achievement, per se, cannot therefore be used as predictors of women’s integration into the social, economic, political spheres. Although women, as a group, represent the best source of human capital available to the country, for the most part, they enjoy less economic, personal and political autonomy than men and, therefore, the majority continues to be subordinate to men in all speheres of life.26 In a case study conducted by Leo-Rhynie (1999)27 examining student government on the UWI Mona Campus, the results demonstrate:

• •

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Retention, by young men, of traditional concepts of patriarchy, power and dominance, and the use of psychological warfare to ensure the maintenance of a male dominated power system of student leadership. Acceptance, by young women, of traditional concepts of patriarchy and dominance, and a lack of motivation to effect change.

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The data also indicated how difficult it is to change the culture of leadership. Socialist feminist and radical feminist perspectives, which promote social transformation and a significant shift in the power relationships between men and women, see educational institutions such as the school and the university as reproducing the status quo, as reinforcing inequity, rather than of effecting transformation. Education, in the Jamaican context, has not proven to be the vehicle for improving the distribution of power between the sexes; and men, in spite of their overall lower levels of educational attainment, continue to dominate in all areas of governance including representational politics and decision-making positions and processes. The NATURE of the educational process, and the values being conveyed need to be re-examined in terms of their perpetuation of traditional gender roles in society and obstacles to power sharing and women’s increased participation in decision-making and governance within the education sector also need to be addressed.

Change in leadership style Generally, the “male world” is perceived as one which is characterised by power, competition and manipulation, while the “female world” is seen as a kinder, more relational, more constructive one. Gilligan 1982, an early feminist writer, points out that men view the world in terms of an hierarchy of power, while women see it as a web of relationships.28 These perceptions have serious implications for leadership and for “comfort levels” with different leadership styles. For women it is more important to maintain that network of relationships than to be “separate” and “on top”. Winning, of primary importance to male leaders, is of secondary importance in a woman’s world, if the consequences are personal isolation. The language and focus of leadership have changed over the past decades. The change from a strongly hierarchical model to “participative” leadership has been spearheaded by concepts such as “transformative” leadership (Burns, 1978),29 and “empowering” followers (Bennis and Nanus, 1985),30 which emphasise the relationship aspect of the act of leadership. Strong interpersonal skills are now seen as being central to effective leadership (Batten, 1989).31 Feminist writers such as Smith, 1997,32 Cockburn, 199133 Rosener, 1990,34 Hartsock, 197935 have equated the old hierarchical leadership model of domination and control with patriarchy and masculinity, and have identified the new paradigm as a feminine leadership model. These writers attribute to feminists the questioning and dismantling of the patriarchal world with its emphasis on male oriented values of rationality, competition and independence, and with bringing to the fore the realisation of the validity and worth of the values of the female. The bases on which the new paradigm of leadership has

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been developed are considered to validate women’s ways of knowing, of living and of leadership. In “engendering” governance, what is needed is the visible acceptance and portrayal of androgynous leadership – combining the best of “masculine” and “feminine” styles.

Special initiatives A number of special initiatives have been undertaken to try and address the problem of a lack of female participation in governance. Local level income generating projects, gender awareness training, attempts at mainstreaming gender in policy and planning have all had the objective of “empowering” women and increasing their confidence and sense of autonomy. In March 1992, a non-partisan initiative by women concerned with the lack of women in representational politics resulted in the formation of the Jamaica Women’s Political Caucus. This group has been a stimulus and catalyst for increasing the involvement of women in the political process and in its leadership, and they have done this through workshops, seminars, fundraising drives and other forms of support for interested women. These activities have encouraged women: • • •

To build a power base – from the bottom up To recognise the voting power of women, and to tap into this. To recognise the special qualities they possess as women candidates and to maximize these with ethics and integrity

This initiative directly supports a strategic objective coming out of the 4th WCW which calls on women’s organisations and non-governmental organisations to “take measures to ensure women’s equal access to and full participation in power structures and decision-making” by “building and strengthening solidarity among women through information, education and sensitization activities.” In the CARICOM post-Beijing Regional Plan of Action it is also suggested that agencies should: Create a system of mentoring for inexperienced women, and in particular, offer training, including training in leadership and decision-making, public speaking and self assertion, as well as political campaigning. (p.54)36 Special initiatives like these assist in giving to women contemplating participation in the political process the confidence and support they very often need to venture into this “male” environment. In recognition of the fact that gender inequality is structural and that national development could not be effectively achieved without the full and equal

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participation of women in public and private decision-making and equal access to all aspects of social and economic activity, the same CARICOM Regional Plan of Action also identified gender mainstreaming in institutions, policy and public debate as a strategy for promoting gender equality and social justice in the region.37 In 1999, this concept was operationalised when the Commonwealth Secretariat recognising the importance of engendering governance at different levels, promoted an initiative termed the Gender Management System (GMS), which has been defined as: . . .an integrated network of structures, mechanisms, and processes designed to make government more gender aware, increase the numbers of women in decision-making roles within and outside government, facilitate the formulation of gender-sensitive policies, plans and programmes, and promote the advancement of gender equality and equity in the broader civil society. (p. 24)38 An essential requirement for the effective functioning of this system is an enabling environment, including:

• • •

Political will and commitment to gender equality at the highest levels A legislative and constitutional framework that is conducive to advancing gender equality A critical mass of women in decision-making roles.

The system involves a cycle of:

• • • • •

Gender analysis of existing structures – from both “results” and “political will” perspectives; Policy development and appraisal carried out with full knowledge and consideration of the results of the gender analysis; Action plans which are gender-aware and focused on promoting equity; Implementation of the plans; Monitoring and evaluation.

Highlighted as important components of the GMS are the :

• •

Importance of gender awareness training in this process Involvement of all key stakeholders (“top down” or “bottom up”)

The elements constituting the “enabling environment” have been examined critically by feminists who are skeptical that there will ever be, as the GMS advocates, “political will and commitment to gender equality at the highest

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levels”. They are not convinced, even with “a legislative and constitutional framework conducive to advancing gender equality” that men are prepared to accept the legitimate claims which women have access to, and occupancy of leadership positions. The tradition of male power and patriarchy are deeply entrenched, and there is strong resistance to any attempt to bring about change. Cockburn (1991) explains that Male power is not occasional, incidental or accidental. It is systemic . . . it is adaptive, with a tendency to self reproduction. To interrupt that reproductive process calls for active and conscious contradiction. (p.220, author’s emphasis).39 Men will resist any attempt at interruption; they fear that with women occupying leadership positions, the status quo will be transformed, women will compete with them for status, money and power, and they are not yet prepared for this. The presence of a critical mass of women in decision-making roles as part of enabling environment has also been questioned: it satisfies the liberal feminist requirement for more women to have access and positions, but there is the criticism that more women does not necessarily translate into greater gender equity, as male power is reproduced rather than effectively confronted and contradicted. The charge has been that women who become part of the power structure become co-opted into the patriarchal system so that they are powerless to bring about change, they become pawns of men and of the system, manipulated to serve patriarchy and to perpetuate it. As Cockburn (1991) explains, actions taken often “make women surrogate men in a world that is still a man’s world” (p. 25)40 Such are the limitations of a liberal feminist theoretical perspective, which emphasises the provision of equal access for women and the development of legal frameworks to ensure both equity of access and equal opportunity. Access alone is insufficient to overcome the strength of the patriarchal system of male dominance which has developed over the years. Socialist feminist and radical feminist perspectives advocate social change and a transformation of the power relationships between men and women. The development of methods to bring about this transformation are vital components of the feminist agenda. What strategies can effectively “interrupt the reproductive process” of male power? The GMS which fits most closely a liberal feminist solution will educate and may gradually change attitudes by establishing legal and constitutional boundaries, yet it may not necessarily change the beliefs held and the practices adopted and reproduced through the process of socialisation in institutions such as the home, church, and school. The transformation needed is one which targets traditional and strongly entrenched attitudes, values and behaviours. Bringing about the transformation which the radical and socialist feminist

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solution demands, and which the new transformational leadership paradigm advocates, will not be easy. Women’s movement towards visibility, recognition, parity and power is accepted in certain areas which satisfy the feminine stereotype, such as nursing, but in other traditionally male areas, women’s bid for leadership is frequently criticised by other women as being “unfeminine”, and confronting men, particularly for political leadership, is often perceived as disloyalty and going beyond acceptable boundary lines. Generations of women and men have been so socialised into the traditional ways of leadership that, despite the activism of the feminist movement, hold that the role of leader is still automatically perceived in masculine, hierarchical terms. The teaching profession is an interesting case as, although the membership of this group is predominantly female, leadership is still disproportionately male. In an effort to break the cycle of male domination of leadership, particularly at the macro-level, the UNIFEM Caribbean Office in collaboration with the Centre for Gender and Development Studies, UWI has embarked on a project to transform leadership, which is seen as a critical vehicle in the development process. The goal is to: transform and engender governance and leadership in the Caribbean in such a way as to ensure the participation of women as agents of change towards a more equitable and gender-sensitive society. (p.3)41

Conclusion Feminists recognise the multidimensional nature of power and do not see all its dimensions in a negative light; rather they see power as a valuable resource or capacity for achieving goals such as equity and non-discrimination. They define power in terms of “Energy and strength rather than domination and control. . .a source of synergy – something to be taught and shared”.42 Women and concerned men need to harness the “energy and strength” of this power, and use it to build effective alliances, and devise creative strategies to bring about significant change. The target must be the qualitative indicators of “political will” so that public policy can be addressed and strategies as well as resources identified to achieve progress towards gender equity in the socio cultural, economic and personal spheres. Power sharing and cooperation as equal partners in decision-making at micro, meso and macro-levels was identified by the CARICOM Secretariat in 1997 as essential elements in the transformation of social relations needed to ensure gender equality, which was conceptualised within the broader context of social justice.43 It is this transformation which will ultimately lead to parity between the sexes in matters of governance, particularly in the arena of macro level political representation.

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NOTES 1

United Nations Development Programme. Women’s Political Participation and Good Governance: 21st Century Challenges. 2000

2

Omar Davies, Reported in the Financial Gleaner, 28 June 2002. Definition taken from Governance Matters - Part II by Daniel Kaufmann, Aart Kraay and Pablo Labaton.

3

Economic Commission on Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC).Participation and Leadership in Latin America and the Caribbean: Gender Indicators. Santiago, Chile. 1999.

4

A. Mondesire, & L. Dunn, Towards Equity in Development: A Report on the Status of Women in Sixteen Commonwealth Caribbean Countries. Caribbean Community (CARICOM) Secretariat. Georgetown, Guyana, 1995.

5

Seventh Conference of Ministers of Education of Latin America and the Caribbean. Education for Development and Peace: Valuing Diversity and Increasing Opportunities for Personalised and Group Learning: An Overview of Education in the Caribbean. UNESCO. Annex to Ed96?MINEDLAC Vll/3, 1996.

7

ECLAC. op.cit. 1999

8

ECLAC. op.cit. 1999

9

United Nations Development Programme. op.cit. 2000.

10 L. Hamadeh-Banerjee, & P. Oquist “Overview: Women’s political participation and good Governance: 21st Century Challenges.” In Women’s Political Participation and Good Governance: 21st Century Challenges, UNDP 2000. 12 Pauline Van der Aa, op.cit. 1995. 13 The Statistical Institute of Jamaica. The Labour Force 2000. (Kingston, Jamaica, 2001). 14 Sunday Herald. “Women salaries and positions lower.” Sunday Herald Business Correspondent. October 1, 2000. P.2B. 15 United Nations Development Programme. Women’s Political Participation and Good Governance: 21st Century Challenges. 2000. 16 Azza Karam, “Beijing +5: Women’s Political Participation: Review of Strategies and Trends.” In Women’s Political Participation and Good Governance: 21st Century Challenges. UNDP 2000. 17 Azza Karam. op.cit. 2000. 18 Caroline Moser “Gender Planning in the Third World: meeting practical and strategic gender needs.” World Development 7.2. (1989). 19 Pauline Van der Aa, op cit. 1995. 20 A.W. Schaef Women’s Reality: an emerging female system in a white male society. (Minneapolis, Minnesota: Winston Press, 1981). 21 UNFPA. International Conference on Population and Development Programme of Action. Cairo, Egypt. 1994. 22 UNIFEM Biennial Report. Progress of the World’s Women 2000. New York. United Nations Development Fund for Women, 2000. 23 Barbara Bailey, “Gender myths and gender realities: education and women’s social

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advancement in Jamaica.” In The Construction of Gender Development Indicators for Jamaica, edited by P. Mohammed. (Kingston Jamaica: PIOJ/CIDA/UNDP, 2002). 24. Barbara Bailey. “EFA in the Caribbean: Assessment 2000.” In Issues of Gender & Education in Jamaica: What about the Boys? edited by Lynda Quamina-Aiyejina (Kingston: UNESCO, 2000). 25. Barbara Bailey. “ EFA in the Caribbean: Assessment 2000.” 26. Pauline, Van der Aa. Changing Power and Autonomy of the Caribbean Women. Santiago, Chile. Women and Development Unit. Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean, 1995. 27. Elsa Leo-Rhynie. Gender and power in contemporary society: a case study of student government. Paper presented at a Regional Conference on Gender and Development, UWI Cave Hill Barbados, 1999. 28. Carol Gilligan. In a Different Voice (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1982). 29. J.M. Burns. Leadership (New York: Harper and Row, 1978) 30. W.G. Bennis, and B. Nanus. Leaders: the strategies for taking charge (New York: Harper and Row, 1985). 31. Joe D Batten. Tough Minded Leadership (New York: AMACON, 1989). 32. Dayle M Smith . “Women and Leadership.” In Leadership: Theory and Practice, edited by Peter G. Northouse. (Thousand Oaks, California: Sage Publications, 1997). 33. Cynthia Cockburn. In the Way of Women: Men’s Resistance to Sex Equality in Organisations. (McMillan Education: London, 1991). 34. J.B. Rosener. “Ways women lead.” Harvard Business Review, (November/December 1990): 119 –125. 35. Nancy C.M. Hartsock, “Feminism, power and change: a theoretical analysis.” In Women Organising: An Anthology, edited by B. Cummings and V. Schuck (Metuchen, New Jersey: Scarecrow, 1979) 36. CARICOM Secretariat. 1997 Gender Equality, Social Justice and Development: The CARICOM Post-Beijing Regional Plan of Action to the Year 2000. 37. Gender Equality, Social Justice and Development. op.cit p.43 38. Elsa Leo-Rhynie and the Institute of Development and Labour Law, University of Capetown. Gender mainstreaming in Education: A reference manual for governments and other stakeholders. Gender Management System Series. Commonwealth Secretariat, UK, 1999. 39. Cockburn, op. cit., 1991 40. Cockburn, op. cit., 1991 41. UNIFEM Caribbean Office. Transformational Leadership Project: project proposal summary, 1999. 42. Smith, op.cit., 210 43. CARICOM Secretariat. Towards regional policy on gender equality and social justice. Mimeo, 1997.

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PART 4 GOVERNANCE SYSTEMS AND STRUCTURES

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assume governance to mean all the ways in which the governors and governed relate to one another; this assumption requires me to identify the principal institutions, where the two groups now interact, and there inferentially, I shall find governance, good or bad, and be able to assess the extent to which, in its current state, governance is a historical legacy. The word legacy is used here as metaphor. We are not discussing real estate. But the metaphor is useful if it makes us ask what was bequeathed, and who devised it. If it was not real estate that was devised, what was it? It was behaviour and the assumptions which induce that behaviour. It was beliefs about the proper functioning of political institutions. It was also the institutions themselves where that behaviour was manifest. My answer is derived from the meaning I have given to governance. If it is the relation between governors and governed then our task is to search in the mindset of the rulers and of the ruled in times past for evidence of the ways they worked institutions of government and governance back then. The topic requires us to relate behaviours in the present to behaviours in the past. If the behaviours manifested in the present have their origins in and are sustained by, assumptions from the past about the proper relationship between governors and the governed, then it would be reasonable to say that the behaviours have been bequeathed, call them a legacy and name the donor. However, the claim that certain behaviours in the present are a legacy from the past can be unfounded. Some behaviours might appear to have roots in the past when they are responses to recent or contemporary circumstances. In my search for legacies I have tried to distinguish present behaviours which are better explained by examining immediate circumstances, from present behaviours which are best understood by reference to the past. Institutions and mindsets first have to be identified before anything useful can be said about their connections with the past. This attempt to trace the historical legacy of governance is only possible because of the abundance of

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writing on contemporary Caribbean political institutions, on the way they work and on the behaviours of governors and governed. I wish, therefore, to acknowledge my debt to the scholars of politics, law, public administration and history, prominently among them Selwyn Ryan, Neville Duncan, Pat Emmanuel, Ralph Carnegie, Margaret Demerrun, Rex Nettleford, Gladstone Mills, Edwin Jones, Carl Stone, Trevor Munroe, Louis Lindsay, Anthony Payne and Paul Sutton. I said at the beginning that legacy used as metaphor prompted me to identify a donor and to consider the nature of the gift. However, if what we have been given is to be found in institutions and mindsets, our search for a legacy will also require us to use notions derived from history and psychology as we engage in what might be a case of transmission of culture. Some elements of the legacy, perhaps the most important, have been represented in the material culture by words printed on paper and inscribed on buildings prominently sited in capital cities. The words have been entitled Acts of Parliament, Orders in Council, Constitutions, Laws, Law Reports; the buildings named, House of Representatives, Supreme Court. What has been printed has generally had the intended effect of regulating behaviour. The pre-eminence of printed words of that sort and the prominent structures from which they have emanated have tended to make us abridge discussions of the historical legacy of governance to the Westminster. Westminster model, we say then approve or disapprove the legacy. Of course, scholars writing with precision, refer to the Westminster-Whitehall Export Model and discuss the ways in which that exported constitution has since been adapted. The Caribbean territories were not the only recipients of the constitution exported, but whereas elsewhere it was soon wholly rejected or eviscerated, here, Guyana and Grenada excepted, the changes have been modest enough to merit the description adapted. Why was the fate of the Westminster-Whitehall Export Model different in the Caribbean? In part, it is because the process of adoption and adaptation of government and governance by people with counterbalancing institutions, together with assumptions about law as an instrument for licensing as well as limiting the exercise of power, was co-terminous with the capture, migration, occupation and settlement of the islands by the English and continues to our own day. In this section of the paper, I offer a brief historical review of the origins of legislative institutions and the mindsets underlying the working of these institutions to support my explanation. For all of the 18th and most of the 19th centuries, the political institutions of the English settlers were governor, council and assembly. The exceptions after 1815 are well known. Given the englishness of the settlers and the apparently exact mapping of governor, council and assembly on crown, lords

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and commons, it is plausible to believe that the settlers had, in the 17th century, simply copied in Antigua, Barbados, Jamaica and St Kitts what they knew from England. But the institutions were, in the first instance, the consequence of local conflicts of interest between the syndicate of proprietors and its governor on the one hand, and the freehold settlers on the other, over a tax. Out of that conflict came the Council as a political institution, the freeholders jointly making law with the governor. In the second instance, the conflict of interest which led to the House of Assembly was between the ex-indentured servants and the syndicate over land due them by contract at the end of their indenture. In both cases, the settlers behaved politically, and with some violence, as a way of resolving conflicts. What happened in the second half of the 17th century was a successful attempt to set limits to autocracy, to put checks on governors who legitimately exercised power in their sole discretion. In the 17th century there was an institutional connection with England. It was, after all, the crown, by letters patent, which had given Thomas Warner legitimacy, the power and authority to govern in his sole discretion. So the freeholders first petitioned the crown to limit the governor’s discretion to act without consulting them. What counted, however, was not the petitioning, but their determination to limit the governor’s sole discretion. At first, they had asked merely to be consulted. When that role did not achieve their aim of limiting the discretion, the freeholders claimed the status of lawmakers. When, in the opinion of the servants who survived indenture, their interests were not advanced by the joint legislature of governor and council, they strove successfully to join them in making law. These are not institutions exported, but creole creations, called into existence to meet local circumstances. In form, superficially resembling the institutions of England, but in substance, radical adaptations. It has been suggested that the rejection of the export model in Africa at the first opportunity was in great part due to the desire to found the postcolonial state on an autochthonous constitution. Be that as it may, the 17th century form of government is the closest that Caribbean societies have come to a government initially of our soil. The reservation implied in “closest” is obviously necessary, firstly, because council and assembly were not grafted on forms of authority and power created by Caribs. Secondly, because the first institutions and the assumptions which sustained them were consequently derived from the prerogative powers given by the English crown to the earliest governors in their Commissions and Instructions. Those powers were necessary to found a colony. But as soon as the settlers had transformed themselves into colonists, they sought to restrain the prerogative by giving legislative authority to the institutions which, of necessity,

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had had their origins in the prerogative: notably, the courts, the militia, the appointment of officials, the tables of fees for public services, the levying of taxes, the control of expenditure, most importantly, the control over the organisation and proceedings of the Assembly. When sugar made the Caribbean colonies into valuable real estate, the Crown, Privy Councillors and Parliament combined (Whitehall-Westminster) to assert the royal prerogative over both planter-governors and the Councils and Assemblies of Barbados and Jamaica, where the assertion of the pre-eminence of local legislation as the source of legitimacy had been most extensive. The contest of the last quarter of the 17th century, most intense between 1676–1680, was between Englishmen on different sides of the Atlantic who belonged to one polity and whose goal was national self sufficiency. The issue was control. The laws of parliament on trade, war and peace had to be obeyed. That institution determined what was in the interest of the whole. The Navigation Acts had to be obeyed. The colonist lost on that front. For Charles II and James II, political assemblies were “of grace”, not of right. In other words, Westminster-Whitehall had not been exported. So the Lords of the Privy Council Committee of Trade asserted the power of the Crown to make the laws for the colonies and to control revenue and expenditure. The colonists replied that the Crown needed their consent for taxation, a right which belonged to all Englishmen. The intensity of the conflict waned towards the end of the 17th century, not because the Lords of the Committee of Trade conceded the counter-claim, but because their project was impracticable. Even with the help of vigorous governors like the Earl of Carlisle, the Lords could not get a permanent revenue act nor effectively review and control the laws being passed by the assemblies. The politics of the 18th century was marked by the persistent and successful attempts of the assemblies to frustrate the exercise of power by the councils and governors. The behaviour of the assemblies was not modelled on the House of Commons. It was improvised to wrest control of the power to tax from the councils and control of the administration of the revenue from the governors. It was calculated on making ineffective the role of the governors as superintendents on behalf of the Crown, the Lords of the Privy Council and Parliament. It was behaviour to ensure local self-government and governance within a system mutually beneficial to Englishmen on both sides of the Atlantic, in which ultimate jurisdiction over the whole lay in Westminster-Whitehall. Central to self-government, was the right to order the lives of the enslaved. But to a degree, in practice, legislatures delegated governance of the enslaved to the managers of estates. It has been asserted that the style of management in public institutions, private corporations and family households today, are the legacy of the style of governance on estates during slavery. I can only notice the claim in passing because to test it by evidence of historical continuity would require more space than is available to me.

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Our present legislatures and their members are legatees of the 17th century, both institutionally and in mindset. Their representative character, their claim to prior consent to taxation, their claim to constrain the exercise of power by the executive all have their origins in the 17th century and all persisted into the 18th; they all survived the period of crown colony, government attenuated in form but strong enough in the memory of the political elite, to have provided the ideology for their campaigns at the end of the 19th century and in the 20th century to restore representation and to end the autocratic rule of the crown colony governors. I have, thus far, discussed the historical antecedents of our present legislatures, claimed for them a persistence of institutional form and mindset from the 17th century. Since the claim of persistence implies a claim of historical continuity, I now discuss why the period of crown colony government was not such a break with the past that, in form and ethos, our present legislatures have to be attributed to contemporary events. Moreover, I have so far referred to Crown and Parliament only to the extent that they impinged upon the autonomy of the assemblies. I now discuss the legacy of crown colony government to governance, and government in the present day, and thus the role of crown and parliament in the political system of the West Indies in the latter part of the 19th century and the first half of the 20th. In the course of this discussion, the nature and extent of the continuity between the political systems of the 17th and 18th centuries and those of the 19th and 20th centuries can be inferred. The constitutions of crown colony governments had their origins in the Crown, not in Parliament. Their instruments were Orders-in Council. Their basis for governance was in the Commissions and Instructions given to crown colony governors. The Orders-in-Council and the Commissions established in law absolutist governments rooted in the royal prerogative, but the Instructions qualified the governors’ absolutism and in practice made them autocrats. Their legislation could not be defeated by the votes of nominated members, but in debate and in the press, by private letters to English civil servants and members of parliament, the members of the legislature could at least embarrass the governors, sometimes even jeopardise their careers. In form, it was a return to the political and constitutional principles appropriate to colonising islands populated by heathens, or to governing lands and peoples wrested from foreigners by conquest. Apparently, the prerogative had at last triumphed over the recalcitrant legislatures whose resistance had fashioned the compromises of West Indian politics of the 17th and 18th centuries. In reality, autocracy was bridled by new assumptions about the relations between Britain and the West Indies after emancipation. Their origins lay not in changes in colonial relations but in reflection and debate in Britain about the principles which should govern action in religion, commerce and politics. In

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turn, these assumptions influenced the behaviours of those who made policy and managed affairs on both sides of the Atlantic. In religion, the change from quietism to evangelisation presaged the missions in the islands and the anti-slavery campaigns in Britain. After emancipation, the churches, on their own initiative, through their missionaries in the islands and their societies in Britain, protected and promoted the interests of the emancipated. Co-opted by the colonial office as its agents, the missionaries administered the British grant for the education of the emancipated. Both as initiators and agents, they were critical observers of the work of assemblies and governors, able to influence policies of the British government through the effective parliamentary lobby of their societies in Britain. Government and governance were affected by the activities of the churches throughout the 19th and 20th centuries in ways West Indian societies have inherited. Their educational and social activities transmitted elements of British culture which influenced the mindset and lifestyle of their congregations. Their political activity in the islands was a factor in extending the size of the political class beyond the enfranchised. Their ability to use their links with the societies in England helped to make the frequent intrusion of Westminster-Whitehall into West Indian politics and administration legitimate and acceptable. Thus was reinforced a mindset of the emancipated of the benign role of crown as their liberator and protector dating from before Crown colony government, dating from the campaigns for amelioration and abolition. Thus also was reinforced a mindset of the propertied dating from the Acts of Trade and European rivalry, that Crown and Parliament were the guarantors of their lives and estates, absolving them from the consequences of their not reforming politics and administration to ensure self-government of a free society. Ennui and irresponsibility fostered the mindsets which facilitated the surrender of representative institutions. In commerce, the change of governing principles from mercantilism to free trade concluded what the abolition of slavery had begun, the end of the relationship between Englishmen on both sides of the Atlantic, founded on the belief of national interest and mutual benefit. The effects of the removal of the sugar duties were both economic and psychological. Property was damaged, but would eventually recover. The self-confidence of the legislators crumpled and did not begin to recover until the end of the 19th century, but then only in part because the effective segment of the propertied and professional class was still reluctant to assume full responsibility for governing the whole society. It is reasonable to search some aspects of contemporary political behaviour for evidence of the persistence of the absence of self-confidence. The consequences for the nature of government and governance we have inherited, I next summarise. First in Jamaica, and later in the Eastern Caribbean, the Crown by negotiation

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and local laws established Executive Committees from members of the councils and assemblies. The Committees were meant to fill the institutional void between governors and legislatures. In theory, governors were representatives of the Crown, agents of Whitehall-Westminster and the executive head of the local government. In their conflict with the Lords of the Privy Council, the assemblies had reduced the effectiveness of the governors to be agents by frustrating their ability to be heads of local government. The Committees were meant to provide for ordered government by giving them, in association with governors, the sole power to table the budget of revenue and expenditure and to administer the decisions of the legislatures. The possibilities of what was given were grossly misjudged. They were nothing less than responsible government. What was on offer in the middle of the 19th century was next put on the table in the mid-20th. In Canada, similar arrangements about the same time, moved by degrees of self-assertion, distinguishing Canadian from British interests, towards Dominion status. In the Caribbean, legislators wanted an unambiguous answer to what was still evolving in Britain. Were members of the Committee responsible to the governor or the legislature? Unable to rise above faction, the members played musical chairs short of tenure, governed ineffectually until the royal prerogative was used to make politics redundant to temper the ill effects of free-trade on property, and to create in the West Indies the appurtenances of the modern state. The changes in the management of politics reflected elements of the assumptions derived from theologians, moralists and economists which entwined Christian doctrine and ethical behaviour; responsibility for less fortunate human brothers with the political idea and practice of trusteeship; ideas of rational and efficient administration with the reform of institutions and parsimony in public expenditure. Work was extolled. The emancipated were assured that the divine guaranteed the benefits, moral and material, of hard work. Idleness thwarted progress towards civilisation. Since public services were to be paid for from local revenue, estate agriculture (which provided, the source of wages, the wherewithal for the consumption of imported goods, the duties which sustained the revenue) had to be fostered. Firstly, the changes in the institutions and mindsets: the Lords Committee of the Privy Council, the instrument of mercantilism, had passed away. In its place the Colonial Office emerged, staffed by men imbued with ideas of efficiency who assumed a limited responsibility for the interests of the emancipated while respecting the rights and interests of the propertied. Their attempts to maintain a balance between these conflicting interests influenced the roles of the Crown, Parliament (Westminster), the Secretaries of State and the civil servants (Whitehall) and the public (West India Committee and religious societies) in government and governance in the 19th and 20th centuries. Property was to have a voice in the legislative chamber; its representatives at first nominated by

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the Crown, later elected by their peers. The Crown was proxy for the excluded majority. But since the Crown was made flesh in whomever in Whitehall, for the time being, was secretary of state, under-secretary, clerk in the colonial office and governor in the island, the balance tipped in favour of property. The Crown and its proxies assumed the majority to be not ready to identify, promote and defend their own interests by the use of the franchise. In place of electoral politics, the Crown named itself sole defender. On both sides of the Atlantic the institutions and human agents, the first by their designs, the second by their circumstances, could not be effective voices for the excluded. The Colonial Office was a part of the machinery of the government of Britain, subordinate to the Treasury, and the Foreign Office, aware of its dependence on the army and the navy, lobbied by commercial and religious interests. It was situated on the far side of the Atlantic, a distance which even steamships and telegraphs could only mitigate. Even allowing for the industry and goodwill of the civil servants immediately charged with administering West Indian affairs, decisions lay with politicians, policy was subject to imperial ideology and consort to private interests; the idea of trusteeship, tainted by cultural prejudice, the need for the trustee was seen to be without end. On the assumption that Britain was governed by parliament, the political theory of crown colony government designated it the ultimate protector of all the people against any excessive use of the royal prerogative. In practice, a thimbleful of the members of the Lords and the Commons took any interest in West Indian affairs. But through these members, both Houses were available to lobbies, ideological, humanitarian and commercial, on both sides of the Atlantic, as well as to the elected councillors in the islands, when they opposed policies of the Colonial Office. Since Britain was governed in reality by Whitehall, the Houses were echo chambers where secretaries of state might be embarrassed. The conduct of civil servants on both sides of the Atlantic was therefore calculated to avoid giving members the opportunity to question the behaviour of governors or debate the policies of Secretaries. If the extravagant claims of crown colony government to train people to look after their own interests and in the meantime to do it for them were to be met, the governors had to be the principal instruments. But both by circumstance and character they were not, in general, fit for the task. The societies they were asked to govern in the spirit of the aspirations of the theory of crown colony government were of the early 19th century, with their pyramidic socio-economic structures and their attendant political advantage to property, skin colour and male gender, substantially intact. Those societies limited the innovations even of the few (Grant, Harris, Hennessey, Gordon, Olivier) who tried to match their behaviour to the theory.

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Most governors were career administrators, serving at pleasure, dependent for their next appointment and promotion on the patronage of the civil servants and politicians in Whitehall. The less their policies and conduct offended the local and expatriate merchants and planters, the greater their chances for continued employment. Even so, the greater fault was for a governor to be associated with policies or circumstances which incited the voiceless to riot, required a battleship offshore and marines on land. Pliant autocrat the governor might be, yet an autocrat advised by career colonial service secretaries in Executive Council and influenced by the advocates for the export-import interests in the Legislative Council. It was natural therefore that for the critics of crown colony government, reform was synonymous with removing the governor’s veto, sitting in the executive council, extending the franchise, controlling the legislature. These were the aims of the campaigns in the press, the church halls, the streets in the 1890s, partially, grudgingly conceded by the trustees of the voiceless in the 1920s, until the riots of the 1930s wrote the epitaph of crown colony government. For three decades following, the royal prerogative survived. It lingers still, complementary to the centrifugal tendency of small West Indian populations. So far I have discussed the political institutions of crown colony government and the mindset of those who worked them in support of my claim that our contemporary legislatures, despite the hiatus of the crown colony period, are legatees of the 17th and 18th century form first created and then modified in response to West Indian circumstances. However, the consequences for government and governance in the present day extend beyond the legislature. Attempting to restrain the prerogative was not limited to parliamentary tactics in the 18th century and to rhetoric in the legislative council in the 19th. It was also part of civic consciousness of the political class which was wider than persons encompassed by the franchise. The notions we express today with the words responsible, accountable, transparent, were also those most often used by the critics of government. We have inherited their mindset and expect our rulers to be accountable and transparent. Our expectations of good governance are not limited to styles of ruling, but also to the provisions which governments make for a civilised life. Those expectations are derived not from the slave societies of the 18th century, but from the free societies of the 19th. The institutions of modern government were introduced into the West Indies by the use of the royal prerogative. By its use ideas and institutions were transmitted from Europe, by its use Englishmen were employed to implement them. By its use they were employed longer than they were needed. By its use colour prejudice was reinforced. Above all, by its use the existing courts were reformed and new ones established; existing laws revised; rules and practices of the English Courts adopted; the subordination of

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the opinions of judges to the fiat of legislatures enshrined in West Indian governance. Above all, because the judges, mostly foreigners, were thought to be independent of the executive, the politics and the society, the poor, rural and urban, came to believe that when disputes among themselves or with their powerful neighbours were heard in these courts, they would receive justice. The critics of crown colony administrators in the press and in the streets knew from experience that the relation between judges and administrators was closer than the doctrine of the independence of the judiciary proclaimed but, by risking prosecution, these critics made the public discussion of the conduct of administrators, sometimes in words of libel, part of our heritage. Talk radio, its hosts and callers, are their legatees. So far I have looked at institutions and mindsets from the mid-17th to the mid-20th century in search of the historical legacy of governance. I have claimed the legislatures to be legatees of the 17th century in form and substance seeking to limit autocracy, despite the hiatus of crown colony government. During the period of slavery, governance excluded the majority of the population from its consideration. It is from the period of crown government that governance becomes inclusive and, from that time, we have derived our notion of governance as providing for the welfare of all. It is the duty of government to provide for our needs — a legacy which strains contemporary budgets and has prompted a search for ways of inducing self-reliance. Seventeenth century representative government was a creole creation modified by conflict with the prerogative. Crown colony government was an export, the Royal prerogative modified by a theory of representation. It survived by evolving to fit its new habitat. Over nearly a hundred years its representative features became more prominent, its prerogative characteristics recessive. Neither in form nor in mindset was crown government adopted but, under pressure from its critics on both sides of the Atlantic, it adapted. Its most influential local critics between the world wars were from the professional class, graduates of British and American universities, and from locally trained clergy, teachers, journalists, self-employed craftsmen, or self-educated individuals. All were familiar with a Whiggish version of British history and the conventional accounts of British parliamentary politics. Those educated abroad or who had migrated had met Indians and Africans, read anti-colonial literature, joined socialist or Marxist societies, had a knowledge of British behaviour in Africa and India less benign than the version available to the middle class in the West Indies. On their return home they were impatient for self-government, for crown colony government to be replaced by the institutions and mindset of Dominion status in a federal state which they were confident that they could manage. Whether the local critics and their allies in parliament would have persuaded the culturally prejudiced trustees, sceptical that the West Indies were rich enough

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to sustain self-government, is moot. Moreover, the trustees, ever protective of property, sympathised with the commercial interest, who feared a parliament of blacks and Indians. The riots and the second world war determined the matter. Those in the West Indies who negotiated independence did not see the export model as something foreign which they were adopting exigently. There was no need to radically modify or reject the model as soon as it was expedient. The export model was the final adaptation of what had been modified by political campaigns, the legal constructs necessary to remove the prerogative while reassuring skittish investors and powerful neighbours, the appropriate language and symbols necessary to excite in the hearts of the locals sentiments of unity and confidence in the future. The export model had merely given the final legal form to what was desired by those who had pressed the institution to evolve over decades. That it had evolved towards a parliamentary democracy similar in form to Britain’s and, in spirit, informed by similar assumptions, was its strength and the justification of its advocates. British was best. What was good enough for Britain and the white Dominions was good enough for them. Since there were and still are those not enamoured of the export model, I now discuss the sources of their advocacy for other institutions and mindsets. The sources lie beyond the cliffs of Dover in Europe, Africa, India and America. The debate about the institutions and mindset appropriate to independent West Indian societies began before Independence. The terms of that debate were first derived from the writings and actions of blacks in America and Africa (some of whom were West Indians) at the end of the 19th century. The circumstances in Europe, India, America and Africa after the first World War exposed West Indians at home and abroad, but particularly abroad, to a ferment of political ideas and practice: the Russian revolution, workers unions, American Imperialism, Indian resistance, lynching of negroes, capitalist boom and bust, the world depression, the Italian invasion of Ethiopia, Marx, Lenin, Gandhi, Garvey, Trotsky, Stalin, Hitler, Mussolini, Rastafari. The idea which connected all of these was welfare. The politics of governance in the 20th century was dominated by the notion of welfare. By the third decade of the 20th century there were three competing models of the best way to provide welfare: liberalism democracy, communism and fascism. All the territories in the Caribbean have chosen a variant of one of these ideologies. Political activists in the West Indies were divided on which of two ideologies to adopt, (liberal democracy or communism), whether there was any need to adopt them, and if so, how. It was the circumstances in each territory, the leeway this afforded political activists to act on their mindsets, which determined the ideology chosen and the extent to which it was adapted. I select for our purpose one element of the local circumstances present in many territories, an integral part of our historical heritage, which has combined with ideology to influence our contemporary forms government and governance,

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namely, the ethnicity of the populations of Jamaica, Barbados, Trinidad and Tobago, Guyana. This is true also for territories outside the scope of this paper, Cuba, Dominican Republic, Haiti, Surinam. Ethnic sentiment provided some political activists with the conviction to reject the Westminster-Whitehall export model and the argument that it had, in its essential features and ideology, evolved in the Caribbean in the 19th and 20th centuries, and therefore was our own. I summarise briefly the instance of Jamaica where the argument was made by Marxists and Africanists. Independence, to be effective, required the society to be born anew. So it required a rupture with the past. Not the smoke and mirrors of the export model, but a significant break with the past, seen to be so by the people, an alternative path to the future, not the donation from Westminster, but an autochthonous constitution. At the heart of this argument is the notion of consciousness of ourselves as a nation. The gift from Westminster was wrapped in the mindset of colonialism and imperialism. Those critics who associated these ideologies with whiteness and Europe, offered the African culture of the Jamaican majority as the source of an alternative mindset. The Marxists realised correctly that the export model had incorporated the dominance of foreign and local economic interests of Britain and the United States and therefore the international relations of power existing before independence. Real independence, founded on a people conscious and self-confident, required an open constitutional convention in which the historical legacies of Africa (even of India) would emerge from the floor, reflecting consciousness of other histories and cultures, and which would have produced a gift from the people to themselves. If the process was peaceful, so much the better. But the proponents of the alternative path to independence expected armed violence from the propertied class at home, either alone or in alliance with foreign governments. Such violence would consume the old society, allowing a new man and a new society to emerge. The acceptance of violence as an instrument of radical change might have had its immediate source in Marxism, but armed resistance by the enslaved, rioting by rural and urban workers is part of our historical legacy of governance. Disturbances of varying intensity have occurred in Port-of-Spain, Georgetown and Kingston, stimulated, no doubt, by current circumstances, but aware however dimly of the violent behaviour of our people in the past. Why did the alternative path to an autochthonous constitution not prevail? It has been suggested that it was because both the liberal democrats and the Marxists were Afro-Saxon in mindset, lacking self-confidence, doubting the capacity of the people to devise their own political institutions. Perhaps, but it might be pertinent to consider that the Garvey and Rasta Africanists had not succeeded in providing an early political response able to influence the course of the debate on the form independence should take. Consider also, that the institutional legacy of crown colony government and the structure of protection

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for the export trade in agricultural products facilitated a smooth transition to an independent state. Why risk disrupting the social relations at home and the beneficial economic arrangements abroad? It might be that Afro-Saxon predilections of political activists to believe in the superiority of things English became united with the peoples’ perception of their interests to favour the reception of the export model. In the forty years since independence the institutions of government established by the export model have been adapted in Trinidad and Tobago, Jamaica, Barbados, Bahamas and rejected in Guyana and Grenada. The export model tried to give the force of constitutional law to aspects of governance which, in British politics, were and are the subjects of convention. In crown colony politics, also, they were the subjects of conventions but the behaviours regulated by these conventions took account of the prejudices of the local high society, those on the governor’s invitation list, as well as of imperial interests. After independence, the conventions of West Indian government and governance were naturally modified by the nature of politics, the upbringing and personalities of the ministers and their sense of what conduct was taboo. But ministerial conduct is often criticised on the mistaken belief of what is expected of ministers in Britain in similar circumstances. The resignation of a minister is sometimes called for on that analogy by persons and groups who assume that is what a British gentleman would do. Others expect resignation because they assume that the principle of responsibility applies to the person in charge of a ministry in a system of representative politics. The proper relations between the public and the civil service (Whitehall) have evolved in Britain since the end of the second world war. In the West Indies some ideas have been adopted from Europe by way of Britain, for example, the office of Ombudsman. Others have a source from a common problem, police complaints authorities. Yet others have been made here, office of the public defender in Jamaica. I next notice briefly the fate of two elements of the export model. One is the service commissions, the other is the judiciary’s attitude to the preamble to the constitution. The services commissions were intended to insulate the appointment and tenure of civil servants, teachers and judges from political interference. Critics allege that not only have they failed to do so, but they have also delayed making appointments to such an extent as to have damaged the efficiency of the service. Moreover, the critics say the judicial services commissions have either been bypassed or have compromised the integrity of the judiciary by collusion with politicians in the appointment of judges. The widespread belief that judicial appointments are subject to political influence, whether true or not, was a source of opposition to the creation of the Caribbean Court of Justice. The opposition was only partly appeased by a panel of non-

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political electors, because the choice of the court’s Chief Justice was to be determined by the prime ministers of CARICOM. In Trinidad and Tobago, both political parties have supported legislation which bring the work of the commissions within the purview of the legislature. In Jamaica, some appointments to civil service posts have been delegated to the permanent secretaries of four ministries in order to let them choose the staff which they think will enable them to meet their responsibilities as the accountable officers, but how they work will be audited by the Commission. The change in Jamaica, made in the name of efficiency, can be interpreted as an instance of the export model being modified to improve its working by this and other reforms of the civil service. The change in Trinidad and Tobago, made in the names of accountability to parliament and transparency, might in time have the effect of curing the alleged defects in the judicial services commission. But it seems more likely to defeat the intention of the export model. The services commissions are a constitutional novelty, but the ideas of merit, efficiency, responsibility, which informed their drafting, came from the historical mindset of those who administered modern British and West Indian politics. However, they are ideas about a problem, the proper relation between those elected to make policy and who are responsible to the public for its results, and those employed by the public to implement that policy efficiently. The problem still exists, but the public’s expectations of politics has changed the context, so the ideas about the proper relations have also changed in contemporary British politics. These ideas owe nothing to history, everything to management theory. So in the West Indies, these experiments, statutory boards, executive agencies, are offered to governments by consultants and implemented. It was not thought necessary that all the relations between politicians and civil servants should be safeguarded in the export model because, with the introduction of the ministries, the conventions which were supposed to exist in Britain were expected by the governors and the Colonial Office to apply in the West Indies. In general, these relations in practice hardly ever resembled either the Whitehall ideal or the reality of ‘Yes Minister’. The relations reflected the dominant elements of contemporary West Indian politics, partisan patronage. I intend, in what immediately follows, to generalise my comments on the services commission to all the parts of the export model constitution and politics which seem to various persons to have produced results deleterious to West Indian societies. It is not in the historical legacies that we find the explanation for current behaviour, even when the form certainly has its roots in British and West Indian history. Rather it is in the adaptation of that form to fit the present circumstances of each West Indian territory, or in the evolution of ideas from the past in response to changes in what the public expects to receive from politics.

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These are analogues in West Indian societies to the five elements, crown, cabinet, civil servants, parliament, public, who in Britain are on the field of politics. They have been replicated in various ways in the export model constitutions. But how these elements will combine to determine political behaviour is decided by the relative strengths of the pertinent variables in a particular West Indian society. I have been arguing that the political behaviours of rulers and ruled in the present are best explained by factors other than the historical. Consider for instance, the temptation to explain the behaviour of West Indian prime ministers when thought autocratic, by reference to the crown colony governor. This tends to overlook the reality that the British prime minister since the 19th century has exercised the royal prerogative. The consequences for parliamentary politics crossed the Atlantic with the export model. Of course, how the power conferred is exercised will be affected by traits of personality, styles will vary, but none are “firsts among equals”. The office of prime minister in the West Indies has been made on these shores. I close this section with an institution whose historical antecedents are clear. The judiciary, since independence, with very few exceptions, decided cases in which the constitution had to be interpreted by using English precedents and by applying the common law principles used to interpret statutes in order not to enquire into the acts of the legislature. By subordinating the courts to the legislature and executive, by refusing the invitation of the preamble in the export model constitution to use procedures for judicial review, the judges missed opportunities to protect the rights of citizens. In this institution, conservative behaviour is partly explained by reference to a mindset derived from the history of the law in the West Indies and the training of lawyers in England. But only in part, because at about the same time, judges in the English high courts were finding grounds in law to challenge the decisions of the legislature and executive. The conduct of the West Indian judges might, in part, be explained by how secure they felt in their office, in part by the small size of the population of the islands, by the social closeness of the professional classes. Finally, I wish to extend my comment beyond the West Indies to the whole of the Caribbean. I have limited my discussion of government and governance to the part of our history which dates from the effective occupation of the Caribbean and the lands adjacent, by European dynastic states. The form of government, the style of governance was settled by war and treaty. The historical legacy which has affected contemporary government and governance must also be sought at different times in the relations among European states, in relations among the states in the Caribbean basin and the United States, and latterly between NATO and the Warsaw Pact. It would be surprising if governance is not now affected by the relations among the United States, Canada, the Latin American States and Atlantic Europe. One can only guess the effects on governance in the Caribbean if the doctrines of factions within the present

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United States administration are put into practice after 2004. In the period between the world wars and during the cold war, the ideologies which informed government and governance of the independent Caribbean states reflected the international relations of what has been called the long war of the nation states, 1914–1990. For the period since 1945 , the internal politics of liberal democratic states in the Atlantic basin have been effected by the prevalence of the means for mass communication. The effect has been to impose a degree of constraint on governments which has benefited governance. The adverse effect that the information afforded the public by pictures in the press or on television, or by talk on radio, has had on the policy of governments and the behaviour of politicians has led governments to spin the news in their favour. Since the end of the second world war, nation states have tended, however inadequately, even cynically, to espouse the spirit and methods of conciliation of conflicts, of multilateral collaboration and of constraining power by international law. This period came to an end in 2000 with the current United States administration, whose policies are informed by the spirit expressed in the language of 1899. The belief in American exceptionalism and therefore in the benign nature of American power facilitates, in turn, the belief that American power should be expanded in order to spread American values. The form the nation state might take in the future is not within our capacity to predict. But the history of Caribbean states supports the generalisation that the use of military force is central to state formation; should terrorists and the drug trade persist and combine to frustrate the drive to construct a free trade area of all the Americas, then it is unlikely that the Caribbean states and their governments will continue to exist in their present forms. The spirit that will then inform their governance will be that dominant in the United States.

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Institutional Design for Sub-national Governance

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InStItutIonal DeSIGn for Sub-natIonal GovernanCe EDWIN JONES*

Introduction and Background

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ince the late 1970s, the character and form of public service delivery have extended beyond provision through central government towards subnational or decentralised systems, with a central objective of “empowering communities”. These decentralised systems increasingly focus on socio economic and political development projects, reflecting the fact that central government alone cannot promote developmental change within the framework of the “politics of globalisation”. This decentralisation movement also recognises “good governance” as a major development strategy capable of shaping and improving relationships among state, market and society at the local level and ultimately yielding a pattern of “holistic development”. Nonetheless, some of the problems found within central governments that propelled the idea and practice of decentralisation – e.g. over-centralisation and inefficiency, unaccountability as well as tendencies toward social manipulation and symbolism – have continually resurfaced and in some ways become just as troubling. In the main, these and related problems relate directly to the quality of “systems and structures” within particular contexts. The texture of such problems is augmented particularly in contexts of low trust and where institutions are underdeveloped. Their underdevelopment is reflected in the fact of being under-capacitated, poorly integrated and therefore lacking the dynamic synergies needed to ensure development and good governance. The basic thrust of this discourse is to interrogate some of the concepts and ideas involved in the issues just mentioned, and to identify possible problem solving tools and techniques available for their Caribbean application.

Some Analytical Frameworks and Considerations Notions of empowerment, decentralisation and capacity building as well as ideas about “community” and communitarianism are central building blocks

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that articulate systems of sub-national governance and the institutional arrangements that support such systems. Critical analysis of these building blocks is necessary in order to formulate some new and alternative approaches for the Caribbean region. Governance is the central organising theme in such a programme. A highly contested literature has grown up around the governance concept, partly reflecting the ideological roots of the debate. Nonetheless, over the past decade or so, governance has emerged as a major development strategy to reconstitute relationships among state, market and civil society. Its main, most recent policy agenda embraces slimming of the state, improving efficiency in the delivery of public services and a broadening of public-private working relationships. Concepts and a range of policy and institutional reforms drive the overall agenda. All these imperatives have become standard components of the policy packages, usually “transferred” globally as coercive conditionalities via the network of bilateral and multilateral bureaucracies that constitute the international policy community (Minogue 2002; Common 1998). Within the variety of meanings attributed to governance (often qualified as “good governance”) the dominant themes clearly relate to democracy, comanagement, economic development and the strengthening of all-round managerial competence. A degree of autonomy from the state is a consistent and central principle that has been employed in the application of this concept. In this mix of meanings, governance is viewed as “self organising and interorganisational networks”, consisting of state and non-state actors and rest on relations of exchange and trust rather than on formal institutional roles and boundaries (Rhodes 1997; Minogue 2002). Another perspective (UNDP 1995, 1998: Kooiman 1993) stresses systems of “co-management” and “co-production” in policy affairs of a country among state and non-state partners who are equally represented. This democratic framework is expected to ensure “voice” for the most vulnerable and poorest in the community. Consistent with its “economic” mission, the World Bank (1992) conceptualises governance as “management of a country’s economic and social resources for development”, with policy actors functioning in a predictable and transparent framework of rules and institutions. The British wing of the international development and policy network accepts these mainstream visions of governance, but emphasises technical competence to design and implement appropriate policies and efficiently deliver policy products (ODA 1993; DFID 2000). All these conceptualisations converge in a critique of centralised public administration, with a preference for decentralised or sub-national forms of exchange. Yet, as Minogue (2002) has shown, the governance strategy is often viewed with “pessimism and suspicion”, partly because its application is sometimes associated with coercive politico-economic conditionalities; partly because it engenders “control and surveillance” in support of “international capital”; and partly also because in the field experience of its application it has

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sometimes tended to be “antagonistic to, rather than supportive of democracy”. These perspectives, nonetheless, buttress the idea that institutions are crucial to good governance and that initiatives to strengthen institutions, particularly those of civil society, and at the local level, deserve priority attention. For local level agencies to work efficiently, their diverse management systems must however be underpinned by incentives and adequate capacity to lead them to work in inter-organisational relationships and realise the benefits of decentralised governance. Impulses toward decentralisation represent a major pillar of sub-national governance systems. According to Hulme and Turner (1997), the organisational expressions of sub-national governance may be found in: local governments, local authorities, district councils, provincial governments and state governments. They vary enormously in size both between and within countries (from a few thousand people to tens of millions); they can be single-tier or multiple-tier; and, their responsibilities may range from a large number of important functions to a few minor functions. A “model” of devolved sub-national government with five features has been guiding traditional institutional practice (cf. Hume and Turner 1997). The first principle is that it should be a local body, constitutionally separate from central government, that is responsible for a range of significant local services. Secondly, it should have its own treasury, budget and accounts along with substantial authority to raise its own revenue. Thirdly, it should employ its own competent staff that it can hire, fire and promote. Fourthly, a majority-elected council operating on party lines should decide policy and determine internal procedures. Fifthly, central government administrators should serve purely as external advisors and inspectors and have no role within the local authority. These principles have sometimes been operationalised in frameworks that emphasise “geographic” decentralisation. Such interpretations are common in Commonwealth Caribbean states. In the “geographic” model of the Commonwealth Caribbean states these ideas and characteristics of political, fiscal, economic and social “autonomy” have been interpreted in largely structural terms and mainly to mean politically managed decentralisation (Jones 1998; Duncan 2000). A “governance” framework and approach would view decentralisation less in these structural categories and more as: a multidimensional process of shifting the focus of development from central planning and bureaucratic government agencies to

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community-based participatory systems that use the full range of local, public and private institutions. This latter process represents the essence of sub-national governance. It involves “empowering communities” to make decisions on matters that affect their lives and to develop and strengthen capacities to manage their affairs. Also central to the process of sub-national governance is the idea of encouraging greater accountability at the local level by relaxing central control, increasing the responsiveness of local institutions to redirect public goods and services to where they are most needed. The creation of mechanisms for communities to connect with service providers and regulatory bodies and for integrating local action with national policy objectives and growth targets is also germane to fabricating sub-national governance. For Rolla (1998), the effective administration and management of the process requires some degree of “institutional autonomy” which is meant to increase awareness and responsibility in the framework of collaborative management and co-production. According to Girvan (1997), the fabrication of viable community governance is “a continuous process” whose underlying institutional forms and systems should be driven by gender-based, enterprisebased and community-rooted considerations. These arrangements, of course, must be fortified by access to information, economic resources and appropriate structures of decision-making. Without meaningful incentives such systems will not work. The building of a technological sub-culture must be an additional underpinning of institutional design in the globalised environment. Moreover, continuous research and critical thinking are central to the continuing efficacy of sub-national governance as a viable project. A critical purpose of the research agenda is to serve to identify and correct perverse effects of prevailing institutional design and systems as well as to sharpen understanding of what activities may be better considered left to respective partners. In addition, its design must aid the programme of lesson drawing across time and space. It must, moreover, heighten recognition of the need, over time, for constant redefinition and restructuring of ideas, concepts and strategies that give real meaning to governance. In other words, the research task is essentially about finding solutions to “reform the already reformed” and to evolve management tools and techniques that provide alternative and more effective solutions to problems on the ground. Yet, the attitude of optimism that often accompanies these guidelines aimed at promoting sub-national governance may mask significant risks. Experiments with this form of governance have traditionally highlighted a high degree of exposure by the Commonwealth Caribbean to an impressive range of such risks (Duncan 2000; Jones 1998; Ryan 1999). In summary, the practice of the Westminster-Whitehall institutional model left legacies of centralised,

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patrimonial and authoritarian administration, all imposing great limitations on efforts at effective local governance. Institutional practice here has also given rise to a high degree of symbolic manipulation that has served as a substitute for action; rather conveying the impression that something is being done without actually tackling governance problems. In effect, political manipulation and symbolism have made it advantageous to neglect implementation of local institutional and other demands necessary for the construction of governance systems. Other risks inhere in inadequate institutional capacity at the subnational level, evident for example in absence or weakness of supporting institutional linkages and resource starvation. Over-exposure or vulnerability to the possibility of “capture” by local elites who continue to play a disproportionate role in local affairs represents a major risk factor. Recently, attempts have been made to confront institutional and related difficulties, partly through “market” mechanisms of decentralisation. Their central features are focused on a minimalist role for the state, the privatisation of delegated functions, re-assigning authority within the state through institutional and policy mechanisms such as privatisation, outsourcing and downsizing. It is claimed that these “managerialist” approaches are promoted to help decentralise and de-bureaucratise government and to capture efficiency gains. Market and geographic decentralisation however, carry risks. Some are evident in the felt effect of the erosion of government’s institutional memories, whilst encouraging policy leaders to concentrate on mainly short-term problems rather than on decisions affecting the long-term. Other risks inhere in those administrative decisions and structures that are dominated by profit-oriented economic considerations to the exclusion of direct community development issues. Paradoxically, these models may and have in fact been manipulated to aid the re-centralisation of power in the hands of political leadership (Jones 1992), thereby weakening opportunities for, among other things, tacit bargaining among partners. In addition, given widespread institutional under-capacity at the typical sub-national level, there will always be doubt whether these microsystems can undertake the risk management necessary to provide solutions to “market failures” in the community situation. Under the market-based institutional regimes there is therefore the risk that the whole framework of community governance would encourage dominance by private capital or market forces. It is precisely to bypass such risks that the state was given a presumptive leading role to protect the “community” or “civil society” in the triadic system of collaborative interaction. Sub-national governance values and institutions would dominate therefore only where the community is free from the threat of capture and dominance by the other governance partners – the state and market. The architecture of community must therefore be specified. Some consensus has settled around the meaning of “community” as a collaborative entity that enables participatory

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governance and empowerment in order to bring about social change in a responsive manner (cf Korten and Alfonso 1983). In order to design significant organisational and operational structures and achieve cooperative developmental outcomes, Abraham and Platteu write that the vision and expectations of members of the community “must converge on a co-operative strategy” and “trust must prevail among them”. Social capital formation and maintenance is an essential benchmark of sound communitarianism. It is the glue that helps to engender and maintain reciprocity, mutual exchange and common understandings. It helps to define the institutional frameworks, operational guidelines and regulative principles needed to enhance grassroots participation. Without an acceptable level of political education, or more broadly, political literacy, an inclusive sub-national governance infrastructure cannot be fabricated. For instance, a development strategy congruent with the poverty eradication objectives of sub-national governance would not emerge where deficits in political literacy are strong. A relevant political literacy campaign and the institutional vehicles on which it relies to inform policy choices must comprehend social development both as a discipline and as a practice. These instruments, formal and informal, should help communities to “recognise the kinds of transformations conducive to, as opposed to deleterious, human development”. They would educate communities to the reality that the economistic growth model does not by itself lead to poverty reduction. Moreover, they would focus on providing “qualitative proxies for human wellbeing, as well as a range of instrumental proxies for participating in the development process” (Green 2002). These qualitative proxies would include access to basic services in education, health and human rights; and the instrumental proxies, voice and social inclusion in civic decisional machinery. A viable political literacy programme must seek to build capacity for sustained claim-making by the community. If reform of the geographic and market approaches to decentralisation is to yield beneficial transformation, then policy leaders must be prepared to invest more in broadening institutional space beyond communities. It must seek to build complementarities with extra-community groups and structures. As well, it must pay greater attention to micro-economic policy concerns. In short, it must fabricate inter-organisational networks and partnerships that can help to build an entrepreneurial culture. Although these considerations are anything but new, they have not yet become settled elements in the emerging institutional culture of Caribbean local governance.

Instituti onal Impli cati ons fo r Governan ce Institutio Implic tio for Governance According to Brett (2000), drawing on Knight (1992, p. 2), institutions that articulate systems of governance must be viewed as sets of rules that structure

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social interactions in particular ways, based on “knowledge shared by members of the relevant community or society. Compliance to those rules is enforced through known incentives or sanctions . . . They influence the function, structure and behaviour of organisations: groups of individuals bound by common purpose to achieve objectives”. Organisations are normally found in the official, market and civic spheres. The special utility of these definitions is that they may be crucial in helping to solve problems of collective action. Sensitively applied, they “undergird essential characteristics of institutional change”. For included among such characteristics are ideas about “continuous interactions of institutions and organisations”; investment in “skills and knowledge in order to survive”; as well as emphasising the importance of “network externalities” (North 1995). All these considerations are relevant to bridging gaps in institution-building for community governance in the Commonwealth Caribbean. In other words, workable institutional design, inter-organisational management and productive interactions are more likely if specific relational conditions are fulfilled. The institutional partners involved must accept the same values and rules and accept each other’s rights and obligations. There must be recognised and enforceable systems of the agreed rules and values. Further, so as to avoid huge social and economic costs, the distribution of policy products must be considered reasonable, fair and just. Moreover, a culture embodying freedom of choice, universal participation and equality of access must grow up around organisational transactions. To be sure, institutional incentives must be employed, but their effectiveness would depend on the extent to which there is accountability to customers (Brett 2000). Elsewhere (Jones 1992), there is detail of other considerations crucial for building institutions of governance on a secure basis in the sub-national setting. One integrated set of building blocks includes the cultivation of pragmatic leadership, working within flexible structures, and with a task-oriented mission. Experience has shown that none of this is possible without a clear organisational doctrine, the institutionalisation of a network of expertise and knowledge and viable linkages and complementarities with the community. Because the network of triadic partners often brings “competing” perspectives on issues of policy, strategy and implementation, a framework for conducting inter-organisational relationships at the sub-national governance level assumes additional significance for at least three additional reasons (Minogue and Kothari 2002 p. 13). In the first place, an institutional framework offers scope for the partners and external agents to engage in effective lesson drawing. Such a framework would put them in a position to “understand which ideas and objectives prevail over others and why they do so”. Secondly, the “model” of institutional co-management and co-production directs attention to how the product of developmental intervention is distributed: who are often neglected victims or who may be beneficiaries. This is a formula for institutional self-

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analysis and self-correction. Thirdly, the collaborative interactions among governance institutions helps us to understand the “relations” that determine the allocation of valued resources – wealth, status, access and power – beyond the boundaries of the community. Reform is another theme that is fundamental to understanding the force of institutional development and design at the micro -level. A programme of reform is always needed in order to correct gaps and misalignments of institutional capacities that often subvert the developmental objectives associated with subnational governance. At least two institutions and systems are of priority concern: (i) the civil bureaucracy at the local and national levels, particularly their human resources systems and, (ii) the prevailing systems of training and capacitybuilding. These are, of course, overlapping concerns. Creating businesslike and competent institutional capacity in sub-national governance requires a programme of comprehensive reform, with investment in capacity-building at the core. It is of immediate importance however that the Caribbean reform agenda would focus on correcting certain well-known patterns of bureaupathology. Some are rooted in experience with politicisation, clientelism, corruption and symbolism (Duncan 2000; Jones 1998; Ryan 1999). Consequently, institutional systems at the local level have emerged underresourced, under-capacitated and especially under-motivated to work in partnership arrangements. They have thus been unable to build generalised frameworks that would help create the basis for mutual trust and reciprocity in their internal and external environments. Overall, they have lacked the incentives for programmatic continuity and professional development, being beset by four historic and contemporary faults or “sins”. The first fault is that the institutions and systems are derived from external models and the politico-economic conditionalities of the new international policy network of aid and advice. The second “sin” is that they have grown to be lop sided because they lack synergies with external partners for community development. Thirdly, they are typically frustrated, mainly because they lack steering capacity, operational autonomy, policy support, and therefore the generalised legitimacy that would help ensure capacity to deliver on their public mandates. In the fourth place, the institutional system is beset by the sin of “anti-politics” because symbolism is its central principle. Accordingly, local government systems are generally viewed and often used as private organisations, not organised for public purpose. The reform priority must be to redeem all these sins. Beyond these considerations, three related themes must be addressed in any Caribbean reform scenario: (i)

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objective of efforts at institutional design and restructuring must therefore embody flexibility in structures and administrative procedures. This may also require constitutional change. At a minimum, training initiatives used as corrective measures must concentrate on bridging gaps in knowledge and skills as they pertain to public economic and financial management, policy analysis and development, social claim-making, as well as strengthening mechanisms to promote leadership and build capacities for conflict resolution. Stakeholder analysis, understood as the technique that clarifies the relations between partners and institutions affected in their social interactions, is also germane to this enterprise. Broadening and deepening understanding of the mechanisms of publicpartnership as well as operationalising it is the third priority reform challenge. Sub-national governance in a market setting requires appropriate division of tasks, responsibilities and accountabilities among partners. Regulatory regimes and continuous social learning and understanding are equally necessary. The social learning and understanding may begin with concept appreciation as well as reliance on specific operational techniques. To be selective, an understanding of the architecture of “partnership” is an important starting point. Lorenz (1989), quoted in Harriss (2000; p. 228), agrees that when accommodation is made for “informal” considerations . . . partnership entails a long-term commitment and reflects a condition of mutual dependency where . . . (partners) . . . are in a position to influence the other by their behaviour. Partnership is a set of normative rules, determining what behaviour is permissible and what constitutes a violation of trust. The rules are designed to facilitate exchange in a situation otherwise open to exploitation.

Of course, it is well-known that the building of successful institutional partnerships normally starts as an incremental process. Yet, success will also depend on the minimum standards of continuous learning, flexible adaptation, a culture of self-correction, and supportive research and planning instruments. Decision-making processes that are broadly based and focused on managing risks are helpful to such arrangements. Many successful episodes of privatepublic partnerships have relied on “pilot projects” and the establishment of “expert centres” that function as think tanks as incentives for improving customer-centredness and for contemplating the range of issues affecting such institutions. All of these techniques are available as starting points for adaptation in the Caribbean local governance situation. The contemporary trend is for the international technical bureaucracies to intervene as “partners” at policy and institutional levels, often with mixed

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results. Some of such bureaucracies are sensitive to the fact that “capacity” at the sub-national level: can be significantly enhanced by approaches which aim to mobilise and draw on existing knowledge and human resources, rather than on approaches which rely solely on the transfer of knowledge through technical assistance, formal training programmes or the creation of new organisations (Euroforic/ ECDPM/ Sept. 1998). Others, however, emphasise the strengthening of regional networks of expertise as an important vehicle of institutional development and capacity building. Yet Abraham and Platteau (2002; p. 27) have identified “dilemma” associated with the kinds of support from other wings of the international policy community. They claim, for example, that the “diluted” approach of the World Bank especially in the building of organisational skills at the community level, tends to ignore “ownership” by beneficiary groups; and over-emphasises “supply-led approach” that are not usually responsive to the needs of rural people. Because the range of policy development and analysis skills needed to successfully confront the issues raised by programmes of policy and institutional transfer is usually small within communities, other options and techniques must be sought.

Elaborating Toolkits and Techniques Within the positions taken in this discourse, five broadly integrated streams of suggestions for reform of Caribbean sub-national governance systems are implied. The first concerns institutional design for capacity building and improved performance, already broadly addressed. Social capital formation, embodying considerable definitional variations, is the second explicit concern. Securing and institutionalising property rights, the development of conflict resolution mechanisms and the definition of clear roles for empowered communities in organising their own development are the other strategies.

Social capital formation and maintenance Let us get definitions out of the way. Social capital is usually thought of as the glue that holds groups and communities together and enables them to get things done; i.e. the ability to work together for common purposes in groups and organisations (Francis: 2002). According to Elinor Ostrom (1997; p 158), social capital is about “the shared knowledge, understandings, institutions and patterns of interaction that a group of individuals brings to any activity”. Identifying with Putnam, Ostrom noted that social capital involves networks, norms and social beliefs that evolve out of processes that are not overtly investment activities, but which exist on the basis of mutual learning, reciprocity,

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as on interpersonal trust. This implies recognition of a common future, the willingness to engage in reciprocal endeavours and to invest in one another’s enterprise. For Coleman (1990; p. 589): Social capital is defined by its function. It is not a single entity, but a variety of different entities, having two elements in common: that all consist of some aspect of social structure, and they facilitate certain actions of individuals – whether persons or corporate actors – who are within the structure. Thus, if social capital can bring solutions to public problems, then its development and maintenance would make a huge difference to the manner in which empowerment, decentralisation and sub-national governance are augmented. Many analysts, in celebrating the virtues of social capital, agree that the stocks of social capital tend to be self-reinforcing. Successful collaboration in one endeavour, they argue, builds social assets in trust, “civic spirit”, reciprocity that facilitate future cooperation. In other words, it is a problem solving resource that increases when used and is depleted when unused. It is also claimed that, in those jurisdictions where social capital is strong, it helps to provide a climate of stable expectation; surmounts problems associated with collective action; enhances capacity-building programmes; reduces certain transaction costs; and produces economic growth. (Ostrom 1997). Among Commonwealth Caribbean states, Barbados is often cited for its relatively developed social capital, rooted partly in traditions of consensual politics, sustained investment in education and social development, and implicitly, reliance on appropriate incentives: a model, perhaps, for the region. Social capital can, however, serve destructive purposes. The common purpose, vision and shared understandings or the solidarity culture that it engenders can also be used for subversive purposes at both community and national levels. Inordinately strong interest groups may be able to exercise political influence that frustrates the public interest at any level of political action. As well, social capital among leading actors in the international community can and has often been exercised for self-regarding (ideological) and other purposes and against the preferred policy and institutional preferences of weaker members in the international system. Likewise, central government agencies may evince a state of “endogenous social capital” which serves their own interests that may also conflict with those of non-state actors. In practice, social capital can produce social exclusion. The documented Caribbean experience, as we have seen, broadly reflects this trend. There may, thus, be a number of competing “social capitals” developing and being maintained and occupying the community/national space at the same time. That is evident because players in triadic governance partnerships often bring the weight of their own vision of social capital to the process

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(Abraham and Platteau). It is obvious too, that for sub-national governance to flourish, mechanisms must be found to restrain the rise of “deviant social capital” and encourage its transition into more forms of “positive social capital”. Such a transition is likely to be a difficult and contentious matter. To discover the “right mix” of social capitals, therefore, requires the mediation of conflict resolution mechanisms. Moreover, despite their command over considerable latent assets, the community is often “relatively weak” in relation to the other partners within sub-national governance systems and structures. For this reason too, conflict resolution mechanisms are needed to tame the “hegemonic” tendencies inherent in “market fundamentalism” and the assumed “sovereignty” of the international technical bureau over development questions in the Third World. Disputes and social tensions over resource allocation and management, particularly relating to property rights, also exert pressures for the activation of formal systems of resolution and enforcement. First, we briefly address the issue of property rights.

Property rights as a tool of empowerment A recent, authoritative report (International Fund for Agricultural Development 2000 p.2), focused on empowering rural communities, noted that “secure access to land, water, and other productive assets is basic to lasting solutions to hunger and poverty”. Normally the poor are excluded from these productive assets because of ill-defined or non-existent property rights that limit their independent access to financial services and markets, overexpose them to risks against natural disasters and restrict their participation in decisionmaking. Thus, a strong coalition of voices, including those of IFAD 2000 and ILO 2002, have been strong in their advocacy for governments, including subnational authorities: To develop and/or adopt policies and implement laws that guarantee to their citizens well-defined and enforceable rights and promote equal access to land and legal security of tenure, in particular for women and disadvantaged groups, including people living in poverty and indigenous and local communities. It is broadly recognised that, where the evolution and allocation of property rights is properly planned and equitably managed, it is likely to reinforce governance systems and structures at the sub-national level by empowering community access to new social, political and economic opportunities. Provision for such rights helps to determine whether assets can be turned into productive capital through sale, lease or use as collateral. Ultimately, property rights may serve as a means of empowering community and state toward processes of entrepreneurship, innovation and business growth or development. Analysts

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of the African jurisdiction (See SSC/EU Brussels 1999: Document # 2) have offered a similar optimistic prognosis, noting that: Land tenure security, including rights relating to land use, transfer, inclusion/ exclusion and enforcement, is the burning issue of the future in Africa, and probably holds the key to its social, economic and political progress, at least in the rural areas. Rights in natural resources have often been overtly subordinated to the State, causing the political rights of rural people to be diminished, and democratic processes and institutions, undermined. In addition, insecurity has negative impacts on agricultural productivity and the management of natural resources, particularly on communally held land. Solutions to African tenure problems are likely to be found in . . . systems that offer communities . . . legal ownership and authority over their land and natural resources. Similar comments could truthfully be made of most Commonwealth Caribbean jurisdictions of which Jamaica would be a prime representative. Optimistic as this prognosis is, however, it must be reinforced by a strategy to help the newly “empowered” to efficiently manage resources in property, extend their overall capacity for collective claim-making and to engage in meaningful conflict resolution processes, including those that normally accompany land reform schemes. In short, such rights are essential for building an enterprise culture as well as to help strengthen the political culture of partnership. In practice, the allocation and institutionalisation of property rights in the Commonwealth Caribbean jurisdiction requires certain fundamental administrative initiatives or first steps. Three steps appear immediately available. One calls for reform of the existing legislative machinery, giving legal status to assets in real property as well as strengthening public policy in the area of social protection. Another requirement is the promotion of broader and deeper forms of representational security by making organisational and policy adjustments that close representational gaps, address “voice” deficits at the community level and encourage regular social dialogue. The third step, especially necessary for building a community enterprise culture, requires the encouragement of a broader network of micro-enterprises and positive attitudes towards risk taking. This, in turn, requires support structures and services. Towards these ends, ILO practitioners, drawing on experience worldwide (ILO 2002; pp73-74), have recommended the provision of one stop windows that provide access to training, credit, working capital and accurate advice; reduce paperwork; consider the feasibility of linking the evolving arrangements with existing cooperative structures; and stay clear of gender bias, particularly against women. Even within the pattern of institution building just discussed, there would be need for appropriate frameworks for conflict resolution at the sub-national level.

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Conflict Resolution To a considerable degree, the architecture of conflict resolution in the Commonwealth Caribbean reflects the “western” formal institutional arrangements and styles, but perhaps, without similar enabling sociopsychological, cultural or economic underpinnings. Rupesinghe and Tishkov (1996) have described that architecture in these terms: In Western approaches to conflict resolution it is assumed that the problem is getting the parties to the conference table through negotiations and that it is possible to get a win/win situation agreeable to both sides. The environment within which these conflicts occur is generally imbued with a strong ideological imperative of equality and recognition of the rule of law. The modern division of labour in Western societies assumes that their members are tied to multiple roles and are attached to a variety of interests which result in conflict. In recognition of this complexity, society develops institutions and mechanisms to resolve conflicts in a specified way. Gradually, a culture of negotiations emerges and a complex network of arbitration and dispute resolution becomes increasingly professionalised. Conflicts are among like-minded actors who speak a common language, denoting a shared universe of meaning. Normally, disputes are defined within a fairly developed regime of law, based on individual rights, which has had a specific historical evolution in the west. In this approach a high priority is given to getting all the parties to reach an understanding of their specific interests and how those interests can be satisfied using problem-solving approaches and negotiations. This sociohistorical profile is typical of an environment remarkable for its relatively developed social capital, with few sub-cultural cleavages. A settled bargaining culture based on trust and reciprocity and, at least, an expanding economy are other core assumptions. In structural-institutional terms, their system also tends to possess early warning mechanisms for conflict prevention and management or other methods of solving inter-group or inter-community conflicts. A combination of factors makes it increasingly difficult in the “plural societies” of the Commonwealth Caribbean to ameliorate conflicts so that a political culture of partnerships can be effectively sustained. Here, it is usual for different social sections to “combine, but do not mix”, partly reflecting the condition of weak social capital formation. Additionally, ethnic factionalism in certain states alongside fights over the allocation of scarce resources in wealth, status access, power and other opportunities complicate the situation. Moreover, there are strong and growing impulses towards violence as a technique of dispute settlement. Additionally, in the institutional sphere, approaches to conflict

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resolution have remained broadly legal-bureaucratic, formalised and reactive, as well as being somewhat over-professionalised. As such, they rely heavily on lawsuits, the imposition of punitive sanctions and “executive orders”. They also reflect the “winner takes all” ethos and style of the Westminster “export” model, which in this context create favoured and un-favoured clients and make for privileged access and degraded exit. All these features create systemic incentives for polarisation and conflict generation, rather than aid the search for solutions. Theory and field experience help us define certain alternative, nontraditional approaches which, when thoughtfully adapted, promise to empower partners to engage in joint problem solving that may sustain partnerships at the community level. Holzer and Isaacs (2002: pp.59-61), drawing partly on Caribbean empirical evidence, have identified some crucial building blocks that make for effective conflict resolution episodes and systems. According to them, a programme of consensus building in a framework shorn of legalistic overtones, driven by norms of informality and stressing voluntary processes is the essential foundation on which strategy may be built. Of course, appropriate incentives, including opportunities to exercise “voice”, are also necessary to help sustain and institutionalise those building blocks. On another level, the rate of institutionalisation of such mechanisms will ultimately depend on the ability of the emerging institutions and processes to sustain face-to-face interactions that predispose to habits of sharing relevant information. Equally, the emergence of viable conflict mediation measures will depend on the rate at which partners learn to recognise differences in each other’s values and perceptions and are able to draw lessons from successful and unsuccessful episodes in joint problem solving. All these forms of collaboration promise to yield mutually agreed ground rules, encourage respect, and therefore, improve the stock of problem solving skills and social capital. An important social purpose of building efficacious conflict resolution measures and techniques is precisely to unblock channels that constrain the growth of an enterprise culture at the sub-national/community level. This strongly implies greater reliance on research, training appropriate for handling community development projects and the development of complaint handling procedures. As well, such “technical interventions” should aim to encourage independent monitoring of project administration by NGOs and other social forces. To be sure, it is not the intention here to suggest that these strategies will prevent conflict, but rather to promote them as important starting points toward collective problem solving in low trust environments such as are common in the Commonwealth Caribbean. The idea of sub-national governance as the creation of a political culture of partnerships means that one of the best strategies for “community empowerment” is to assign communities themselves active roles in the process of promoting sub-national development.

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Engaging the Community The communitarian movement emerged here and elsewhere in response to feelings of “powerlessness and alienation” within civil society that increasingly saw both the state and market as remote sources of decision-making. It sees communities as the repositories of “mutual concerns and cooperation” waiting to be rekindled and activated. It views the “empowerment” of sub-national associations as central to democratic decentralisation. It regards “community”, interposed between state and market, as necessary for the “design of successful institutions”. Moreover, communitarianism represents “an intelligent democracy and government”, in the sense that it encourages willingness to make the trade offs, face the risks and bear the costs of sacrificing some degree of national power and accountability “in the interest of facilitating the diverse energies and aims” at the sub-national or community level (Self 2000: pp 228234). Further, comunitarianism reflects that branch of new “third way” political thought, which emphasises “redefinition and strengthening of mutual rights and responsibilities” within the community as well as introduce certain “community values”, e.g. equity and administration of justice, as a counter to the self-interest of the market or the invasion of the profit motive (Self 2000: pp. 176-179). Implicitly and explicitly communitarianism is co-terminus with wider values of sub-national governance because it aims to build a political culture of partnerships; because it seeks to avoid destructive social conflicts; because it advocates learning by participating as a core pillar of democratic education; and because it suggests that “institutional pathologies will arise when one group is too dominant or too absent”. Yet, perhaps the most potent message associated with operationalising these regulative principles is that the community must engage proactively with its own development agenda. In practice, however, it would be necessary to restrain “excesses of communitarian zeal” while promoting its positive benefits alongside the cultivation of an ethic of selfreliance. What is often termed the “dependency syndrome” or the “freeness mentality” typically constrains empowerment of local communities because, among other things, it anaesthetises against the exercise of personal initiative, encourages the fight over scarce public benefits, and reinforces cynicism and disrespect for public institutions so that, ultimately, effective partnership is constrained. To begin to bypass or throw off these fetters, Caribbean communities must evince certain “commitments”. Commitments to values of “civilised living” that are supportive of the “dignity, safety and mental health of its members” as well those rejecting “violence as an instrument of dispute resolution” are essential starting points. These are learned values that require institutional frameworks for regular, disciplined interactions among members. They require that some

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spheres of community action be insulated from the self-seeking imperatives of market fundamentalism. Community engagement in “sports and arts” is a natural framework for building values of commitment to mutual organisation and collective action and sharing that can escape the trap of cruder expressions of market profit (Nettleford 1992: pp. 8-9). Nettleford further contends that the community as effective partner in the participatory structure must be committed to self-reliance. This must involve willingness to take self-directed, just-in-time initiatives to protect the civilisation of community life. Attentiveness to personal hygiene, surveillance of workplace standards, engaging in the maintenance of social institutions and the surrounding discourse are some primary community responsibilities that ultimately help to undermine impulses toward deviant social capital and prepare members for larger schemes of self-reliance and cooperation. The “Nettlefordian” thesis also argues that a commitment to leadership for self-mastery is a clear and inescapable responsibility of the community in the schema of sustainable sub-national governance. It clearly involves tasks of problem identification, the design of implementation plans and fabricating sustainable links with partners. In a dynamic context, a special function of community-based leadership now hinges on encouraging meaningful human resource development and research partnerships to help bring about all-round enlightenment to the developmental projects and general life of members. In the Caribbean experience the research arm of this challenge is perhaps lagging furthest behind. Commitment to a “bottom-up” research design is one possible way to recover some ground. Genuine bottom-up research would serve as an antidote to top-down approaches that categorises research problems and service production and delivery arrangements from the perspective of the powerful at the organisational top. This approach is, in practice, problem based; and departure is taken from analysis in the field, not from the desks of central bureaucracies. Additionally, the approach would seek to be “scientific” in its research techniques, concentrating on how to best understand the development problem by relying on the “cultural wisdom” of the community and its sense of how to prioritise alternative ways of problem solving. Another part of its technique would concentrate on reforming the already reformed. In effect, the research challenge of this approach is to focus on empowering groups of citizens to maintain the community and to build coalitions or bridges rather than dig trenches between partners.

Toward a Conclusion This paper makes no higher claim than an attempt to clarify certain concepts and re-think some related practices and approaches that may be helpful in improving sub-national governance in the Commonwealth Caribbean. It purports to be a basic manifesto against “administrivia” in the evolving discourse on an aspect of governance.

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Accordingly, we have argued that the quality of institutional design, the clarity with which institutional rules of the game are specified, and the sense of equity that guides the distribution of the policy products of community institutions, are fundamental to realising “good sub-national governance”. These and other related considerations would help society to escape the traps of four dominant local institutional sins in the region. These sins characterise the system as being derivative, lopsided, frustrated, and as the efficient vehicles of “antipolitics”. The real source of these legacies in the local institutional sphere is the tradition of politically “managed decentralisation”. It is also argued that the relatively slow rate of evolutionary learning in the region has constrained the space in which a fuller range of the values of communitarianism would flourish and take root. In any event, other emancipatory strategies would be needed to provide reinforcing effects. Included among the institutional and other arrangements/strategies proposed, are mechanisms to enhance social capital formation; broaden property rights; build conflict resolution mechanisms; and prepare the community in technopsychological terms for self-management and entrepreneurial activities. To be sure, these arrangements are not a panacea for all the problems of sub-national governance. But they are at least capable of channelling the collective interest and guiding behaviour towards solutions of important and pressing common problems. Another part of the argument is that there is a natural misfit between market fundamentalism or any other fundamentalism for that matter, including “excesses of communitarian zeal”. The pitfalls of market fundamentalism are well known and understood in poor communities. But excessive communitarian zeal may carry its own dangers, especially a potential for conflict when it emphasises excessive participation and involvement in tasks for which the community is not technically prepared. The core organising principle, then, in articulating institutional design or the other recommended strategies for sustainable sub-national governance is therefore that of flexible adaptation. Finally, it is implicitly and explicitly concluded that power is not diminished when it is shared; rather its diffusion better guarantees that it would serve wider social purposes.

*

With research assistance from Roger Smith, Teaching Assistant in the Department of Government, UWI, Mona campus.

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REFERENCES Abraham, Anita and Jean-Philippe Platteau. ‘Participatory Development in the Presence of Endogenous Community Imperfections’, Department of Economics and CRED (Centre de Recherché en Economie du Dévelopement), University of Namur. Rempart de la Vierge, 8, B-5000, Namur Belgium. Ballantyne, Peter. 1998. ‘Capacity Building Programme Strategic Plan 1998-2000’, ECDPM. Brett, Teddy. 2000. ‘Understanding Organisations and Institutions in Managing Development’. In Managing Development, Robinson, Hewitt and Harriss (eds). Sage: The Open University Press. Common, R. 1998. ‘The New Public Management and Policy Transfer: The Role of International Organisations’. In Beyond the New Public Management M. Minogue, C. Polidano and D. Hulme (eds). Edward Edgar. Department for International Development (DFID). 1997. ‘Eliminating World Poverty: A Challenge for the Twenty-First Century’. London: HMSO. __________, 2000. Government and Poverty Strategy. London Duncan, Neville. 2000. ‘Voice Participation and Governance in a Changing Environment: The Case of the Eastern Caribbean’, SALISES, UWI, Mona. Francis, Paul. 2002. ‘Social Capital, Civil Society and Social Exclusion’. In Development Theory and Practice: Critical Perspectives, Uma Kothari and Martin Minogue (eds). Basingstoke: Palgrave. Girvan, Norman. 1997. ‘Poverty, Empowerment and Social Development in the Caribbean’. University of the West Indies: Canoe Press. Green, Mair. 2002. ‘Social Development: Issues and Approaches’. In Development Theory and Practice: Critical Perspectives, Uma Kothari and Martin Minogue (eds). Basingstocke: Palgrave. Harriss, John. 2000. ‘Working Together: The Principles and Practice of Co-operation and Partnership’. In Managing Development, Robinson, Hewitt and Harriss (eds). Sage: The Open University Press. Holzer, Marc and Hedy Isaacs. 2002. ‘Building Effective Shared Service Partnerships’. In International Review of Public Administration. 7.1 (July 2002). IFAD. 2000. ‘Empowering the Rural Poor through Access to Productive Assets and Participation in Decision-making’, Secretariat at the International Fund for Agricultural Development, IFAD. ILO. 2002. ‘Decent Work and the Informal Economy’. Geneva. Jones, Edwin. 1998. ‘Decentralisation and Market Efficiency in the Caribbean: Different Stories for Different Audiences’. University of Guyana. Jones, Edwin. 1992. ‘Development Administration: Jamaican Adaptations’. Jamaica: Caricom Publishers Limited. Jones, Edwin. ‘Governance in CARICOM – A 2000 Perspective’. CARICOM PERSPECTIVE, II.69 (June, 2000).

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Kooimann, Jan, ed. 1993. Modern Governance: New Government - Society Interactions. London: Newbury Park, Calif: Sage. Korten, David and Felipe Alfonso. 1983. ‘Community Participation: A Management Perspective on Obstacles and Options’. In Bureaucracy and the Poor: Closing the Gap. West Hartford: Kumarian Press. Minogue, Martin. 2002. ‘Power to the People? Good Governance and the Reshaping of the State’. In Development Theory and Practice: Critical Perspectives, Uma Kothari and Martin Minogue (eds). Basingstoke: Palgrave. Nettleford, Rex. 1992. ‘Report of the Committee of Advisors on Government Structure’. Kingston, Jamaica. North, Douglas. 1995. ‘The New Institutional Economics and Third World Development’, John Harriss, Janet Hunter and Colin M. Lewis (eds). Routledge. Ostrom, Elinor. 1997. ‘Investing in Capital, Institutions and Incentives’. In Institutions and Economic Development. John Hopkins University Press. Overseas Development Administration (ODA). 1993. ‘Taking Account of Good Government’. London Putnam, R. 1993. ‘The Prosperous Community: Social Capital and Public Life’. American Prospect. (Spring): 35-42. Rhodes, R. 1997. ‘Understanding Governance: Policy Networks, Governance, Reflexivity and Accountability’. The Open University Press. Rolla, Giancarlo. 1998. ‘Autonomy: a guiding criterion for decentralizing public administration’. International Review of the Administrative Sciences, 64. Rupesinghe, Kumar and Valery A. Tishkov. 1996. ‘Ethnicity and Power in the Contemporary World’. United Nations University. Ryan, Selwyn. 1999. ‘Winner Takes All: The Westminster Experience in the Caribbean’, ISER, UWI, St Augustine, Trinidad and Tobago. Self, Peter. 2000.

‘Rolling Back the Market: Economic Dogma of Political Choice’. St

Martin’s Press. Turner Mark and David Hulme. 1997. ‘Governance Administration and Development: Making the State Work’. Macmillan Press Ltd. UNDP. 1998. ‘Decentralised Governance Country Thematic Assessment Framework and Guidelines’. In Management Development and Governance Division Bureau for Policy Development United Nations Development Programme, (April). World Bank. 1992. ‘Governance and Development’. Oxford University Press.

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‘nah vote aGaIn’ – repreSentatIonS of GovernanCe In JamaICan popular Culture CAROLYN COOPER

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he Graeco-Latin origins of the English word governance encode a nautical metaphor: “gubernare to steer”.1 In its purest sense, governance is the art of steering the ship of state into safe harbour. In our Caribbean small-island states, the ship is really a canoe, constantly threatened by tempestuous waves of economic deprivation, devalued human capital, mismanaged natural resources and, of course, globalisation – that cunning euphemism for the old imperial politics of appropriation and exploitation. The catchword, ‘globalisation’, deliberately conceals the treacherous undercurrents that lie beneath its surface meaning. In these dangerous waters, navigation/governance becomes an oceanic enterprise worthy of those celebrated African seafarers who came to these shores long before the predatory Columbus. Foolhardy politicians who do not understand – or deliberately misrepresent – the complexity of the challenges of governance in the Caribbean today discover that the people whom they aspire to rule are not always willing to be steered in certain directions. So they mutiny. This spirit of rebellion is, at times, manifested in violent acts of aggression against state authority; or, much more therapeutically, is articulated in forms of popular discourse that either cry down damnation or tek bad tings mek joke. Political satire, like its more solemn, denunciatory variant, becomes a powerful weapon of resistance against incompetent and downpressive leadership, to use an apt Rastafari neologism. In this exploratory critique of the representations of governance in Jamaican popular culture, I focus on a single theme: disengagement from the rituals of partisan political electioneering. In an impassioned opinion piece published in the Daily Observer of August 12, 2002, Reverend Clinton Chisholm, advocate of the New Jamaica Alliance, exhorts recalcitrant non-voters to “arise!”: We are targeting the uncommitted, especially, because you make up between 44 per cent and 52 per cent of eligible voters. We are targeting Christians, more particularly, because you are the majority of the uncommitted.

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Think, uncommitted eligible voter, is it sensible to allow a minority to continue deciding for the majority who runs the country?2 Anthony B, one of the most contemplative and militant of the new wave of Rastafari DJs, gives a thoughtful response to the Reverend Chisholm in his anthemic “Nah Vote Again” on the 1997 CD, Universal Struggle. This song is a perennial rallying cry for the stubborn hardcore of potential voters in Jamaica who disdain to participate in national elections. “Nah Vote Again” opens with a sample from the Ethiopians’ 1969 hit “Everything Crash”, thus underscoring the intertextuality of the lyrics of the contemporary DJs and their reggae antecedents. Anthony B’s appropriation of “Everything Crash” demonstrates, as well, how little has changed, fundamentally, for the poor in the intervening decades: Seet ya now! Everyting crash Weh gone bad a mornin Can’t come good a evenin Dat’s why Wi naa vote again All dem a enumerate Naa participate So wi naa vote again Only ting wi get from election A debt an problem So wi naa vote again3 The Jamaican pronunciation of the English “death” makes a perfect pun on “debt”. Anthony B denounces the People’s National Party, the Jamaica Labour Party and the former New Democratic Movement (now structurally adjusted into the New Jamaica Alliance) as constituting a collective threat to the interests of the poor. Subverting the meaning of the abbreviations, PNP, JLP and NDM, Anthony B offers a derisive redefinition that foregrounds the prolonged suffering that has been institutionalised in the factional Jamaican political party system: Dem tell yu vote fi all di PNP We find out dat a Pains, Needs an Poverty4 Dem tell yu fi vote fi all di JLP Dat a Juicing di Life of di ghetto Pikni NDM seh yu fi come vote fi D Yu no see a New Destruction for you an Me

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Dem a try bus [burst] Jamaicans inna three Mi a unite dem fi face God Almighty So wi nah vote again. Anthony B’s dancehall disavowal of “non-representational” politics is reminiscent of the satirical critique of government programmes and the electoral process offered by Louise Bennett in a number of poems such as “Census” and “Votin’ Lis’”. When in “Nah Vote Again” Anthony B declares – apparently out of context – “Talk like Miss Lou, mi no talk like foreigner”, the DJ is acknowledging his affiliation to an indigenous performance tradition that is articulated in “nation language”, to cite the work of the Barbadian griot, Kamau Brathwaite.5 The Hon. Louise Bennett-Coverley – poet, actress, folklorist, cultural ambassador – is the most celebrated advocate of the reclamation of Jamaican nation language from the condition of barbarism contemptuously assigned to our mother tongue and to us, its habitual speakers.6 Anthony B also seems to be affirming the value of the subversive talk of Louise Bennett as she humorously voices working-class resistance to government interference in the lives of the people. For example, the mischievous speaker in the poem “Census” confesses her sabotaging of the reporting system on grounds of the nosiness of personified “govament”: But govament fas’ [nosy] ee mah? Lawd: Me laugh soh tell me cry, Me dis dun [just done] tell de census man A whole tun-load [ton-load] o’ lie. Him walks een an sidung [sit down] like is Eena [in] my yard him grow [he was raised], An yuh want to hear de femelia [familiar] tings De man did want fe [to] know. Him doan [didn’t]fine [find]out one ting bout me, For fe me y’eye [my eyes] soh dry, Me stare right eena census face An tell him bans o’ lie!7 Similarly, in “Votin’ Lis’”, the Bennett persona derides the aggressive verbal strategies of the campaigners in Jamaica’s first national elections under universal adult suffrage, held in 1944. Almost six decades later, the poem remains current, except that there are now substantially more female candidates. In 1944, four women and one hundred and twenty one men ran.8 Ms Iris Collins won her seat for the JLP. Miss Lou’s reference to “bans o’ man” in the poem accurately reflects the gender ratio of the candidates. In 2002, twenty-eight female candidates

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contested the elections: Bans o’ man all ovah islan’, Dis a-blista [blister] up dem t’roat Dis a-chat till dem tongue leng [hang] out An dah-beg [are begging] me fe [for] me [my] vote. Ah gwine meck dem tan deh beg me, [I’m going to make them keep on begging me] Ah gwine meck dem tan deh pine, Ah gwine rag an haul an pull dem So till ah meck up me mine. Me doan know who me gwine vote fa, For me doan jine [haven’t joined] no gang, But what me cross out gawn [gone] like storm An wat me lef [leave] kean [can’t be] wrong.9 It is instructive that Louise Bennett uses the derogatory word “gang”, with its criminal associations, to describe the political parties, thus foreshadowing Anthony B’s righteous distancing of himself from the divide-an-rule politics that is characterised by Reverend Chisholm as “the dictatorship of a tribal mentality”10. In his helpful note to the poem, “Votin’ Lis’”, Rex Nettleford observes that “[t]he last verse was taken seriously by several people who wrote letters to the Editor of the Daily Gleaner accusing Miss Bennett of misleading the public on how to vote”.11 Miss Lou was moved to write a conciliatory poem, “Rightful Way”, to restore that which had been erased in “Votin’ Lis’”: Posen any fo-fool smaddy shoulda [Suppose any foolish person should] Hear yu big report, An go cross-out any sinting [something], An go pwile [spoil] de people vote! Yuh know how de genkleman dem Weh dah-gi speech all bout Hooda [would be] bex [vexed] fe know yuh help fe teck [take] De pap out o’ dem mouth.12 Despite the pretence of disclaimer, Miss Lou cleverly reinserts her critique of the political process in the ambiguous reference to “de people vote”: both the vote of the people – the collective electorate – as well as the vote that the politician

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assumes as a right. It is the alienated politicians – “de people” – who, having hijacked the electoral system, benefit the most from the vote. Miss Lou’s satirical critique of long tongue, licky-licky politicians is amplified in her derisory reference to the “pap” that they will not get if the ballot paper is spoilt and the vote discounted. The Oxford English Dictionary notes that pap is “app[arently] from Scandinavian. Supposed to echo the sound made by an infant in feeding.” The primary meaning is “nipple”. In English “pap” is also defined as “soft or semi-liquid food for infants or invalids, made of bread, meal etc., softened with water”. In Jamaican, the consistency of pap is less watery but Miss Lou’s clever image of the infantile/invalid politician feeding from the breast of the electorate vividly embodies the discourse of exploitation. It is significant to note that Anthony B declares “Nah Vote Again”. Again. There was a time when the freedom to vote was a highly valued privilege, as is evident in Miss Lou’s poem, “Revelation”: Yuh noh happy noh sta [sister] Katy! Yuh noh happy noh Aunt Fan! Yuh naw glad an jump up merry Bout we New Cons’itution Everybody got a vote, an Every vote gwine swell de score; Missa Issa, Missa Hanna, And de man wat [who] sweep de store.13 It is the failure of state institutions to fulfill the promise of the New Constitution and, later, Independence that accounts for the withdrawal of youth like Anthony B from the charade of the voting game. Another inspired text by Anthony B, “Fire Pon Rome”, repudiates the craven political system in this epigrammatic statement: “Outa politics poor people get dem beating.”14 Partisan politics, a major structural means of exacerbating the deprivation of the poor – sucking them dry – is rejected by the generation of “conscious” youth, like Anthony B, who confidently asserts in “Swarm Me”: “Dis is di generation dem can’t confuse/ Dis is di generation dem can’t use/ Get di news.”15 It is not only insightful Rastafari youth who can no longer be manipulated by the political system. Even those whom Anthony B calls the “generation of vipers” renounce unswerving party affiliation for the immediate material benefits that are offered by those with the resources to buy loyalty, however fleeting. In an illuminating interview with David Scott, editor of the incisive journal, Small Axe, Anthony B elaborates:

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Dis is di unruly generation. Understand mi, man. Dis is a new generation now, dat Babylon can’t go line up and seh you is a PNP an you is a Labourite. Dem youth no deh pan dat. Money! If a PNP a run [is handing out] money, im deh-deh [he’s there]; if a Labourite a run money, im deh-deh. Yu see weh mi mean? So money is di controller of dem youth ya. Not no leader nor no man who dem like. Dem a youth ya no like nobody. Yu understand mi? Dis is di generation of vipers dat di Bible tell yu bout. So dis is di generation who will survive . . . Dis is di generation who a deal wid survival. Dem naa follow no man an seh “yeah wi rate da man deh, wi a go tump a man inna im mouth fi dat man”. No. Politician seh “go lik down da man deh”, an dem go down and seh, “bwoy, a one millionaire dis! . . . Listen politician seh fi come lik yu down, gi mi a ting. . .”16 In that instructive interview, Anthony B notes the entanglement of capital and politics in the continued oppression of the poor. In response to David Scott’s statement, “But, Anthony B, wa yu a seh is dat di politician dem no business wid poor people. Dem ongle business wid demself,” the DJ concurs thus: No, just dem an dem friend. Dem just come together, who inna di same circle, keep dem big party, and laugh about wa a gwaan.17 Dem is not about we. Di only time yu see dem dong inna di ghetto is now. Yu start see dem inna dis ya season now cause election a come. Yu never see dem weh day [in the recent past]. An none of dem no live ya. Dem live inna dis island and dis island, an dem carry di whole a dem money gone bank up deh so. An mi an yu have fi bank ya so. An when yu no bank inna fi yu country yu no put no investment inna yu country. If yu a tek your country money somewhe yu no di govament. Most a di govament money inna Cayman, it deh inna ya so an ya so. None of it no deh inna Jamaica a invest.18 It is this widespread conviction that there is an insurmountable divide between “dem” – the politicians – and “we” – the masses of poor people – that accounts, in part, for the rise of alternative authority figures, the ambiguous outlaw/heroes of Jamaican popular culture. In “Warrior Cause”, for example, DJs Elephant Man and Spragga Benz salute a long line of such notorious characters, ascribing to them heroic proportions: Well mi come fi big up every warrior From di present to di past Hail all who know dem fight for a cause. . . Well some seh dem a bad man No know di half of it Don’t know a big gill nor a quart of it Woppy King an Rhygin was di start of it19

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The long list of warriors – with a wonderful assortment of nicknames – includes Feather Mop, Burry Bwoy, Tony Brown, George Flash, Jim Brown, Starky, Dainy, Bucky Marshall, Dudus, Zekes, Ian Mascott, Andrew Phang, Gyasee, Shotta John, Speshie Corn, Claudie Massop, Natty Morgan, Sprat, Sandokhan, Rashi Bull, Cow, Early Bird, Rooster, Chubby Dread, Willy Haggart, George Phang, Tony Welch, Sammy Dread, Randy and Smile Orange.20 In this roll call of the tougher than tough the DJs include even supposed badman lawmen: “Laing an Bigga Ford was di police of it/ . . . / Now Adams come get introduce to it.” The somewhat ambivalent DJs also salute potential warriors who renounce the calling: Big up di youth dem weh steer clear of it Weh wuda [who would] do nuff [lots of] tings an dem no hear of it Weh [who] know wrong from di right An dem aware of it But dem still no have no coward or no fear of it. Like, “Warrior Cause”, Louise Bennett’s humorous tribute to Rhygin – the poem “Dead Man” – expresses some ambivalence about the outlaw warrior. There is the same thrill of identification with Rhygin’s apparently indomitable badness. The final verse of the poem, undercutting the proverbial certainty of the first, humorously suggests that Rhygin as duppy/legend may be even more deadly than Rhygin as living gunman: When smaddy dead dem dead fi true! Koo yah, koo police man Tan up over Rhygin an dah Finger-print up him dead han! Member dem days when big fraid Hole we everywhe we tun? Ef dem hear a car back-fire People seh a Rhygin gun! Night time every tree was Rhygin Or one a Rhygin spy: Ef peeny-wally blink him light Dem seh a Rhygin yeye! Part of the humour of the poem centres on mockery of the police who are so afraid of Rhygin that they give him ample warning of their presence. But there

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is as well the sobering certainty, epigrammatically expressed, that Death is badder than the baddest gunman: Police dress wid gun an bayonet Dissa stamp [are just stamping] bram-bram all bout: Dem big boot a warn Rhygin fi Careful when him walkin out! Koo omuch [so many] time him slip police! Koo omuch blood him shed! But no care how man seh dem bad, Man cyaan badder dan Dead! Wid all a Missa Rhygin Carrin-awns-dem, me did know Seh Dead was backa him dah teck Him meck big poppy-show! From de beginnin a Rhygin Narvasness an terror spread: An look pon de en a Rhygin – Bullet-hole up, harmless, dead! Koo de fus picture him pose fa, Gun dem ready, blazin lead! Koo de las picture him pose fa, Eena dead house, lidung dead! But ah wonder what would happen To de picture-man, Miss Sue, Ef when him dah teck de picture Rhygin duppy did seh “boo”!21 Somewhat like “Warrior Cause”, Buju Banton’s “Concrete Jungle Rock”, also acknowledges the contested authority of the dons: Jim Brown was di man who was di great top-o-top Early Bird was di Ras who have di whole acre lock Now a Dudus a di man weh no argue nor chat Father Zekes seh fi cool, an fool must quiet Dem man deh run di acre an run it non-stop Dem murder Willy Haggart an it cause bare riot Now if a green den a green An if a red an if a black.

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The main burden of Buju’s exhortatory song, like Anthony B’s “Nah Vote Again”, is to motivate the youth to renounce partisan political affiliation: Born inna Jamaica We all waan [want to] be free No JLP, no PNP Money inna wi pocket No shooting spree Every man a fight fi peace an tranquility [True] dem cyan use wi out Dem waan rub wi out I conclude this preliminary analysis of the representations of governance in Jamaican popular culture with a caveat: if we do not listen to the dissonant voices of the youth as they cry down damnation on our exploitative political systems, we will forever alienate them from full participation in the affairs of state; worse, we will create the conditions for the emergence of more warriors with one cause – the total destruction of the state. Good governance is not about coercing the rebellious into conformity. Governance is a social contract that requires integrity of all the signatories. In the words of Anthony B, “Wi a di govament”. [We are the Government].22 And the DJ makes a persuasive argument for mass disengagement from the present electoral system in Jamaica. What is usually called “voter apathy” by the naïve becomes for Anthony B a powerful political weapon: . . . if me start keep back an every man start keep back an when election day come yu don’t see nobody come out deh yu ha fi start look inna yuself an know seh sopn wrong. . . . Someting wrong. Wi ha fi do something. So right deh so di change a go mek when di people stand up pon dem own, get up an stand up pon dem own.23

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References B., Anthony. “Nah Vote Again.” Universal Struggle, Jet Star, UK, 1997. ____________. “Fire Pon Rome.” Real Revolutionary, Greensleeves, 1996. ____________. “Swarm Me.” Real Revolutionary, Greensleeves, 1996. Bennett, Louise. Jamaica Labrish. Kingston: Sangster’s, 1966. ____________. Selected Poems. ed. Mervyn Morris. Kingston: Sangster’s, 1982. Benz, Spragga and Elephant Man. “Warrior Cause,” Strictly The Best. Volume 27, VP Records, 2001. Brathwaite, Kamau. History of the Voice. London: New Beacon Books, 1984. Chisholm, Reverend Clinton. “Let the uncommitted arise!” The Daily Observer, (August 12, 2002), 9. Scott, David. “‘Wi a di Govament’: An Interview with Anthony B.” Small Axe 2, 79-101.

Notes 1

Oxford English Dictionary definition.

2

Reverend Clinton Chisholm, “Let the uncommitted arise!” The Daily Observer (August 12, 2002), 9.

3

Anthony B., “Nah Vote Again,” Universal Struggle, Jet Star, UK, 1997.

4

This contrasts markedly with the meaning of the initials in the PNP’s “Log On” advertisement for the 2002 election campaign: P for progress, N for nation-building and P for prosperity.

5

Kamau Brathwaite. History of the Voice, (London: New Beacon Books, 1984).

6

In 2002 the Government of Jamaica approved the establishment of a Language Planning Agency at the University of the West Indies, Mona, directed by Professor Hubert Devonish, that will address the issue of a national language policy.

7

Louise Bennett. Jamaica Labrish, (Kingston: Sangster’s, 1966, 131-32).

8

I am indebted to Linnette Vassell, Social Development Consultant and Caribbean women’s historian for the data.

9

Louise Bennett. Jamaica Labrish, (Kingston: Sangster’s, 1966), 134.

10 Reverend Clinton Chisholm, “Let the uncommitted arise!” The Daily Observer, (August 12, 2002), 9. 11 Louise Bennett. Jamaica Labrish, (Kingston: Sangster’s, 1966), 133. 12 Ibid., 135 13 Ibid., 129. 14 Anthony B., “Fire Pon Rome,” Real Revolutionary, Greensleeves, 1996. 15 Anthony B., “Swarm Me,” Real Revolutionary, Greensleeves, 1996. 16 Small Axe 2, 93. 17 There is a nice word-play on “party” – both political institution and social gathering – which suggests the self-indulgent behaviours of the ruling elite.

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18 David Scott, “‘Wi a di Govament’: An Interview with Anthony B.,” Small Axe 2 , September 1997, 91. 19 Spragga Benz and Elephant Man, “Warrior Cause,” Strictly The Best, Volume 27, VP Records, 2001. 20 I am indebted to Sean Mock Yen of the Radio Education Unit, University of the West Indies, Mona, for the transcription of the song text. 21 Louise Bennett, Selected Poems, ed. Mervyn Morris (Kingston: Sangster’s, 1982) 56-7. 22 Small Axe 2, September 1997, 87. 23 Ibid., 88.

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C H A P T E R

F I F T E E N

the CarIbbean DIaSpora/CarIbbean homelanD DIaleCtIC anD the Global CarIbbean LOCKSLEY EDMONDSON

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n academic journal labelled Diaspora: A Journal of Transnational Studies was launched in 1991 with the following rationale:

Diaspora is dedicated to the multi-disciplinary study of the history, culture, social structure, politics and economics of both the traditional Diasporas – Armenian, Greek, and Jewish – and those transnational dispersions that in the past three decades have chosen to identify themselves as “diasporas”. These encompass groups ranging from the African-American to the Ukrainian-Canadian, from the Caribbean-British, to the New East and South Asian and Québécois Diasporas. Diaspora provides a vital forum for debate on increasingly flexible terms such as “diaspora”, “nation”, and “transnationalism”. Articles span a variety of disciplines. . .1 An intriguing aspect of the foregoing rationale is this example of a delayed, long overdue, admission to the mainstream of “diaspora studies” of those formations which are said to have recently “chosen” such self-identifications. This conveys the implication that the so-called “traditional diasporas” are objectively endowed with diasporic attributes in contradistinction to seemingly subjective diasporic claims of more recent “transnational dispersions”. The expansion of “diaspora studies” beyond a “traditional” focus is also addressed in a 1986 edited volume entitled Modern Diasporas in International Politics, described by the editor as a contribution to a “relatively new field” of academic enquiry.2 In similar vein, the United States-based Social Sciences Research Council in the late 1980s to the early 1990s launched a research project to define and explore the relevance and significance of diasporic studies/ analysis in the context of the United States/continental African nexus. Such relatively recently emerging academic undertakings in mainstream

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Western World academia could well have profited from an earlier recognition of the concerns and activities of historical Pan-Africanists, from the early 19th century onwards, very much including Jamaica’s first National Hero, Marcus Garvey, who in the early 20th century sought to mobilise political, economic, cultural and psychological challenges by “Africans at home and abroad” (on the African continent and in the African diaspora) against then entrenched White World imperialist and racist impositions. By the late 1960s, insurgent challenges in American academia were most effectively manifested in the “Black Studies” movement, labelled in some quarters as the “Africana Studies” mission,3 fundamentally linking the African American experience to the continental African and other Black World situations, thus energising and expanding frameworks for “diaspora studies”. Of relevance in this expanding context was the initiation in 1965 of the “UNESCO General History of Africa” eight-volume project, which included the mandate that the study of continental Africa should also encompass relevant studies of the African diaspora, historically as well as in a contemporary setting.4 Not surprisingly, a number of seminal studies on the African diaspora (largely inspired by the United States racial context of African American diasporic mobilisation) have appeared over the past three decades.5 This preliminary focus on the broad ambit of African diaspora studies is of central importance to the Caribbean region with its vast populations of peoples of African origin, dislocated historically from their original homelands over many centuries of traumatic enslavement, yet persisting in challenging White racist impositions and asserting notions of Black dignity and empowerment. Such is the context in which notions of the “Black Atlantic” are salient and in which the Caribbean presence looms large.6 “Diaspora Studies” have now become more widespread and regularised undertakings in the academy, transcending the original focus on so-called “traditional” or “classical” diasporas – the archetypical Jewish experience – and encompassing a range of disciplines in the humanities and social sciences. The founding of the academic periodical Diaspora in 1991 is thus symptomatic of such trends. So too is Robin Cohen’s 1997 book on Global Diasporas: An Introduction, launching a publication series on “global diasporas” under his editorial direction.7 Burgeoning migration flows in recent times especially from South to North — reflecting a reversal of previous patterns of North to South population transfers in the heyday of European imperial expansion — have ascribed much salience to the globalising process and impact of diasporic political, economic and cultural mobilisation. Thus is explained the motivation underlying the appearance of “Special Report Diasporas” published in a very recent issue of The Economist.8

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THE C ARIB BEAN L OC ATI ON IN THE “D IA SPO RA STUD IES” CARIB ARIBBEAN LOC OCA TIO “DIA IASPO SPORA STUDIES” ENTERPRISE Given the centrality of the migration experience in the founding and subsequent development of the modern (post-sixteenth century) Caribbean and the associated phenomena of diasporic formations, it is entirely appropriate that one of Robin Cohen’s eight chapters in his Global Diasporas: An Introduction specifically addresses the Caribbean – the topic of Chapter 6 on “Cultural Diasporas – The Caribbean Case”. The Caribbean indeed offers profound insights as well as challenges in the “diaspora studies” enterprise. Here is a region whose modern creation was essentially based on multiple diasporic formations, especially in those territories where the original indigenous inhabitants were either marginalised or in most instances liquidated in the European imperial onslaught. In Cohen’s words: Virtually everybody in the Caribbean came from somewhere else – the African slaves from West Africa, the white settlers, planters and administrators from Europe and the indentured workers who arrived after the collapse of slavery from India. This may in and of itself disqualify any consideration given to the idea of a Caribbean diaspora. Settler and immigrant societies are normally conceived of as points of arrival, not departure, sites of a renewed collectivity, not of dissolution, emigration and dispersion.9 The modern Caribbean originating in the context of imported diasporas – “notably the African victim diaspora, the Indian labour diaspora and the European imperial diasporas” in Cohen’s words – eventually came to be associated with new formations of exported diasporas within and beyond the Caribbean region. In addition to this intriguing Caribbean location as both a diasporic product and subsequent source, the dynamics of Caribbean internal migration alongside external migration presents other insights in the furtherance of diaspora studies. Regarding the issue of internal migration within the larger Caribbean region, Cohen reminds us of the presence of Afro-Caribbean minorities in the Panama Canal Zone and of the smaller enclaves in Central American banana plantations, “often still fiercely resisting the abandonment of the English language, which they value as part of their diasporic identity”.10 But these are not phenomena originating only in the late 19th and early 20th century, as illustrated in this sample of recent studies on Central American migration to Belize, “West Indian” migration to the US Virgin Islands, Cuban and Dominican Republic migration to Puerto Rico, Haitian migration to the Dominican Republic and to the Bahamas, and also the movement of migrants from the Dominican Republic to the Leeward Islands.11

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Such patterns of internal Caribbean migration primarily result in the formation of national diasporic formations within the Caribbean region. By contrast in extra-regional arenas of migration and settlement there are various layers of Caribbean diasporic identity ranging from national (eg. Jamaican or Cuban or Haitian) diasporas to wider cultural sub-regional diasporas (Anglophone, Francophone, Hispanic and Dutch) to even wider notions of a Caribbean archipelago diaspora to the broadest conceptualisation of a Caribbean Basin diaspora. In addition to these spatial Caribbean diasporic formations (national, subregional, archipelago, and circum-Caribbean) one should also take account of socio-structural and socio-behavioral variables which challenge the promotion of diaspora studies from a Caribbean perspective. For example, gender-related considerations loom large, especially given the fact that in recent times Caribbean female migrants have outnumbered men, at least with reference to the United States. While gender-related analyses of the sociological, psychological and economic aspects of Caribbean diasporic formations have been steadily emerging12, political and public policy implications appear to be largely ignored. Another intruding factor is the issue of race/ethnicity, whether relating to distinctive patterns of white Cuban migration in the Castro era or in the case of the dynamics of Indo-Trinidadian as well Indo-Guyanese migration alongside Afro-Trinidadian and Afro-Guyanese migration. For a number of reasons, studies of Afro-Caribbean migration have dominated the research agenda. Much of this has to do with the simple facts of migration demography in which AfroCaribbeans vastly outnumber Indo-Caribbeans. Also, the shared migrant experience of both groups abroad would help to neutralise the ethno-political cleavages previously existing in the Trinidadian and Guyanese homelands. Such political competition becomes less relevant when these groups migrate to various metropoles and now have to adjust to a pre-existing dominant political space. What is more, their experiences in these White-dominant racialised North American and European environments would supersede other ethnic competitions and differentiations which loom larger back at home. Even if notions of Afro-Caribbean and Indo-Caribbean cultural identity may impact on some respective diasporic cultural differentiations, these do not convey significant political implications regarding the relations between both groups outside their Caribbean homelands. Be that as it may, a greater need for research on the Indo-Caribbean diaspora needs to be addressed, as is so well articulated in the following excerpt from the “Foreword” to the Summer/Fall 2000 (Vol. 3, No.2) issue of Wadabagei: A Journal of the Caribbean and its Diaspora: The second dimension of our further diversification pertains to the relative low visibility of Indo-Caribbeans in discourses about the Caribbean. Thus,

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often the region is represented (if only implicitly) as a space inhabited almost exclusively by people of African descent. While this is true in many instances, it denies both the great diversity in the region even within this population, but also the existence of rather substantial populations of Indian descent (by extension, albeit to a smaller degree, a similar argument could be made with regard to peoples of Chinese, Lebanese or Syrian descent). This imbalance has often been “exported” into the Diaspora communities of Europe or North America. As, for example, the large – and growing – annual Phagwah parade in Queens [New York] clearly demonstrates the IndoCaribbean population in the Diaspora is not to be discounted by any means, and is in fact to be regarded as yet another resource of the larger Caribbean community.13 Using a Caribbean perspective to interrogate the challenges associated with “diaspora studies” invites attention to the political and/or cultural dynamics of diasporic formation/identity. For example, if notions of “diaspora” usually convey some perception of an original national-political homeland, what then of the case of Caribbean territories which are now constitutionally incorporated into metropolitan political arrangements – such as the political association of Puerto Rico and the US Virgin Islands with the United States, or the political incorporation of Martinique and Guadeloupe and Cayenne into the French political system, or the similarly integrated political ties between the Netherlands Antilles and the Netherlands, or the special political status of the “associated states” in the Caribbean which still are in some respects formally part of the British political system? It would seem that in cases like these one has to be cautious in applying the notion of “diaspora”, at least in a political sense. However, notions of cultural diasporas remain vibrant and relevant in such situations. Yet another Caribbean challenge to the furtherance of diaspora studies lies in the numerous variations and nuances of the migration phenomenon which include permanent migration (the typical diaspora notion); interim migration (for example, those migrants who are part of a diaspora, as temporary migrant workers); reverse patterns of migration (those who after spending much time as part of a diaspora have returned to their homelands while in some instances retaining some residual ties to their previous diasporic location); or circulatory migrants (those who move from and to or to and from their original homelands and their adopted foreign residences).14 Whatever the complications and challenges in interrogating “diaspora studies” through a Caribbean lens, the basic factor relates to the Caribbean migration propensity. On a per-capita basis it could well be established that the Caribbean region is the most migration-prone of all regions in the international context. This selective sample of numerous studies on Caribbean migration (push and pull) processes illustrates the significance of these phenomena and

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opens the path to explore more specifically the implications for Caribbean diaspora studies.15

Comprehending the Caribbean Diaspora: Various Approaches There have been several studies of Caribbean diasporic formations and consequent diasporic experiences. Most of these studies conventionally focus on areas of diasporic settlement in the host/receiving country, addressing such issues as the conditions of migrant arrival, and related first and subsequent generational political, socioeconomic, educational and cultural adjustments, adaptations, activities, contributions and challenges. Some such studies have a regional or comparative-type perspective on the destination of Caribbean migrants16 but most have a single country focus such as Britain,17 Canada,18 and the United States.19 Nor has Africa been absent from the Caribbean migration propensity, as illustrated in the titles of these two historical studies,20 and is further evidenced in the more recent “Back to Africa” movement of some Jamaican Rastafarians to Ethiopia, or the movement of Haitian political exiles to various parts of Francophone Africa during the period of the Duvalier political tyranny’s. But as Cohen reminds us, Caribbean diasporic formations in Africa have been “mere drops in the [migration] ocean of Caribbean people” over time.21 North American and European metropoles have been the main magnets of Caribbean migration, mainly due to economic opportunities, but also (especially in the case of the United States) involving the movement of political exiles or refugees from Haiti during the period of Duvalier’s tyranny in the past, or from Cuba in the current Castro era. Whether derived from primarily economic or occasionally political considerations, Caribbean diasporic formations in the United States and Europe draw attention to longer established Caribbean connections to these areas in the context of centuries of Caribbean enslavement and colonisation under European dominance as well as the regional hegemonic imperialist presence of the United States since the turn of the 20th century. As shall be further elaborated, such historical and international systemic considerations are relevant in exploring not only Caribbean foreign policy formation processes and international relations options vis-à-vis the dominant North American and European powers; they also impact on Caribbean diasporic (“host country” located) roles and potential in such processes. Challenging the more conventional analytical focus on Caribbean diasporic experiences within various countries or regions of re-settlement is the transnational approach, which underpins Paul Gilroy’s pioneering 1993 study, The Black Atlantic: Modernity and Double Consciousness. In somewhat similar vein are the writings of Stuart Hall 22 and much more recently Harry Goulbourne.23

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Despite various emphases and points of departure, these “transnational” analysts raise important questions about the transatlantic reconfiguration of Caribbean diasporic identity in the context of “hybridity” (in Hall’s words), very much including ties and inspirations relative to broader African diasporic notions, not least involving Black America. One way of addressing Hall’s questioning of “a closed conception of ‘tribe’, diaspora, and homeland” 24 is to recognise the dialectic of relationships between the Caribbean diaspora(s) and homeland(s) which loom potentially large in Caribbean foreign policy initiatives and international relations interests, and which would validate the notion of a “Global Caribbean”. The global Caribbean perspective simultaneously recognises the Caribbean in its component regional and extra-regional parts and also a global “whole”. As articulated by Norman Girvan in his essay aptly entitled “Creating and Recreating the Caribbean”: We can identify at least four broad notions of what constitutes “the Caribbean”. First is the Caribbean as the island chain lying in the Caribbean Sea. Second is the Caribbean as a basin, comprising the countries lying in and around the Caribbean Sea. Third is the Caribbean as an ethno-historic zone, comprising the islands and the adjacent coastal communities in South and Central America sharing a similar history, culture, and ethnicity. The fourth, and more recent, is the idea of the Caribbean as a transnational community that embraces the Caribbean diaspora overseas. 25 This perspective also underpins Ralph Premdas’ notion of “a multi-headed Caribbean identity” (which I prefer to refer to as the “Global Caribbean”): A multi-headed Caribbean identity has now been forged by both residents in the Caribbean and those overseas attesting to the truism that to survive in the global present requires simultaneity in several spaces. While this schizophrenic split at one time described only a small Caribbean group overseas, today it applies with few exceptions to practically every home, village, and township throughout the Caribbean. The Caribbean is truly wherever Caribbean peoples reside in the insular areas of the Caribbean Sea as well as in metropolitan areas everywhere. 26 Similar global Caribbean notions underpinned the launching in 1998 of the multi-disciplinary academic journal Wadabagei: A Journal of the Caribbean and its Diaspora by the Caribbean Research Center at Medgar Evers College, City University of New York, in celebration of its tenth anniversary. The journal’s explicit founding mission is “to address and redress scholarly neglect of the Caribbean and its diaspora”. 27

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One advantage of this global Caribbean approach at the political level is that it encompasses both a transnational sensitivity (necessarily including nongovernmental interests in the Caribbean diaspora) as well as an interstate focus in terms of Caribbean regional foreign policy and diplomatic interests and activities. It is in this context that I shall now proceed to explore further the Caribbean diaspora/Caribbean homeland dialectic.

Positing the Caribbean Diaspora/Caribbean Homeland Dialectic Whatever the various emphases or points of departure in exploring notions and dynamics of the Caribbean diaspora, the simple fact is that the notion of “diaspora” by definition connotes a homeland connection, real or imagined. “Diaspora”, in other words, encompasses two interrelated components – the residential (locational site) and the transactional (connections and interactions of all types involving the homeland). A number of literary contributions by Jamaican poet/folklorist Louise Bennett – all the more authentic, being rooted in Jamaican vernacular – brilliantly posit a range of situations in the diaspora/homeland connection. For example, while insisting in her 1947 poem “Back to Africa” that the real homeland is Jamaica, not an imagined African homeland, she recognises the importance of economic motives underpinning the Jamaican migration propensity, thus articulated in the final stanza: Go a foreign, seek yuh fortune But noh tell nobody seh Yuh dah go fi seek yuh homelan, For a right deh so yuh deh! The implications here are indeed much wider than those pertaining specifically to the back to Africa movement since her basic position is that wherever Jamaican (and by extension Caribbean) migrants relocate, there is always a homeland of original and indeed persisting identification. Another classic example of Louise Bennett’s interrogation of the diaspora/ homeland dialectic is her poem “Colonization in Reverse” written at the height of the momentum of Jamaican migration to Britain during the 1950’s. She rejoices in the phenomenon of “Jamaica people colonizin Englan in reverse,” thus reversing historical processes (“. . . tun history upside dung”) when they “immigrate an populate De seat o’ de Empire”. The implications of this poem are that Jamaica is now replacing Britain as the colonial mother country, consequently becoming the homeland for Jamaican migrant “colonising” forces.28 Moving beyond Louise Bennett’s literary contributions toward

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comprehending the dialectic in psycho-cultural terms, Orlando Patterson’s essay “Reflections on the Caribbean Diaspora and Its Policy Implications” is one of the rare efforts to explore the dialectic in the context of public (including foreign) policy issues and formulation. 29Despite some debatable premises and controversial proposals, Patterson poses a number of important questions for continuing reflection and potential policy implementation. The Report of the West Indian Commission, entitled Time for Action,30 contains many observations and policy recommendations pertaining to the enhancement of relations between the West Indian homeland and diaspora which remain valid over a decade later. Four fundamentally important factors emerge from the Commission’s thinking and methodology. The first is the Commission’s recognition of “The Wider Caribbean”– synonymous with my notion of the “Global Caribbean”– extending beyond the West Indies to the wider Caribbean region and beyond to the West Indian/ Caribbean diaspora.31 Second is the fact that in preparing its report, the Commission consulted several constituencies in the West Indian diaspora in Britain, Canada and the United States, thus making the important statement that such interests are integrally connected to the strengthening of the Caribbean Community. Third, one section of the report is specifically devoted to the topic “Diaspora – Commitment and Potential”,32 in addition to the fact that diasporafocussed concerns are incorporated in other parts of the report. Fourth, the Commission authoritatively articulates the basic reciprocal framework underpinning the diaspora/homeland dialectic: And, quid pro quo, lest it be thought that our interest in the diaspora is purely mercenary, we must also find better organized, more systematic, ways of involving ourselves in the problems they face in their new homes. In particular, the racism which many have experienced, and which many more are likely to experience as the voice of extreme chauvinism becomes shriller in metropolitan countries, must be considered our problem too. We must represent our interest in the well-being of “our people” at the highest official levels and whenever required. We must treat these men and women and children of the diaspora as West Indians all, far from home but close at heart. 33 As implied in the foregoing statement, meaningful explorations of the Caribbean diaspora/homeland dialectic should include considerations of aspects of the host/receiving country conditions which impact on the capacity of resident diasporas to pursue their political interests domestically and indeed externally. Some such considerations will now be broached.

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Exploring Host Country Variables While recognising that “host countries” are not always necessarily hospitable to newer migrant/diasporic formations, the term is employed here as a synonym for “receiving countries” or “countries of resettlement”. In exploring the possibilities and prospects of enhancing meaningful ties and transactions between Caribbean homelands and diasporas in order to advance their collective interests, host country variables are important for two fundamental reasons. The first is that the potential for effectively deploying Caribbean diasporic political resources is integrally related to the nature of that diaspora’s political situatedness and political influence in host country domestic political arenas. This in turn has spillover effects in terms of diasporic capacities to influence host country foreign policy interests vis-à-vis the Caribbean homeland. The second factor initially has less to do directly with diasporic capabilities and interests, but is instead connected to the texture of relationships between the host country and the Caribbean homeland. By this I mean that it is critically important to explore the underlying or overriding foreign policy predispositions and international relations orientations of the host country vis-à-vis the Caribbean region, since this influences the way in which given host countries may or may not be receptive in principle to engage in foreign policy and international relations activities basically favourable to the Caribbean in a systemic context. A focus on the United States as one such host country is most appropriate for a number of reasons. The first is its proximity to the Caribbean region – a proximity reinforced by its institutionalised political presence in certain Caribbean locations, namely Puerto Rico and the US Virgin Islands – thus making it in geo-spatial terms, let alone economic opportunity and occasional political refugee motives, a primary magnet for Caribbean migration. It should also be borne in mind that unlike Britain and France, for example, the United States was created as a nation of migrants. Another consideration is the relative longevity of the Caribbean migrant connection to the United States, the first such momentum beginning in the early 20th century, decades before countries like Canada, Britain, France and the Netherlands began to experience significant Caribbean migration flows. This in turn relates to the quantitative factor, namely that within its borders the United States contains the largest aggregation of Caribbean migrants. Another significant factor is qualitative in nature, namely the range of migrants from different countries and sub-regions of the Caribbean. The United States is indeed the most distinctive of all host countries in having the widest congregation of Caribbean migrants, and hence the broadest formations of Caribbean subdiasporas. To elaborate, Caribbean migrants to the Netherlands are almost exclusively

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from the Dutch-speaking Caribbean; those to France are overwhelmingly from the Francophone Caribbean; those to Britain are predominantly from the Anglophone Caribbean. Caribbean migrants to Canada are primarily Anglophone, but with some Francophone Caribbean presence (mainly from Haiti), given Canada’s bilingual composition influenced by the predominantly French-speaking province of Quebec, a major migration outlet for Haitians. By contrast, migrants to the United States come from all parts of the various Caribbean language and culture areas, especially Anglophone, Hispanic and Francophone. This latter consideration raises challenges with regard to the mobilisation of Caribbean diasporic interests and influences transcending these culture and language differences, a factor which impacts on the efficacy of the prospects of enhancing the Caribbean diaspora/homeland dialectic in the broadest possible sense, involving all of the Caribbean sub-regions. Yet another important factor in the context of foreign policy formation and influence is the commanding power of the United States, as the only regional power within the Americas and the only global superpower, which conveys a special significance in exploring such host country variables in the context of the Caribbean diaspora/homeland dialectic. My earlier comment about the importance of recognising host country predisposing foreign policy and international systemic orientations applies with particular force to the United States. This perspective is especially helpful for interrogating what I consider the misleading comparisons often made on the one hand between the highly effective roles of Jewish American and Cuban American foreign policy lobbies, and on the other hand the relative lack of foreign policy lobbying influence among Caribbean Americans in general. A case in point is the recent suggestion by Richard Bernal, Director-General of the Caribbean Regional Negotiating Machinery – previously Jamaica’s Ambassador to the United States – “that Caribbeans [in the United States] should look at the much more organized groups of the Cubans and Jewish Americans as models”.34 Similar analogies appear in Orlando Patterson’s essay, “Reflections on the Caribbean Diaspora and Its Policy Implications”. Citing inter alia the examples of the successes of the pro-Israel and the Cuban-American lobbies to demonstrate “the fact that American ethnic groups play a significant role in determining major foreign policy decisions, especially those relating to their homeland countries”, Patterson asserts: . . . the West Indian population is not only significant in number, but is concentrated in several crucial states [“that are decisive in America’s voting system”], most notably New York and increasingly Florida. West Indians also have a historical head start over other groups, given their long tradition

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of engagement in American politics. It is time that Caribbean leaders start playing the ethnic lobbying game. 35 However, the degree of influence wielded by ethnic/diasporic foreign policy lobbies cannot be explained only in terms of their organisational skills or their economic resources or their strategic political location in the host country political arena. Important though such factors can be, they do not operate all on their own. For example, to attribute the United States’ continuing and strengthening support for Israel simply or even primarily in terms of the power of the Jewish American lobby – recently identified as the fourth most powerful lobby in the United States – is an oversimplification. The influence and success of this lobby is due not only to organisational initiatives but also to powerful supportive factors already residing in the United States foreign policy establishment. American public opinion, which is overwhelmingly supportive of Israel in the Middle East conflict, is both cause and effect of the influence of the pro-Israel lobby. The United States, which was instrumental in the creation of the state of Israel has been its persistent ally and supporter, not simply due to Jewish American influence, but also to fundamental geo-strategic and geo-economic American interests. The initiatives of the Jewish American lobby objectively tend toward much compatibility with United States foreign policy interests, thus making it easier for that lobby to have such a record of outstanding success. Similar explanatory factors should also be taken into account in considering the strong influence of the Cuban American lobby. While its political influence is aided by its voting concentration in Florida, “a vital swing state in American presidential politics” as Orlando Patterson reminds us,36 there are far more fundamental foreign policy related factors which enhance the influence and power of the Cuban American lobby. It is necessary to recall that the United States hostility to the Fidel Castro regime preceded the first major wave of the Cuban exodus in 1965 and that this hostility has persisted over four decades partly but not only influenced by the presence of a well organised Cuban American lobby. I thus take issue with those who would tend to oversimplify explanations about the success of particular ethnic/diasporic foreign policy lobbies compared with the relative failures of others, without providing sufficient systemic context and without recognising a multiplicity of relevant factors. It is easier for such lobbies to exert influence on host country foreign policies in situations where the host country’s prevailing foreign policy interests and international predispositions are already compatible. To put it another way, those lobbies serving to reinforce host country foreign policy interests start with greater advantages over those lobbies which have an interest in transforming aspects of host country foreign policies.

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There are other reinforcing factors at work. For example, foreign policy lobbies are likely to be better mobilised and effective when dealing with more straightforward ideological or strategic issues of interest to the host country than with the complexity of economic development interests and goals. It is also easier for more effective lobbying mobilisation to occur when focusing on a particular country (such as Israel) or regime (such as Fidel Castro’s), especially if the host country has compatible stakes in the outcomes. Also, effective foreign policy mobilisation and influence is more likely to materialise in situations where the issues are more susceptible to being articulated and perceived in terms of an explicitly focused overriding goal, such as supporting Israel’s survival or seeking to effect the Castro regime’s non-survival. Impacting on the issue of Caribbean American lobbying potential is the fact that, objectively, United States foreign policy and international relations interests tend towards some fundamental incompatibilities with the interests of smaller, developing, and many recent ex-colonial states, in the context of development challenges. Entertaining unrealistic expectations about the mobilisation and deployment of Caribbean American diasporic political influence in favour of the homeland can be as dysfunctional as having no expectations at all. That having been said, it is necessary to recognise long-standing patterns of Caribbean diasporic political, social and economic supports for the Caribbean homeland(s), the more so that in recent times there appears to be a burgeoning tendency toward further institutionalisation of various forms of Caribbean diasporic mobilisation focused on homeland interests. On the other hand, it is also important as a policy imperative to continue to explore Caribbean homeland interests and potential in aiming to consolidate and expand ties with the Caribbean diaspora. After all, the Caribbean diaspora/ homeland dialectic has everything to do with the strengthening of actual, and exploration of other potential, transactional links and exchanges within the notional context of the “Global Caribbean”.

Caribbean Diaspora Supports for the Caribbean Homeland(s) In discussing the nature and range of Caribbean diasporic supports for the Caribbean homeland(s), it is appropriate to begin with the issue of economic remittances37. This phenomenon is by no means unique to the Caribbean since recent studies have shown that with increased international migration flows from South to North, remittances to respective homelands constitute an extraordinarily significant economic resource in the international economic setting. One reason for focussing on economic remittances is due to the longevity and constancy of this activity. The typical migrant need not have to wait for the

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development of a political consciousness linked to homeland advancement before dealing with immediate personal and family-related issues of economic supports and survival. Indeed, one of the primary impulses behind Caribbean migration has been not only to further economic opportunities of migrants abroad but also to recycle some of these economic benefits to alleviate family economic hardships back in the homeland. As pointed out in a recent Jamaican newspaper article, “outside of tourism earnings, remittances from abroad sent by Jamaicans now provide the most amount of foreign exchange”.38 From another angle, Richard Bernal provides reinforcing arguments about the significance of such remittances, in suggesting that “ironically, migrants may contribute more to Caribbean economics than if they had remained in the region”.39 More recently, Bernal has elaborated on the matter, in pointing out that such remittances “account for the largest inflow of foreign capital, even more than foreign investment” in the Caribbean.40 This phenomenon has influenced Orlando Patterson’s controversial proposition that the Caribbean should “start thinking in terms of training people to work in America”. Drawing on experiences from the Indian diaspora, Patterson suggests that remittances from the diaspora in a short time exceed the costs of educational training in the homeland while in the process constituting “a major source of foreign revenues”. He also observes that some of these migrating professionals may indeed return as “skilled returnees for our economies”.41 Some analysts have suggested that we should not exaggerate the real impact of remittances, on the grounds that they are mostly applied to consumption rather than investment purposes. But this argument fails to pay sufficient attention to the fact that alleviating individual and family economic hardships in the homeland has some positive repercussions for the wider politico-economic system by helping to ease the strains which might otherwise be imposed for providing more economic opportunities and meeting welfare expectations. Over many decades there have been a range of voluntary Caribbean diasporic associations based in the United States which have sought to provide support for the enhancement of Caribbean socioeconomic, cultural, educational and political life. This phenomenon has been analysed in a succinct way by Bert J. Thomas, himself of West Indian origin.42 Examining 16 such voluntary associations in Harlem, New York, Thomas notes that “while island parochialism was the norm” these “individual groups maintained strong links with governments and organizations back home in the Caribbean”. Drawing on historical as well as contemporary insights on these organisations’ linkages with the Caribbean, Thomas identifies six main areas in which these groups have been individually or collectively engaged, as illustrated in these examples. One such group, the Utilities D’Haiti was “created to encourage Americans to buy Caribbean products” while also fostering “a retention of the members’

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Caribbean culture”. Another such group, the West Indian Federation and Unity Association “came into existence to retain linkages with and to duplicate in the US the [then] young movement toward Caribbean political integration in the Caribbean”. A third such group, the Jamaica Progressive League, founded in 1936 and still in existence today, provided much support to the emerging trade union and political party movements in the period of West Indian labour disturbances in the late 1930’s. While being mainly concerned with Jamaica, the League has also been involved in wider West Indian causes. A fourth group tendency, has been related to “the perennial disaster, be it the flood or hurricane, [which] was always and still is a concern for Caribbean groups” – an activity in which “Caribbean-American groups were at their unified best as they provided relief”. A fifth area of involvement is in “educating the youth both at home and abroad”, whether through the provision of scholarships, or the support of training programmes, or supporting educational institutions and initiatives back in the homeland. Finally, Thomas identifies “a keen interest” in health delivery systems in the Caribbean, on the part of many such groups, whether in terms of fundraising to improve health standards or providing medical equipment for hospitals or sponsoring visits by Caribbean American medical practitioners to donate their services for weeks or even months in the Caribbean. A most encouraging recent development lies in burgeoning efforts in Caribbean America to institutionalise an interest and involvement in Caribbean homeland development. To illustrate selectively, organisations such as the Caribbean Media Association (USA), Inc., formed in March 1994, and the Caribbean American Chamber of Commerce and Industry (CACCI), founded and incorporated in the state of New York in 1985, explicitly include Caribbean homeland concerns and involvement within their broader mission, primarily focused on the diaspora. Another example of recent institutionalised Caribbean diasporic formations which incorporate a homeland interest is the Association of Caribbean American Elected Officials and Leaders (ACAEOL). Founded in the late 1990s on the initiative of then Brooklyn Councilmember Una Clarke (of Jamaican origin), this currently 25-member organisation – made up of two US Congresswomen, some state legislators, and a number of Mayors, elected judges, and legislators at county, city or ward levels – in its Mission Statement includes among its purposes this first-stated commitment: “To promote, advocate and educate individuals, corporations, government and regulatory agencies on issues of interest to Caribbean Nations.” A more recent organisational initiative is the Caribbean American Leadership Summit (CALS) launched in Brooklyn, New York in August 2001 and which has since held its Second Summit in August 2002. Spearheaded by the CACCI and the Caribbean Research Center at Medgar Evers College in

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Brooklyn, the Leadership Summit includes representatives of the Caribbean community in New York City affiliated to a wide range of organisations covering fields such as education, communications, culture, economic and business development, family services, sports, the media, and the legal profession. The underlying rationale emerging from the stated interests and activities of CALS is that the development of the Caribbean diasporic community cannot take place in isolation from development in the Caribbean homelands. Among the stated objectives of CALS is the enhancement of two-way trade ties between the United States and the Caribbean and also to engage in efforts to develop more effective lobbying capability – two aims intended to enhance diaspora/homeland connections and transactions. The National Coalition On Caribbean Affairs (NCOCA), founded in 1997 with headquarters in Silver Spring, Maryland, in order to represent and advance common interests of the Caribbean diaspora and homeland is explicit in its goal of developing political capability to advance the collective interests of the Caribbean diaspora and the Caribbean region. NCOCA thus describes its founding mission: The National Coalition On Caribbean Affairs (NCOCA) was founded in 1997 to address issues impacting Caribbean communities within the United States of America and in the Caribbean region. NCOCA is a realization of the need for new, cohesive strategies to address a variety of challenges that impact peoples of the Caribbean at home and in the USA, and the realization that there needs to be a strong, unified Caribbean entity that can, among other things: Promote Caribbean interests in legislative matters; Provide the Caribbean community with a constant flow of information on issues important to its welfare; and galvanize the community to participate fully in civic matters at the local, state and national levels. Based on individual and organisational membership, NCOCA which already has regional coordinators in place in eight states in the American Northeast, North Central and South, and with its headquarters strategically situated in Maryland, close to the corridors of power in Washington, D.C., is obviously committed in its mission to become an effective lobbying force for Caribbeans “at home [ author’s emphasis] and in the USA”. What is more, although NCOCA’s leadership echelons – Board of Directors and Main Officers – are comprised mainly of those of Commonwealth Caribbean origin (representing nine such countries), the inclusion of one Haitian and one Netherlands Antillean among its main officers suggests that the organisation is designed to have a region-wide Caribbean participant base and focus.

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Such institutional developments potentially augur well in demonstrating more incentives and providing more opportunities for the greater fulfillment of development needs and goals for the Caribbean diaspora/homeland collective. It is thus appropriate now to turn to considerations of Caribbean homeland interests and initiatives in exploring and developing connections with its diaspora(s) as a mutually advantageous imperative.

Enhancing Caribbean Homeland Initiatives It appears that in recent times there has been an increasing frequency of contacts involving the Caribbean homeland and the Caribbean diaspora, relevant to the policy-making context. Caribbean decision-makers, during their visits to various diaspora communities, frequently reiterate the theme of common ties and interests between homeland and diaspora and at other times may articulate more specific areas in which collaboration between homeland and diaspora can help to solve or alleviate some of the socioeconomic problems back in the homeland. Examples of the latter are the recently increasing appeals on the part of Jamaican government representatives to overseas Jamaicans for assistance in fighting the rising crime rate which, too, involves overseas diasporic elements. My impressionistic assessment is that such contacts – a visit or a speech, here or there – important though they can be, are more indicative of short-run ad hoc interactions than of longer-range systematised transactions. It would indeed be appropriate to revisit, a decade later, the analysis and recommendations of the 1992 West Indian Commission on the specific topic “Diaspora – Commitment and Potential”, in order to assess the extent to which the range of recommendations on strengthening, indeed systematising, the homeland relationship with the diaspora have been seriously considered or implemented by CARICOM (Caribbean Community) governments. The issue of expanding and institutionalising frameworks for the transfer of economic remittances, discussed by the West Indian Commission, is an even greater challenge today in the aftermath of the 9/11 (2001) terrorist attacks on United States territory. New United States measures now being put into place in the fight against terrorism will limit trans-border monetary flows which will impact profoundly on numerous resident diasporas, especially those originating from the Third World/South where such remittances have been of major economic significance to their homelands. One interesting approach in the recommendations of the West Indian Commission is that it dealt with remittances less in the context of conventional monetary transfers to individuals and families in the homeland, and more in the context of broaching ways and means of institutionalising the remittance phenomenon in terms of investment. In recommending “that credible mechanisms for the mobilisation and channeling of investment capital from

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the diaspora be put in place”, the Commission also recommended that governments provide the necessary support to financial institutions to establish facilities for mobilising savings of West Indians living abroad.43 Coping with this new challenge involving consumption or investment remittances will obviously require more sustained efforts and coordinated strategies between homeland and diaspora, especially to cushion some of the adverse circumstances in this post 9/11 situation. During the June 21, 2002 CARICOM Day celebrations held in Brooklyn, New York, CARICOM Secretary-General, Edwin Carrington, in addressing the predominantly Caribbean American audience, is reported to have said “that CARICOM is also ready to access not only their remittances but also their skills and ideas” in order “to make a lasting and positive impact on the fortunes of our region”.44 This implies that the challenge of systematising Caribbean regional efforts to address the issue of economic remittances is still very much alive. Also implied in this formulation is the notion of “remittances” being in effect extended beyond conventional monetary considerations, to include diasporic remittances of skills and ideas. 45 This naturally raises considerations of the implications of the “brain-drain” or the skills drain in the migration process. While there is every reason to lament these consequences – especially since the training for such talents and skills is mostly incurred at public expense in the homelands – given the fact that Caribbean governments have no capacity and should indeed have no inclination to limit migration opportunities, a productive countervailing approach would be to explore the extent to which migrated or exported skills and talents can be redeployed for the benefit of the homeland. Such considerations are all the more salient in view of the current aggressive drives, especially by the United States, to recruit West Indian teachers and nurses to meet its professional needs. The West Indian Commission in approaching this issue in a systematic way under the rubric “Mobilising Caribbean Expertise in the Diaspora” recommended “that a regional scheme for attracting back West Indian expertise in the diaspora be developed”, involving “the establishment of a ‘Skills Bank’ and the identification and location of professional skills and technical expertise which could be harnessed by the Region on terms and conditions mutually advantageous to both donor and recipient”.46 The thinking underlying this idea of establishing a “Skills Bank” has been manifested in other diaspora/homeland transactions, for example in the more recently articulated notion of “brain circulation”. This phrase has been used to describe a movement among some Silicon Valley entrepreneurs of Asian descent to remit or deploy skills developed in the United States for the benefit of their home countries, thus – in the words of Professor Analee Saxenian of the University of California, Berkeley – “building on the best of both places”.47 Such strategies could indeed assist in cushioning some of the negative impacts of the

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brain drain or skills drain. Immigration rules and practices of the North American and European magnets of Caribbean migration have frequently persisted as a sensitive issue, indeed a sore spot, in relations between the Caribbean and these “host countries”. These relations have been especially exacerbated by the still burning issue of “deportees”. CARICOM members have expressed their concerns loudly and clearly on this issue and challenge, so well articulated – with special reference to the United States – by Vaughan Lewis in his presentation at the September 1999 Mona (University of the West Indies) Academic Conference: In addition, the United States has itself created a new national security threat for many of the Caribbean states, by its wanton expulsion of criminal elements long removed from their places of their birth and, as has been said, well-trained in the modern American technologies of crime, back to their native Caribbean lands; this being done with minimal consultation until the onset of vociferous protests from Caribbean states. This phenomenon is likely to continue, leading, paradoxically, to a new dependence on the United States for wherewithal with which Caribbean states can control the new bandits on their homeground.48 The United States is not, of course, the only migrant receiving country involved in such practices, but it is of primary significance. For example, it was recently reported that in the last 12 years up to 70 per cent of Jamaican deportees have come from the United States.49 Another relevant statistic, as conveyed in a more recent newspaper report, is that “since the 1996 variation in the US immigration laws over 35,000 Caribbean nationals were deported of which 24,996 were classified as criminal deportees”.50 The latter newspaper report is based on an address by Jack E. Wallace, attorney-at-law for the Florida Immigrant Advocacy Center, at the January 2003 ACAEOL, held in Fort Lauderdale, Florida. Alluding to the tightened United States Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) regulations already being imposed on immigrants from some Middle Eastern and South Asian countries, Wallace anticipated that the Caribbean might soon be subject to similar INS registration requirements. He further warned of a likelihood of a new wave of deportation of Caribbean nationals, even involving the retroactive application of some US immigration laws. The ACAEOL venue for Wallace’s remarks is important, demonstrating that such concerns apply not only to the Caribbean homeland but also to the Caribbean American constituencies. The fact is that the deportee issue creates hardships for both sides. This is well summed up in the following comment by Brooklyn Councilwoman Yvette Clarke – of Jamaican ancestry – in recently expressing her concerns about aspects of the Patriot Act Anti-Terrorism Bill

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which came into effect in October 2001, including provisions for deportations which in her words are “part and parcel” of the Act: I don’t think it is only destabilizing the countries of the Caribbean, to which people are being deported, but people are being separated from their families (in the United States). People don’t recognize that it also has a destabilizing effect on families in the United States, because the person who is being deported may have also been the sole bread-winner, taking care of a family. He is deported to country where he has no roots, so you have a two-fold situation. . . 51 Clearly this issue of deportees – which includes not only those with a criminal record – continues to loom large as an area for appropriate strategies to be developed between the Caribbean homeland and various affected Caribbean diasporas in order to confront this challenge. Another issue which seems to require the concerted attention of Caribbean homeland governments and societies is the receptivity accorded to actual or potential return migrants – Caribbeans in the diaspora who voluntarily wish to relocate in their respective homelands. Richard Bernal’s summarised comments at the March 2002 Annual US-Caribbean Executives Club in Washington D.C. are indeed perturbing: [Caribbean] Governments do recognize the importance of the diaspora, but an ambiguous attitude exists to overseas success and creates a problem for those who want to return to the homeland. The governments are not necessarily welcoming to returnees. Some governments have established offices to welcome and engage returnees, but the countries are still ambiguous. Developing more positive attitudes to these voluntary returnees by facilitating a welcoming environment in order to ease their transition back into homeland societies would be of mutual advantage for homeland and diaspora. Surely, perceptions entertained in the Caribbean diasporas of any negative attitudes residing in the homeland towards their status and interests are certain to complicate the building of mutually beneficial relations. Another area which needs to be tackled on the homeland front – if it is not yet in place – is to systematically incorporate knowledge about the Caribbean diaspora at large throughout all levels of the educational system, in textbooks and in courses taught. There is a ready-made receptive audience since, at least in the West Indies, most students are likely to have close or distant relatives with some diasporic residence or experience. But systematising such knowledge in the educational system can help to reinforce knowledge about the importance of diaspora/homeland ties, of the mutual and collective interests of both

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components, and of Caribbean diasporic contributions to the development and advancement of the host societies. Not least, it will help to enhance perceptions of the emergence of a Global Caribbean. On November 20, 1998 there occurred on the floor of the Jamaican Senate an extensive debate – in reality a discussion in which the participants all shared common ground – on a motion introduced by Senator Trevor Munroe, in the following way: . . . this motion before us calls for three things. It calls first of all for the Senate to record its appreciation of the positive role of overseas Jamaicans in Jamaica’s survival and development. Secondly, it asks the Senate to call on the government in association with the appropriate non-governmental organisations of Jamaicans abroad, private sector entities here in Jamaica, as well as abroad and returning residents’ associations to convene an urgent conference or consultation of overseas and resident Jamaicans, the purpose of which would be to upgrade, not to begin, but to upgrade our attention to one another’s concerns, to remove barriers which remain, many of which are artificial, and generally to raise the level of mutual assistance to one another. Thirdly, it asks that such a conference of overseas and resident Jamaicans should consider, and I underline consider, the appropriateness of a dedicated minister or ministry to the issues facing overseas Jamaicans and returning residents communities. To provide more effective support to overseas Jamaicans such a conference would seek to develop and to implement policies to more comprehensively involve overseas Jamaicans in the political, economic, sporting and cultural life in Jamaica. The Maryland-based NCOCA, in a statement of support for the resolution, expressed “the fervent hope that acceptance of Senator Munroe’s resolution in Jamaica will establish a precedent which will be emulated by all the Caribbean governments”. NCOCA’s suggestion surely warrants serious consideration. Not only could it be a productive exercise to replicate this kind of debate in different parliamentary forums across the Caribbean region, but also it is worthwhile to heed at least one of the resolution’s concrete proposals, namely the need for organising a conference of overseas and resident Caribbeans to help enhance collective diaspora/homeland concerns and interests. The fact that the proposal to convene such a conference involving Jamaican diasporic and homeland interests has not yet materialised – despite the idea’s unanimous recommendation by the Jamaican Senate in 1998 – should be seen not as a disincentive, but as a challenge. One intriguing aspect of Senator Munroe’s resolution is the suggestion that

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“such a conference . . . consider . . . the appropriateness of a dedicated minister or ministry to deal with the issues facing overseas Jamaicans and returning residents communities”. I find this intriguing because there is a precedent of sorts in the establishment in Haiti of a Ministry for Haitians Residing Abroad, which is sometimes cited as a possible model to be emulated elsewhere in the region. This ministry was created in 1991 shortly after Aristide was elected as president, following up on his suggestions a year earlier about creating a “10th Department”, while on a campaign swing through the Haitian diaspora resident in the United States. By adding this 10th department to Haiti’s pre-existing nine geographic divisions, the underlying rationale was that Haitian emigrants living abroad would, whether or not they became naturalised United States citizens, continue to remain Haitians and part of Haiti. Such a formulation, of course, arose from distinctive conditions of contemporary Haitian diasporic formation, related mainly to the expansion of Haitian diasporas of exile during the previous authoritarian Duvalier and immediate post-Duvalier period, then being challenged by Aristide. However, as pointed out in a recent communication [to this author] by Professor Alex Dupuy (of Haitian origin): The ministry has a purely symbolic or ideological function, since Haitians living in the US do not have a right to vote in Haitian elections, and the Haitian government so far does not recognise dual citizenship. Moreover, the ‘tenth’ department exists only in the US and does not include Haitians living in other countries, such as Canada, where there are about 150,000+ Haitians, the Bahamas, with its 60,000+ immigrants or the Dominican Republic where there are now well over 500,000 Haitians living there. 52 Dupuy suggests that economic considerations largely help to explain the ministry’s focus on the Haitian diaspora in the United States: Haitians in the US send upwards of $500 million back to Haiti annually, making them an important economic bloc, and there is also an emerging professional middle class among Haitians in the US (as in Canada) that makes them a potentially important source of know-how and cultural capital (if not also investment capital) that the government could tap. But it seems clear that political factors are also at work. The creation of the Ministry for Haitians Residing Abroad arose out of the specific political conditions of Haiti, given that Haitian communities in exile naturally became exceptionally involved directly in the politics of their homeland in the interests of facilitating transformations, as was represented in Aristide’s challenge to the status quo.

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This is a situation less typical of most other Caribbean political conditions. Also, the ministry’s ultimate desire to institutionalise an overseas voting component of Haitians could be fraught with related administrative and political complications. In its specifics, the Haitian model is not one recommended for emulation on a region-wide basis. However, a significant implication arises, namely that Caribbean governments should feel challenged to explore ways and means of institutionalising homeland/diaspora connections to enhance transactional flows and impacts in the overall interests of advancing the interests and needs of the Global Caribbean. One method of promoting such institutionalisation could lie in CARICOM’s granting of observer status to selected organisations from various parts of the Caribbean diaspora. Perhaps this is already being considered, but it useful to be reminded of the initiatives undertaken by ACAEO (the Association of Caribbean American Elected Officials) which announced in July 2002 that it had applied for observer status with CARICOM. More recently in February 2003, NCOCA was approved for participation in activities sponsored by the Organization of American States. Such OAS accreditation, which seems to draw attention to the way in which CARICOM has lagged in promoting such initiatives, should hopefully act as an incentive on CARICOM’s part to cementing such relationships with relevant Caribbean diasporic organisations. Admittedly, there could be problems in deciding among the claims of various diasporic groups for observer status or for other forms of linkage with CARICOM. But the working out of clear and considered guidelines by CARICOM for such affiliations would in and of itself be a productive enterprise in encouraging CARICOM to formulate systematically the Caribbean Community’s needs, interests, priorities and expectations in developing such institutional arrangements. In his June 2002 address at CARICOM Day celebrations in Brooklyn, CARICOM Secretary-General Edwin Carrington had this to say: Make no mistake about it, the encouragement from you our Caribbean brothers and sisters in the Diaspora can be a definite spur in our activities in forging a united Caribbean that has for so long been dreamt of. Conversely, I maintain that homeland efforts and successes in forging a united Caribbean are likely to redound positively on the prospects of Caribbean national and cultural sub-diasporas forging a greater degree of Caribbean diasporic unity. This could well prove to be the homeland’s greatest potential impact in giving real meaning to the notion of a Global Caribbean.

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NOTES 1. Diaspora: A Journal of Transnational Studies, published three times per year, jointly by Oxford University Press and University of Toronto Press, was initiated with the first issue, Vol I, No 1 (Spring 1991). 2. Gabriel Sheffer, ed. Modern Diasporas in International Politics (London & Sydney: Croom Helm,1986). Sheffer’s introductory chapter is entitled “A New Field of Study: Modern Diasporas in International Politics,” pp 1-15. Included in this volume is my essay, “Black America as a Mobilizing Diaspora: Some International Implications”, pp.164-211, formulating theoretical perspectives on “diaspora”/ “host-country”/ “homeland” interactions which are being applied and extended to the present analysis. 3. Such, for example, is the case of Cornell University’s Africana Studies and Research Center (to which I have been affiliated since 1983), which was founded in 1969 with a globalised Africana ethos, focussing mainly but not exclusively on interdisciplinary and interrelated studies of Black America, Africa and the Caribbean. 4. Given the long-standing Western World’s intellectual historical and historiographical distortions and abuse of Africa and Africans worldwide, it was appropriate that the UNESCO project of regional histories was launched with the UNESCO General History of Africa Series in 1965 (in principle) and formulated in 1969-1971 (in terms of concrete planning) as an 8-volume series (all since published). 5. For example: Aubrey Bonnett & G. Llewellyn Watson, eds. Emerging Perspectives on the Black Diaspora (Lanhan, Maryland: University Press of America, 1990); Michael Conniff & Thomas Davis, eds. Africans in the Americas: A History of the Black Diaspora (New York: St Martin’s Press, 1994); Joseph Harris, ed. Global Dimensions of the African Diaspora, 2nd ed (Washington, D.C.: Howard University Press, 1993); Alusine Jalloh & Stephan Maizlish eds. The African Diaspora (Arlington: Texas A & M University Press, 1996); Isidore Okpewho, Carole Boyce Davies, & Ali A. Mazrui, eds., The African Diaspora: African Origins and New World Identities (Bloomington & Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 1999); Ruth Hamilton Simms, Creating a Paradigm and Research Agenda for Comparative Studies of the Worldwide Dispersion of African Peoples (East Lansing: African Diaspora Research Project, Michigan State University, 1990). 6. See e.g. Paul Gilroy. The Black Atlantic: Modernity and Double Consciousness (London: Verso, 1993). 7. Robin Cohen. Global Diasporas: An Introduction (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1997). 8. “Special Report Diasporas: A World of Exiles,” The Economist, (January 4, 2003): 4143. 9. Cohen, Global Diasporas, p. 137 10. Ibid., p. 139.

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11. John C. Everitt, “The Recent Migrations of Belize, Central America,” International Migration Review, XVII, No. 2 (Summer 1984): 319-325; Klaus de Albuquerque and Jerome McElroy, “West Indian Migration to the United States Virgin Islands: Demographic Impacts and Socioeconomic Consequences,” International Migration Review, XVI, No. 1 (Spring 1982): 61-101; Jorge Duany, “Caribbean Migration to Puerto Rico: A Comparison of Cubans and Dominicans,” International Migration Review, XXVI, No. 1 (Spring 1992): 46-66; André Corten and Isis Duarte, “Five Hundred Thousand Haitians in the Dominican Republic,” Latin American Perspectives, XXII, No. 3 (Summer 1995): 94-110; Dawn Marshall, The Haitian Problem: Illegal Migration to the Bahamas (Mona, Kingston: Institute of Social and Economic Research, University of the West Indies, 1979); Jessica Byron, “Migration, National Identity and Regionalism in the Caribbean: A Leeward Islands Case Study,” in Contending with Destiny: The Caribbean in the 21st Century Kenneth Hall and Denis Benn (eds.), (Kingston: Ian Randle Publishers, 2000): 80-90. This book edited by Hall and Benn – to which I shall refer from time to time – is based on the papers presented at the September 1999 Mona Academic Conference on the Caribbean in the Twenty-First Century held on the Mona (Jamaica) campus of the University of the West Indies. 12. See e.g. Dennis Conway and Susan Walcott, “Gendered Caribbean and Latin American New Immigrant Employment Experiences in New York City,” Wadabagei, II, No 1 (Winter/Spring 1999): 53-112. Also see essays in Ransford Palmer (ed.), In Search of a Better Life: Perspectives on Migration from the Caribbean (New York; Praeger, 1990), by Monica Gordon, “Dependents or Independent Workers? The Status of Caribbean Immigrant Women in the United States” (pp. 115-137) and Aubrey Bonnett, “The New Female West Indian Immigrant: Dilemmas of Coping in the Host Society,” (pp.139-149). Also see essays in Mary Chamberlain, ed. Caribbean Migration: Globalized Identities (London & New York: Routledge, 1998), by Helma Lutz, “The Legacy of Migration: Immigrant Mothers and Daughters and the Legacy of Intergenerational Transmission” (pp. 95-108); Yvette Kopijn, “Constructions of Ethnicity in the Diaspora: The Case of Three Generations of Surinamese-Javanese Women in the Netherlands” (pp. 109-126); Margaret Byron, “Migration, Work and Gender: The Case of Post War Labour Migration From the Caribbean to Britain” (pp. 217-237); Stephanie Condon, “Compromise and Coping Strategies: Gender Issues and Caribbean Migration to France” (pp. 232-247). Also see essays in Winston James and Clive Harris, eds. Inside Babylon: The Caribbean Diaspora in Britain (London: Verso, 1993), by Gail Lewis “Black Women’s Employment and the British Economy” (pp. 73-96); Amina Mama, “Woman Abuse In London’s Black Communities” (pp. 97-134); Amina Mama, “Black Women and the Police: A Place Where the Law is Not Upheld” (pp. 135-152); Claudette Williams, “We Are a Natural Part of Many Different Struggles: Black Women Organizing” (pp.153-164). 13. Illustrative of emerging research on the Indo-Caribbean diaspora are Steven Vertovec, “Indo-Caribbean Experience in Britain: Overlooked, Miscategorized, Misunderstood” in James and Harris, eds. Inside Babylon: The Caribbean Diaspora in Britain, pp. 165-

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14.

15.

16.

17.

18.

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178; Simboonath Singh, “Ethnic Associations and the Development of Political Consciousness in Indian Diaspora Communities: The Indo-Caribbean Experience in Canada”, Wadabagei, III, No. 2 (Summer/Fall 2000): 38-75. See e.g., Mary Chamberlain, Narratives of Exile and Return (New York: St Martin’s Press, 1997); George Gmelich, Double Passage: The Lives of Caribbean Migrants Abroad and Back Home (Ann Arbor: The University of Michigan Press, 1992); Harry Goulbourne, “Returning ‘Home’ from the ‘Mother Country’ in the 1990s,” Chapter 8 in Goulbourne, Caribbean Transnational Experience (London: Pluto Press, 2002): 184-205; Patricia Pessar, Caribbean Circuits: New Directions in the Study of Caribbean Migrations (New York: Center for Migration Studies, 1997); William Stinner, Klaus de Albuquerque and Roy Bryce-Laporte, eds. Return Migration and Remittances: Developing a Caribbean Perspective (Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution, 1982). Illustrative of a range of books on Caribbean migration processes are Rosemary Brana-Shute, ed. A Bibliography of Caribbean Migration and Caribbean Immigrant Communities (Gainsville: University of Florida Libraries in Cooperation with the Center for Latin American Studies, University of Florida, 1983); Barry Levine, ed. The Caribbean Exodus (New York: Praeger, 1987); Ransford Palmer, ed. In Search of a Better Life: Perspectives on Migration From the Caribbean (New York: Praeger, 1990); Elizabeth M. Thomas-Hope, Explanation in Caribbean Migration (London: The Macmillan Press, 1992). For a succinct historical overview see Bonham C. Richardson, “Caribbean Migrations, 1838-1985.” In The Modern Caribbean Franklin Knight & Colin Palmer eds. (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1989): 203-228. See e.g. Colin Brock, ed. The Caribbean in Europe: Aspects of the West Indian Experience in Britain, France and the Netherlands (London: Frank Cass, 1986); Mary Chamberlain, ed. Caribbean Migration: Globalized Identities (London & New York: Routledge, 1998); Malcolm Cross & Han Entzinger, eds. Lost Illusions: Caribbean Minorities in Britain and the Netherlands (London: Routledge, 1988); Nancy Foner, “West Indians in New York City and London: A Comparative Analysis,” International Migration Review, XVII No. 2 (Summer 1979): 284-297; Keith Henry, “Caribbean Political Dilemmas in North America and the United Kingdom,” Journal of Black Studies, VII, No 4 (June 1977): 373-386; Anthony Richmond, “Caribbean Immigrants in Britain and Canada: Socio-Economic Adjustment,” International Migration Review, XXVI, No. 4 (1988): 365-375. See e.g. Winston James & Clive Harris, eds. Inside Babylon: The Caribbean Diaspora in Britain (London: Verso, 1993); Philip Nanton. “The Caribbean Diaspora in the Promised Land.” In London: The Promised Land? The Migrant Experience in a Capital City, Anne J. Kershen ed,(Aldershot: Avebury, 1997): 110-127. See e.g. Frances Henry, The Caribbean Diaspora in Toronto: Learning to Live with Racism (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1994); Herard Jadotte, “Haitian Immigration to Quebec,” Journal of Black Studies, VII, No. 4 (June 1977): 484-500; Dwaine Plaza, “A Socio-Historic Examination of Caribbean Migration to Canada: Moving to the Beat of Changes in Immigration Policy,” Wadabagei, IV, No. 1 (Winter/Spring 2001): 39-80.

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19. See e.g. C. Jama Adams, “Contested Space: Psycho-Social Themes Around the Construction of Caribbean-American Identities,” Wadabagei, II No. 1 (Winter/Spring 1999): 29-52; Roy Bryce-Laporte & Delores Mortimer, eds. Caribbean Immigration to the United States (Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution, 1976); Bryce-Laporte, “Introduction: New York City and the New Caribbean Migration – A Contextual Statement,” International Migration Review, XIII, No. 2 (Summer 1979): 214-234; Holger Henke, The West Indian Americans (Westwood: Greenwood Press, 2001); Percy Hintzen, West Indians in the West: Self-Representations in a Migrant Community (New York: New York University Press, 2001). Matthijs Kalmijn, “The Socioeconomic Assimilation of Caribbean American Blacks,” Social Forces, LXX, No. 3 (March 1996): 911-930; Philip Kasinitz, Caribbean New York: Black Immigrants and the Politics of Race (Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press, 1992); Suzanne Model, “Caribbean Immigrants: A Black Success Story?” International Migration Review, XXVII, No. 2 (Summer 1991): 248-276; Ransford Palmer, Pilgrims From The Sun: West Indian Migration to America (New York: Twayne Publishers, 1995); Alex Stepick, Pride Against Prejudice: Haitians in the United States (Boston: Allyn & Bacon, 1988); Catherine Sunshine & Keith Warner, eds. Caribbean Connections: Moving North (Washington, D.C.: Network of Educators on the Americas, 1998); Constance Sutton & Elsa Chaney, eds. Caribbean Life in New York City: Socioeconomic Dimensions (New York: Center for Migration Studies of New York, 1987). 20. Nemata A. Blyden, West Indians in West Africa, 1808-1880: The African Diaspora in Reverse (Rochester: University of Rochester Press, 2000); Alan G. Cobley, “‘Far From Home:’ The Origins and Significance of the Afro-Caribbean Community in South Africa to 1930,” Journal of Southern African Studies, XVIII, No. 2 (June 1992): 349370. 21. Cohen, Global Diasporas, p. 139 22. Stuart Hall, “Thinking the Diaspora: Home-Thoughts from Abroad,” Small Axe, VI, No. 6 (September 1999): 1-18. 23. Goulbourne, Caribbean Transnational Experience (London: Pluto Press, 2002) 24. Hall, “Thinking the Diaspora,” p. 4 25. Norman Girvan, “Creating and Recreating the Caribbean.” In Contending with Destiny: The Caribbean in the 21st Century, Kenneth Hall & Denis Benn eds. (Kingston: Ian Randle Publishers, 2000): 31-32. 26. Ralph Premdas, “Diversity and Liberation in the Caribbean: The Decentralist Policy Challenge in the New Millennium,” In Contending with Destiny, Hall & Benn eds., p 176. 27. The first issue of Wadabagei was published as Vol. I, No. 1 (Winter/Spring 1998). The founding and current director of the Caribbean Research Center is George Irish who was born in Montserrat and was an academician at the Mona campus of the University of the West Indies before moving to New York over two decades ago. 28. These two poems, “Back to Africa” and “Colonization in Reverse” are published in Louise Bennett, Jamaica Labrish (Kingston: Novelty Trading Co. & Sangster’s Book

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Store, 1966): 214-15 & 179-180. 29. Orlando Patterson, “Reflections on the Caribbean Diaspora and Its Policy Implications,” In Contending with Destiny: The Caribbean in the 21st Century, Hall & Benn eds., pp. 500-510. 30. Time for Action: Report of the West Indian Commission, 2nd ed. (Largo, Maryland: International Development Options, 1994); first published in 1992. The Commission chaired by Sir Shridath Ramphal (currently Chancellor of the University of the West Indies) was established in 1989 by CARICOM Heads of Government to develop proposals through public consultation for widening and deepening Caribbean integration processes and for preparing the people of the West Indies for the 21st century. 31. Time for Action, pp. 25-27. 32. Time for Action, pp. 408-415. 33. Time for Action, pp. 26-27. 34. This statement is recorded in the “Summary of Proceedings” of the Third Annual US-Caribbean Executives Clubs in Washington D.C. (March 2002), which focussed on the theme “The Caribbean Diaspora Hits Home: Economic, Social, and Political Impacts in the Caribbean.” 35. Patterson, “Reflections on the Caribbean Diaspora and Its Policy Implications,” p. 507. 36. Ibid 37. See e.g., William Stinner, Klause de Albuquerque & Roy Bryce-Laporte, (eds). Return Migration and Remittances, one of several studies of this phenomenon. 38. Lloyd B. Smith, “On Being a Jamaican,” The Daily Observer, January 21, 2003, p. 8. 39. Richard Bernal, “The Caribbean in the International System: Outlook for the First Twenty Years of the Twenty-first Century”. In Contending with Destiny: The Caribbean in the 21st Century, Hall & Benn eds., p. 301. 40. Reported in “Summary of Proceedings of the Third Annual US-Caribbean Executives Club in Washington D.C. (March 2002). 41. Patterson, “Reflections on the Caribbean Diaspora and Its Implications,” p. 508 42. Bert J. Thomas, “Historical Functions of Caribbean-American Benevolent/Progressive Associations,” Afro-Americans in New York Life and History, XII. No. (July 31, 1988): 45 ff. 43. Time for Action, pp. 415 and 133. 44. Felicia Persaud, “CARICOM Secretary General Urges Caribbeans In NYC to Lend Voices, Skills,” . 45. This idea of expanding the notion of “remittances” beyond purely monetary considerations is inspired by the personal reflections of Roy Bryce-Laporte (a United States resident of immediate Panamanian ancestry and earlier West Indian ancestral background) who as a noted scholar on Caribbean migration experiences surmised that his scholarly interests and contributions might perhaps “constitute personal forms of remittances” in lieu, or in anticipation, of returning; “Preface” in Return

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Migration and Remittances, William Stinner, Klause de Albuquerque and Roy BryceLaporte (eds.), pp. xx-xxi. 46. Time For Action, pp. 251-252, 264, 415. 47. This concept of “brain circulation”, was mentioned in a CNN Headline News report of September 17, 2002, discussing such commitments on the part of Stanford University’s Asia-Pacific Entrepeneurship Society (in the Silicon Valley). 48. Vaughan A. Lewis, “Looking from the Inside Outwards: The Caribbean in the International System After 2000.” In Contending With Destiny: The Caribbean in the 21st Century, p. 334 Hall & Benn eds., For a thorough analysis of the process and impact see Pedro Noguera, “Exporting the Undesirable: An Analysis of the Factors Influencing the Deportation of Immigrants from the United States and an Examination of their Impact on Caribbean and Central American Societies,” Wadabagei, II, No. 1 (Winter/Spring 1999), pp. 1-28. 49. “US proposes joint study of deportees,” The Weekly [Jamaica] Gleaner, November 14-20, 2002, p. 8. 50. “Caribbean nationals, others face INS round-up,” The Weekly Gleaner, February 612, 2003, p. 13. The “1996 variation” refers to the 1996 Immigration Reform Act which, as stated in this newspaper report, “facilitated deportations on the basis of criminal convictions through a wider application of offences classified as ‘aggravated felonies’”. 51. “The chickens are coming home to roost – Councilwoman Yvette Clarke,” The Sunday Gleaner, January 19, 2003, p. A6. 52. My thanks to Alex Dupuy, Professor of Sociology at Wesleyan University in Connecticut, who in response to my request provided through e-mail communications much helpful background and analysis about the Ministry of Haitians Residing Abroad.

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Civil Society, Governance and Conflict Resolution

PART 5 STATE, ECONOMY & SOCIETY

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Civil SoCiety, GovernanCe and ConfliCt reSolution in the Caribbean CEDRIC GRANT

Introduction

C

ivil Society is credited with contributing significantly to the tide that created, as Samuel P. Huntington characterised it, “The Third Wave of Democratization”.1 Expressing itself in the Solidarity Movement, the civil society element of the tide first washed the polluted shores of Poland in the 1970s. Since then, there has been a widening of the amplitude of the interests in civil society. A new salience has been accorded to non-state actors, particularly nongovernmental organisations (NGOs) whose interest and activities straddle the whole gamut of human endeavour including charity and welfare; the advancement of the interests of the disadvantaged and the marginalised, especially the poor; gender equity; human rights; the protection of the environment; and security issues. The salience of non-state actors also resulted from other factors. One is the inadequacy of the paradigms for development previously utilised. Another is the deleterious impact on the various sectors of the society of the unrestrained application of market forces being employed as the prime determinant for economic organisation. Yet another is the reevaluation of the role of the state and its consequential de-emphasis in economic activities.2 As the idea of civil society became persuasive, there emerged a growing consensus on the need to strengthen civil society with the goal of improving governance globally, regionally, and nationally. The influence of civil society has become so pronounced in the conduct of global affairs that the United Nations Conference on Environment and Development in Rio in 1992 was considered “citizenized” and the United Nations Conference on Women and Development in Beijing in 1995 “feminized”.3 International financial and development agencies and bilateral donors have also elevated civil society, both as a concept and a phenomenon, into an organising principle. Expanding

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the participation of civil society through policies that improve associational life and increase local community control of decision making is as much a preoccupation in democracies that are considered mature as it is in those in which democratic transition and consolidation are underway.4 Within the Caribbean, civil society was accorded prominence when the West Indian Commission (WIC) proposed in 1992 that the Caribbean Community (CARICOM) adopt, as an additional compass in the promotion of democracy and good governance within the region, a Charter of Civil Society for the Caribbean Community5. In a sense the WIC recommended that the Community should become the standard setter of democratic norms. Ten years later, in 2002, and following several related regional initiatives, a dialogue, which CARICOM heads of government had decided in 1999 to hold with civil society, resulted in the Liliendaal Statement of Principles on “Forward Together”.6 This study will focus on the role of civil society in governance in the region in the intervening years. It will address the definitional problems that the term civil society poses. The study will then examine the role of CARICOM and that of civil society within it in terms of both regional and national governance. The concluding section will consist of a summation of the study.

Civil Society: Definitional Problem Civil society poses a number of conceptual difficulties.7 The concept lacks clarity and analytical rigour and is highly contestable. In addition to private, voluntary, largely self-supporting organisations functioning in the public sphere, civil society frequently embraces the scholarly community many of whose members are associated with public or government institutions. Civil society also counts economic groups (productive and commercial associations and networks) among its vast array of organisations. This addition reinforces the perception that politics and economics provide an enabling environment for each other. The question that arises is whether this close, almost umbilical relationship, means that the definition of civil society encompasses business (the market) as well or whether the market constitutes a separate, “private” sphere in which civil society is a stakeholder.8 There is greater certainty in identifying civil society with political action. Yet, political thinkers have distinguished “civil” from “political” society.9 Boundary becomes an issue when civil society moves beyond aligning itself against the abuse of state power and engages in the pursuit, acquisition, and exercise of that power. This ambiguity creates difficulty for civil society organisations in responding to the claims of their critics that they are justified in labelling them “political” rather than “civil”, especially if they coalesce with political parties in pursuit of their goals.

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Beyond such definitional concerns there is an ambivalent relationship between civil society and democratic government. There is a negative or hostile perspective that emphasises the tenuous nature of civil society, even as it exercises a restraining influence on state power. The ground on which the edifice of civil society is constructed or repaired on an ongoing basis is seen as capable of shifting at any given moment, thereby returning the polity to its uncivil and disfigured conditions.10 In order to avoid this relapse or more positively to safeguard the freedom of civil society to act, it has been suggested that civil society needs the protection of an institutionalised order.11 The other perspective is more benign. It focuses on the state, which it sees as being in need of civil society in order to achieve its objectives. In this way, civil society has come to play an even more critical role in determining how economies and societies work, the nature of transactions costs, and the feasibility of engaging in individual and group action. The interaction provides legitimacy to both the state and civil society and fosters the habit of “communicative discourse” or a conversation, openness to one another’s view and mutual tolerance.12

Civil Society and Regional Governance: CARICOM CARICOM’s Minimalist Approach to Governance The proposal for a Charter of Civil Society was related to misgivings about the sustainability of democracy in the region that the WIC, representatives of civil society, notably academics, and also state actors had expressed. Prior to 1992, CARICOM’s efforts to address the challenges to good governance were, however, limited for three reasons. First, during the cold war, issues such as the respect for human rights and the practice of a democratic culture were considered to rest within the jurisdictional ambit of individual states and to be of little legitimate concerns of the international or regional community. Second, CARICOM member states subscribed to the principles of ideological pluralism espoused by the Organization of American States (OAS) Resolution of 1979 within the region. This commitment obliged them to respect their differing political and economic persuasions, including the methods of achieving and maintaining power.13 Ideological wrangling that would have inhibited the integration process was to be contained. Third, this minimalist approach entailed the conscious avoidance of the derogation of sovereignty and the reining of the concept of supra-national governance. The consequences of CARICOMs efforts to establish a balance between sovereignty and integration are reliance on a mechanism of unanimity and consensus to reach decisions, and keeping formal community institutions and arrangements at a minimum.14

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These considerations were extensively at work in the case of Guyana, which was considered the most problematic country in terms of commitment to the democratic process. The reluctance to intervene in the domestic affairs of member states helps to explain CARICOMs decision to be generally unresponsive to allegations of electoral irregularities in Guyana during the 1970s and 1980s. Similarly, CARICOM relied on informal discussions as its preferred method of conferring with Guyana’s leaders on several occasions. Prominent among these were the meeting between a representative group of heads of government, notably Prime Minister (later Sir) James Mitchell of St Vincent and the Grenadines and Prime Minister (later Dame) Eugenia Charles of Dominica and the newly elected President Desmond Hoyte of Guyana in St Vincent and the Grenadines in 1986 and the interlocutory role that Prime Minister Mitchell performed between President Cheddi Jagan and Mr Hoyte following the change of government in 1992. Critical to the effectiveness of the informal discussions were the interpersonal relationships that were facilitated by longevity of many of the founding leaders of nationalist movements in government. These inter-personal relations were also strengthened by the interaction of the political leaders since there is a grouping of social and democratic leaders in the Eastern Caribbean that are in and out of office. They also stretch back to collegial ties forged in British universities or the University of the West Indies (UWI) in the case of the older and younger generations of political leaders respectively.

CARICOMs Proactive Approach to Governance In 1992, CARICOM heads of government decided to rely less on personal stature to secure cooperation at the national level. They formalised their consultation mechanism by establishing a bureau of heads comprised of rotating members – the current, outgoing, and incoming chairmen – as well as the secretary general of the secretariat in his executive capacity. The changes in the global polity following the end of the Cold War and the related emergence of a greater homogeneity of political thought and action among the CARICOM member states have meant that the tensions between the principles of non-intervention and the universalism of good governance have been reduced to the point where sovereignty itself is considered to be safeguarded when it is exercised in an international and a regional environment of inclusivity. This is the context in which a number of initiatives that CARICOM has undertaken and several measures it has adopted to promote good governance, including cooperation with the regional civil society organisations, should be viewed. An added context is CARICOMs establishment of a Single Market and Economy that is under way. The deepening of the integration increases the need for formal community institutions and arrangements and the stake of the

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region in national governance. The ongoing efforts to establish the Caribbean Court of Justice, including the consultations with general and legal interests groups on its role, illustrate the need and the utilisation of the participatory approach. The Assembly of Caribbean Community Parliamentarians (ACCP) that includes representatives of the regional civil society or social partners and the Youth Parliament are fixtures of the CARICOM calendar.15 Civil Society groups are also participating in the organisation, Pan Caribbean Partnerships Against HIV/AIDS, established in 2001 and that is currently negotiating with the pharmaceutical companies for cheaper anti-retroviral drugs for The People Living with HIV/AIDS. The Caribbean Regional Negotiating Machinery (RNM), established in 1997, has also drawn from the private sector some of its lead negotiators in relation to the negotiation of The Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA) that is under way. Overarching these examples of the participation of civil society in regional governance were three CARICOM measures. One was the approval of the Charter of Civil Society in 1998.16 The preamble expresses the determination to “enhance public confidence in governance”,17 while one of the articles contemplates the participation of the people in the democratic process in establishing effective systems of ongoing consultations by the government with them. Another broad based measure was the establishment in 1996 also, of the ACCP that the WIC had also recommended. The Assembly comprises representatives of the government and the opposition in national parliaments and of regional NGOs. The initiative is an attempt to overcome some of the flaws in the working of the Westminster parliamentary system, inherited from the colonial past, in the region. These include the emphasis on division, exclusion, and executive ascendancy. The system also provides little impetus for the government, the opposition, and civil society to define those areas of national interest where they are not too far apart and where, with additional efforts by all sides, some common ground can be reached. The third measure is the Consensus of Chaguaramas, a set of decisions taken in 1999 to guide the integration movement in the 21st century. One decision significantly enlarged the CARICOMs heads of government quasicabinet and included justice and governance as one of the new portfolios. Another decision identified the political opposition as partners in the framework of the consultation in the integration process. Yet a third decision proposed the CARICOM Forum for a civil society dialogue with the CARICOM heads. CARICOMs decision to adopt a Charter of Civil Society, the regional grouping’s implicit assumption of the role of a standard setter of national democratic norms and behaviour, its expectation of commitment by member states to the principles and values enshrined in the Charter and its creation of the Justice and Governance portfolio pointed logically to the deepening of its

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involvement in national governance, including the exercise of its mediating influence in political conflicts. Indeed, CARICOM has mounted Electoral Observer Missions in its member states, including Haiti and Suriname. It also dispatched a prime ministerial mission to St Kitts and Nevis in 1998 in pursuit of a solution to the persistent problem of governance between St Kitts and Nevis. Since 2001, CARICOM has also worked closely with the OAS in a Joint OAS/CARICOM Initiative on Haiti to accompany the country in its efforts to resolve its political and economic problems.

CARICOM’s Mediation of Conflict: Guyana and St Vincent and the Grenadines Guyana Other notable actions by CARICOM that have had far reaching implications for governance in the Caribbean include its intervention in two conflict situations. This first scenario relates to the aftermath of the hotly contested national elections in December 1997 in multi-ethnic Guyana that triggered further social, ethnic and political unrest, including street demonstrations, in the country. In January 1998, at the request of representatives of Guyana’s private sector, CARICOM sent a team of three emissaries, Sir Henry Forde, Sir Alister McIntyre and Sir Shridath Ramphal – all prominent non-state personalities to the country. In separate meetings with them, the envoys brokered an agreement, the Herdmanston Accord,18 between Mrs Janet Jagan, the leader of the Peoples Progressive Party/Civic (PPP/Civic) who had been declared the winner of the elections, and Mr Desmond Hoyte, the leader of the People’s National Congress (PNC), who had refused to recognise the government and to take up the PNC seats in parliament. In addition to an audit of the votes, the leaders of the PPP/ Civic and the PNC also agreed to a moratorium on public demonstrations and to engage in a sustained dialogue between themselves in an attempt to resolve their differences. The highlight of the Accord was the reduction of the PPP/ Civic term of office and the holding of national elections under a reformed constitution not later than January 2001, which was two years earlier than the constitutional deadline. The CARICOM mediators had consulted with a wide cross-section of the Guyanese society19 but the civil society organisations were not high contracting parties to the Accord. Nor did the agreement between the PPP/Civic and PNC cater for their participation in the dialogue. The formal role of the civil society organisations was limited to participation in the proposed Constitution Reform Commission (CRC). Ultimately, however, the national assembly was responsible for determining the membership of the CRC, which was required to consult with civil society at large.

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The dialogue between the two party leaders soon developed into an impasse. Once more, CARICOM resorted to informal diplomacy in its effort to assist in bringing the stalemate to an end. It took the opportunity of the heads of government conference in St Lucia in November 1998 to confer with both leaders. Prime Minister James Mitchell was entrusted with the task of acting as emissary between President Janet Jagan and Mr Hoyte who had travelled to St Lucia at the request of the prime minister. The negotiations that occurred on the margins of the conference culminated in the reaffirmation of the Herdmanston Accord in the St Lucia Statement to which President Jagan and Mr Hoyte, representing the PPP/Civic and the PNC respectively, agreed between themselves and with CARICOM.20 The two party leaders accepted also the CARICOM offer of the services of a facilitator to assist in the resumption of the dialogue and the implementation of several of the other agreements.

St Vincent and the Grenadines In St Vincent and the Grenadines, the conflict surrounded the introduction by the National Democratic Party (NDP) government of a bill in the national assembly in 1998 that initially provided for gratuity to senators. Dr Ralph Gonsalves, the leader of the Opposition, objected to the bill on the grounds that the government had acted unilaterally. He proposed the constituting of an independent group to study the conditions of service of parliamentarians and to make recommendations on their emoluments. The bill was introduced at a time when there was dissatisfaction among the public servants, teachers and nurses with their emoluments and conditions of service. Through their unions, the public servants had been engaged in protracted negotiations with the government about increases in emoluments. These negotiations had resulted in a 12 per cent increase in the public servant salaries over a period of three years; an increase that was considerably less than the 30 per cent that the Public Service Union had requested. The government justified its inability to agree to a larger increase by referring to the generally depressed state of the economy at that time and in particular to the problems that the country had been experiencing with its banana industry, one of the country’s principal sources of revenue. Furthermore it stated that the increase was higher than in other countries of the Organisation of Eastern Caribbean States (OECS). Responding to the criticisms both from the opposition party and the trade unions, the government suspended passage of the bill through parliament. It did so pending a report of an Advisory Committee on Remuneration for Ministers and Members of the Legislature that it appointed under the chairmanship of Mr (later Sir) Dwight Venner, governor of the Eastern Caribbean Central Bank. The terms of reference called on the Venner committee to review the salaries and benefits for parliamentarians and make recommendations on a new structure of

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salaries and benefits for them. The committee’s report which took into account conditions of service within the entire OECS included recommendations for other categories of public servants.21 Following the completion of the work of the committee, the Pensions and Gratuities bill for parliamentarians was introduced and passed in the national assembly. The bill needed to receive the governor general’s assent for it to become law. But that final stage was delayed on account of the political climate. The passage of the bill through parliament had given rise to a storm of criticism and massive public protest demonstrations organised by most of the trade unions that banded together to form the Organization in Defense of Democracy (ODD). The other components of civil society, notably the youth groups and the Human Rights Association did not only refrain from joining the ODD but generally supported or appreciated the position of the government. The ULP supported the ODD and further claimed that it was a part of it.22 The claim was indicative of the ULP’s concern with the legitimacy of the government that arose from the outcome of the most recent national elections in 1998. The NDP won the election by one seat and with a minority of the total number of votes cast (45 per cent). On the other hand the ULP had gained a majority of the votes cast (55 per cent) but failed to win a majority of the seats. The ULP leader refused to accept the results of the elections and questioned the integrity of the electoral process. The ULP had insisted that fresh elections be called to resolve the crisis in governance.23 It accompanied its demand with veiled threats of making the country ungovernable because, in its view, the election results did not reflect the will of the majority of the people. Eventually, the ULP took its place on the opposition benches in the national assembly. Nonetheless, it remained wedded to its view that the government was not legitimate. It never ceased agitating for the resignation of the government and was poised to intensify its role as a vigilant and aggressive political opposition when the demonstrations began. In embracing the ODD, the ULP in effect capitalised on the government’s miscalculation of the political mood of the electorate. Although largely non-violent, the public demonstrations often held government and commercial business and normal daily activity as hostages. The militant trade unions also sought to discredit their moderate counterparts, thereby exerting a strain in the trade union movement. It began to be feared in some quarters that, unless there was some reconciliation of differences between the contending parties, the situation might deteriorate into one of violence and political instability. Indeed it became more than a matter of speculation within the government as to whether elements within the law enforcement agencies could be relied upon to maintain law and order and to be custodians of intelligence information. Despite the possibilities of escalation of the crisis, or because of it, the government showed no interest in declaring a state of emergency or signs of inviting the presence of the Regional Security System.

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A CARICOM team, comprising two members of the bureau, Prime Minister Basdeo Panday of Trinidad and Tobago and Prime Minister Denzil Douglas of St Kitts and Nevis, visited St Vincent to assess the situation. The prime ministers were accompanied by a former attorney-general and Foreign Minister, Maurice King, QC, of Barbados who, as would be seen later, had served as the CARICOM facilitator in the dialogue process in Guyana, and a senior official of the CARICOM secretariat. Prime Minister Panday expressed his opposition to popular uprising as a means of removing a legitimate government from power. CARICOM took another initiative, but jointly with the OECS. At their annual meeting in Grenada in May 2001, the heads of government of the OECS met with the contending and other interested parties. The outcome of the meeting was The Grand Beach Accord which bore the signatures of the prime minister of St Vincent and the Grenadines, the opposition leader and representatives of the social partners: the president, National Labour Congress (NLC), and chairman, ODD; the president, Chamber of Industry and Commerce (CIC); the president, the Employers’ Federation (EF); and the president, National Youth Council (NYC). Prime Minister Denzil Douglas of St Kitts and Nevis, who was the chairman of CARICOM, and Prime Minister Keith Mitchell of Grenada, who was the chairman of the OECS, also affixed their signatures to the Accord.24 The main ingredient of the Accord was the curtailment of the life of the government and the holding of general elections no later than March 2001. The Accord also provided for the government, opposition parties and the civil society organisations to be engaged in the implementation of the agreement. It also provided for the establishment of two mechanisms. One was the National Monitoring and Consultative Mechanism (NMCM) to ensure the conduct of free and fair elections. Its members were political parties, ODD, the NLC, the CIC and other interested groups. The other mechanism was the National Consultative Council (NCC) for the purpose of holding dialogue on industrial relations issues and other issues of national interest. Its members were representatives of employees and employers organisations, the NYC and other NGOs, but not the ODD. Both the NMCM and the NCC were to be convened by the Christian Council that did not participate in Grand Beach process. The Accord also required the government to take action to implement longstanding commitments regarding terms and conditions of service of teachers. Similarly, the Accord committed the government to take further action to implement the main elements of the Venner report. The most vexatious issue, the Pensions and Gratuities bill, was to be addressed within the context of the recommendations of the CARICOM team.

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Reaction of Leaders to Approach to Conflict Resolution Intervention At the heads of government conference that immediately followed the diffusion of the political crisis in St Vincent and the Grenadines “strong views were expressed which decried any unconstitutional actions designed to remove a duly-elected government from office”.25 Not unexpectedly, Prime Minister James Mitchell and President Bharrat Jagdeo of Guyana laid bare their disappointment. Referring to the experience of his country and Guyana, and to recent actions in Suriname, the prime minister stated that “[t]he collapse of law and order, or the use of force to resolve disputes, ignoring the parliamentary procedures or dialogue, cannot be blessed and should not be allowed to become the norm in our region”.26 In a similar vein, President Jagdeo expressed reservations on CARICOMs “recent forays into conflict resolution in the region”.27 He stated that: [t]his body [CARICOM] cannot and must not be seen as either supporting extra-parliamentary stratagems to eclipse the term of elected governments, or consecrating new forms of removal of governments outside the ballot box.28 This was one of two lessons that the president drew from CARICOMs approach to the resolution of the conflicts. The other lesson was that: [u]nder agreements brokered by CARICOM, all parties should assume their responsibilities. Unequal burden must not be placed on elected governments to unilaterally discharge obligations under any such agreement.29 The implications of CARICOM leaders’ method of resolving national conflicts for themselves and for their countries were not lost on the other prime ministers, including some of the OECS prime ministers who participated in the Grand Beach meeting with the representatives of St Vincent and the Grenadines. Prime Minister Lester Bird of Antigua and Barbuda was concerned about the demonstration effect of the apparent reward to street protest.30 The CARICOM formula also touched a raw nerve. In an expansive comment, Prime Minister Keith Mitchell stated that, based on his experience of Grenada’s painful past arising from “the short circuiting of the democratic process”, he appreciated “the wisdom of having a greater voice and participation of the civil society in governance.”31 But the prime minister also observed that “if civil society is to take up its role as a partner in governance” then “subverting the legitimately elected government by force or threat to the lives of citizens, or creating a situation of duress” cannot be its role.32 The prime minister had, earlier in his address, rhetorically raised the question of “whether inclusiveness, active and meaningful participation in

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governance can effectively take place in the context of the present constitutional frame”.33 The question was likely to resonate since, throughout the Caribbean, in Antigua and Barbuda, Barbados, Belize, Guyana, Jamaica, and St Kitts and Nevis among others, the process of constitutional review was actively underway. These reviews foreshadowed the Conference on Constitutional Reform in the Caribbean in January 2002, held under the auspices of the Unit for the Promotion of Democracy of the OAS and the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) in conjunction with the UWI. The opportunity for CARICOM to intervene in a third country under similar circumstances of a political impasse arose from the national elections results in Trinidad and Tobago in 2001. Like Guyana, Trinidad and Tobago is ethnically diverse and its politics is increasingly polarised along this line. The contest between the two political parties, the United National Congress (UNC) and the People’s National Movement (PNM) that participated in the elections ended in a dead heat. Each party received 18 of the 36 seats in the national assembly. Both leaders claimed the right to be given the opportunity to form the government. The UNC contended that it had not lost the election. The PNM stressed that its victory was nation-wide since it had won seats not only in Trinidad but also the two seats in Tobago. A constitutional crisis loomed, more so since, in the absence of defection, the cooperation of one party was required for the election of the Speaker to the national assembly upon which the functioning of the bicameral parliament depended. The two party leaders, however, did not avail themselves of CARICOM good offices when the bureau of heads, comprising the newly elected Prime Minister Ralph Gonsalves of St Vincent and the Grenadines, Prime Minister James Keith Mitchell of Grenada and Prime Minister Owen Arthur of Barbados, visited Trinidad to consult with them. Instead, the party leaders decided to ask the president of the country, A.N.R Robinson, to settle the issue and agreed to abide by his decision. It is plausible that the two political leaders, especially Prime Minister Panday who had looked askance on the unfolding crisis in St Vincent and the Grenadines, decided to establish a measured relationship with CARICOM because its recent approach to conflict management and resolution entailed fresh elections. Neither of the leaders was interested in taking the risk of returning to the electorate when (for the UNC leader) the retention and (for the PNM leader) the acquisition of the prime ministerial office was within their respective grasp.

Analysis of CARICOMs Modus Operandi The institutionalisation of CARICOMs diplomatic modus operandi was instructive. The new CARICOM structure that the bureau represents appears to be more effective when consideration of the history of inter-personal relations and the stature of CARICOM envoys are taken into account. Standing in the

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“club” has little connection with the rotational character of the bureau. In the case of Guyana, the formal structure was not applied and indeed none of the emissaries was a head of government. Two of them had close ties to Guyana. One, Sir Shridath Ramphal, had served not only as minister of foreign affairs and attorney-general in the PNC administration but was also chancellor of the University of Guyana. He was, at the time, also the chief negotiator of the RNM; a position that allowed him to interact with the PPP/Civic government. The other emissary, Sir Alister McIntyre, resided in Guyana during his tenure as secretary general of the CARICOM secretariat and enjoyed the confidence of both the PNC and the PPP/Civic leaders. In office, the PNC had concurred with Sir Alister’s appointment as the United Nations secretary general “Good Officer” to assist Guyana and Venezuela to resolve the controversy arising from Venezuela’s claim to Guyana’s territory while the PPP/Civic, as the successor government, reaffirmed the appointment. By the same token, the leadership that the OECS had assumed in brokering the Grand Beach Accord rendered the outcome more palatable to Vincentians than the fact that one of the OECS prime ministers was at the time the CARICOM chairman. The value of participating within the standing conference of political parties in the Eastern Caribbean was in evidence. It is noteworthy that the bureau mission to St Vincent and the Grenadines at the height of the crisis made little headway. Similarly, in the case of Trinidad and Tobago, where the formal CARICOM decision-making structure also operated, the scope for interpersonal relationship to be at work was limited, more so as one of its members, Prime Minister Gonsalves was a newcomer to his office.

Civil Society Role in Governance An aspect of regional governance that requires further examination is the role of civil society organisations or social partners, as these two groups are interchangeably called in the Caribbean. Beyond the initiative that the representatives of the private sector in Guyana took to engage CARICOM in mediating the conflict in the country, a representative of the Caribbean Congress of Labour visited St Vincent and the Grenadines to dialogue with its affiliated unions, particularly the Public Service Union. A representative of the Caribbean Association of Industry and Commerce also undertook a similar visit to consult with the St Vincent Chamber of Commerce and Industry. These two visits were the first attempts at external mediation of the St Vincent impasse. But the objective of the visit was only partially accomplished. The ODD had previously taken a decision that its constituent members would not engage in discussions with any organisation unless a collective decision to do so was taken within the ODD. The political crisis in Guyana and in St Vincent and the Grenadines also captured the attention of the print, television and electronic media in the region,

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most notably, in the case of the print media, in Barbados. Indeed, in both Guyana and St Vincent and the Grenadines, the political actors vied with each other to influence the media and by extension both the governments and the court of public opinion in the region.

Civil Society Perspective on Governance A dual perspective informs civil society’s orientation towards governance. One aspect of it asserts that too close a relationship between governments and NGOs would compromise the latter. Through this prism, NGOs offer criticism of them as proof of their independence, which is generally considered essential to their role as effective catalysts for social and institutional change. They therefore see tension between themselves as positive and transformative in the sense that it legitimises their role. The other component of the perspective emphasises the collaborative relationship between government and civil society as being also in the interest of the democratic process. This outlook was appealing, especially in the context of the clamour by various groups for a greater voice in decisions that will affect their lives consequent upon the establishment of a single market and economy. Neville Duncan, a proponent of participatory governance, has therefore pointed to the need for a process-linking central government, the local government and NGOs in a relationship conducive to good governance.34 Within the civil society organisations, the proposed CARICOM with the “widest possible participation”35 of civil society as a means of incorporating their views into the vision for the future development of the community seemed to be a logical development.36

Forward Together: The Liliendaal Statement Although he had expressed reservations on actions of the civil society in the St Vincent political impasse and claimed more generally that “the street was no longer the acceptable place for civil society to resolve its differences”, Prime Minister Keith Mitchell contended that there was need for government to: [R]emove possible operational and constitutional basis for such behaviour. We acknowledge that it is time for the Caribbean Community to formally reconsider [his emphasis] the matter of the Civil Society, good governance within the Community, dispute settlement in the spheres of the Civil Society especially industrial disputes.37 In concluding that he “looked forward to the proposed conference in 2001 with the representatives of Civil Society . . .”, the prime minister captured the anticipatory outlook of both the governments and civil society organisations.

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A mutual wariness, however, surrounded the preparatory process that included national consultations between state and non-state actors. The civil society organisations prepared for the dialogue, mindful of their experiences with CARICOM heads. They recalled that the promise to hold similar dialogue periodically which emerged from the unique and historic Regional Economic Conference in 1991 had remained unfulfilled. Another concern was that, notwithstanding their legal requirements under the Charter of Civil Society, the governments were grudgingly following through on their stated position of consultation with civil society at the regional level. Furthermore, little had been done in terms of monitoring and follow-up on ensuring that the commitment made with the adoption of the Charter was being fulfilled. The civil society organisations also claimed that interaction among the social partners was limited at the national level; a situation that provided little encouragement to them. On the other hand, it was recognised that the collaboration process between civil society and governments was made difficult because of questions on the representative nature of some of the groups purporting to represent civil society.38 The conference was therefore a modest attempt to explore the possibilities of improving governmental consultations with civil society. It agreed to a series of measures that included the institutionalisation of the consultation process, greater involvement of civil society in appropriate decision-making organs of the Community and the establishment of a Task Force to develop a comprehensive regional strategic framework for carrying forward the main recommendations of the conference. The decisions did not necessarily overcome governmental reluctance about the policy or the pace of developing the relations with civil society. They reflected little more than the willingness by governments to take into account the views of civil society in the formulation of policies. Nonetheless the decisions constitute a progression that began with the WIC ideas for new modalities of governance that were themselves the product of extensive consultations with a cross section of West Indian society both within the region and the diaspora. This reference to the diaspora has received much of its relevance from the advent of the electronic media. In expeditiously exposing both state and nonstate actors within the region to the currents of opinion that emanate from the immigrant communities, principally in Europe and North America, this relatively new and rapidly growing form of communication renders those communities part of the regional and national neighborhood. This development suggests that there is the need to refine the definition of civil society in terms of its spatial dimension and to assess the impact of the phenomenon of an emerging virtual civil society on the strength and vitality of civil society. Indeed, it is appropriate for this presentation to return to the exploration of the concept of civil society.

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Civil Societ y and Na ti onal Governan ce Society Nati tio Governance St Vincent and the Grenadines It would be recalled that one of the definitional difficulties was the identification of civil society with political parties. Starting with St Vincent and the Grenadines, this distinction was blurred. The protest demonstrations by the trade unions and other mass organisations began as an action to force the government to withdraw the pensions and gratuities bill. A secondary and related objective was to more decisively register dissatisfaction with the outcome of decisions on public servant benefits and perhaps compel the government to rethink its decision on the matter. But the objective experienced a metamorphosis. The call became not only for the bill to be withdrawn but also for the government to resign and for fresh elections to be held. The trade unions unmistakably crossed the line between civil society and political society when they formed the ODD. Whether the ODD strategically associated itself with the opposition ULP or was embraced by it, or whether there was a mere coincidence of interests, the civil society credentials of its constituent members had been further compromised, at least from the perspective of the government. In a reversal of its position, the government made a conciliatory approach to the trade unions during the impasse but ultimately to no avail. A further evaluation of the Grand Beach negotiations suggests a more complex view of the role of the civil society organisations. At a critical juncture of the negotiations the two political leaders, always the high contracting parties, repaired to the beach to confer privately. On their return, they announced that they had reached an understanding that fresh elections would be held. In order to assure his strategic allies that they had not been outdistanced or placed on the margin of relevance, the ULP leader took the view that the understanding had to receive the endorsement of the ODD before he considered it binding. The turn of events was a reminder to the civil society organisations, some of which considered themselves a part of the opposition party delegation, that the portals of the political parties would not be not flung open to them. Indeed, the Accord reinstated the distinction between the civil society and the political society when it omitted the ODD from participating in the NCC. The Christian Council had maintained a low profile when the British clergy controlled it. It became more socially aware with the replacement of these personnel with West Indian clergy, the attainment of independence and the global call for more social action within the church. The Council, which maintained a separate identity from the NMCM, stated that in being named the convener and facilitator of the two mechanisms, the NMCM and the NCC, it “was clearly considered to be an impartial body with the necessary moral suasion to influence the political process . . . .”39 The claim to impartiality was, however,

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supported more in terms of the countervailing influence among its constituent members than shared equidistance from the political parties. In keeping with the Accord, the Council extended participation to the People’s Progressive Movement, a newly formed political party, in the NMCM. It also co-opted the St Vincent and Grenadines Bar Association and the National Women’s Council as additional members of the NMCM and the former organisation as a member of the NCC also. The addition of these two organisations that were not overtly involved in the events that culminated in the Accord served to reduce scepticism about the capacity of civil society to be either impartial or independent minded. The NMCM identified as its objective the monitoring of the general elections to ensure that the process “remained free, fair and violence free”.40 It placed a high premium on the process of dialogue among the political parties contesting elections, more so as the conduct of the two principal disputants could have hindered or facilitated the work of that body. The hallmark of the NMCMs efforts was the development of a Code of Conduct to which the leaders of the political parties subscribed. The NMCM also established an office to receive and investigate complaints from the parties and the general public. In responding to the major challenge of monitoring the observance of the Code, the NMCM placed its confidence in the youths. The NMCMs final report on its work emphatically noted that “the majority of these monitors [at the election campaign meetings] were young people between the ages of 18 and 30 years”.41 The Christian Council also confirmed that: [i]t would have been impossible for the NMCM to achieve its goal of ensuring free and fair elections without the commitment of many young men and women who volunteered their time and service to the cause by working as monitors on Elections.42 The media also publicised the activities of the NMCM and functioned as a vibrant and unfettered component of civil society to the point where it was noted that it frequently breached the canons of its profession. The focus on the Christian Council and the NMCM is not intended to overlook the pivotal role of the Supervisor of the Elections and the Electoral Office in the conduct of the elections and the integrity of the election results, which gave the opposition ULP a sweeping victory: 13 of the 15 seats that were contested. Unlike the 1998 elections when the defeated ULP leader challenged the results on the ground that there had been irregularities in the conduct of the elections there were no similar charges. Even on that occasion, the ULP did not follow up on its allegations. In its report, the NMCM noted that the Supervisor of Elections along with the Electoral Office “did adequately prepare for the elections”.43 The report attributed irregularities regarding the voter registration to the quality of the voter education campaign. It recommended that the

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“Government and Civil Society organizations, inclusive of, but not limited to the members of the NMCM, should embark on serious and continuous voter education campaigns”.44 Excluded from a vital part of the negotiations of the Accord, the ODD and the NLC did not occupy the centre stage of the NMCM. In contradistinction to its main constituent member, the NLC, the ODD returned from the Grand Beach meeting piqued about its omission. Its newly established Steering Committee “regretted the short sightedness demonstrated by its omission from the National Consultative Committee”.45 The committee also decided to “insist on playing a vital role as a member of the NCC . . . [and] to write the Chairman of the Christian Council to that effect”.46 At a general meeting, ODD also decided to embark on a vigorous public campaign . . . to stimulate discussions on critical issues of democracy and governance, including Constitutional Reform with a view towards arriving at a popular consensus of such issues.47 The reality was that the circumstances that were the raison d’etre of the ODD’s formation had evaporated. The CARICOM legal advisor, Maurice King, QC, had provided an opinion on the Pensions and Gratuities bill that all the political parties and the social parties accepted. The acceptance resulted in the bill’s withdrawal and brought closure to the controversial issue. The ODD’s call for fresh elections had also been upheld. The ODD therefore found it difficult to maintain its existence independent of the circumstances to which its birth was attributed. The umbrella organisation therefore disbanded after the election. In essence, the ODD was a casualty not only of its success but also its straddling of the civil society and the political society. The ruling ULP has made a concerted effort to involve the civil society. One of the weaknesses or limitations of the constitution that the ULP had identified was the provision of “insufficient structures or mechanisms for the voters and non-governmental organizations to participate actively in an ongoing basis”.48 In anticipation of its victory at the elections, the ULP had prepared a document entitled “Constitutional Reform: A Discussion” in 2000 as part of a consultative exercise. The document included a wide range of options.49 In the keynote address, delivered to the Conference on Constitutional Reform in the Caribbean in January 2002, Prime Minister Gonsalves elaborated on the need for participation to be inclusive. He stated: The very exercise in constitution making ought to involve an unprecedented campaign of structured, mass political education on all the relevant philosophical, practical, legal, political, historical and comparative issues. This educational programme demands, first, a thoroughgoing understanding of the existing constitutions, their strengths and weaknesses, possibilities

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and limitations. The particular options in constitutions reform will be better appreciated. This educational campaign ought to be, as far as the competitive political market can bear, a national, as distinct from a party political affair.50 In the run up to the elections, the ULP also prepared a companion volume to the one on Constitutional Reform under the theme “Ideas Towards a Social Contract”.51 The party leader stated that the initiative followed ODD’s call for an appropriate social contract between itself, the other social partners and any competing political party or parties. The ULP found the social contract that Barbados had developed and expanded exemplary, and “borrowed heavily”52 from it, particularly in respect of the commitments and obligations of government, trade unions and private sector organisations. In office, the ULP has initiated measures that are intended to fulfil its undertaking to conclude a social contract as an important feature of governance.

Guyana Civil society in Guyana is less empowered, as was reflected in its noninvolvement in the determination of the Herdmanston Accord. It has had a chequered history and it is still to be widely recognised as being comprised of independent minded and politically untarnished actors. There has been a tradition, dating back from the colonial period, of voluntary organisations and associations in which citizens have sought to pursue some of their own interests through such organisations. Some of these organisations, especially religious ones, were primarily devoted to charitable and welfare work, while other organisations were noted for their concerns for industrial and political rights. The role of citizen’s organisations declined as Guyana made its transition from colonialism to independence and consolidated the latter over a period of 30 years beginning in the 1960s.53 The reasons that have been posited for the decline could be grouped into two schools of thought. One school argues that the civil society was emasculated following the advent of mass politics. The two major political parties embraced ideologies that assigned a dominant role to the state in government and the economy. Structurally and operationally, they modelled themselves on, or borrowed heavily from, the practices of the political parties of the USSR and Eastern Europe. While in office, the PNC in 1973 adopted a policy that asserted the paramountcy of the party over all national institutions, including the government. Paramountcy was widely criticised in the society and the PNC abandoned it as a policy in 1987.54 Nonetheless, the adherence of the PPP, which came to office in 1992, to the outmoded Leninist principle of the vanguard role of the party and its derivative, the application of enforcement mechanisms,

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encourages the view that paramountcy is still being practiced, however unofficial, and remains conflictual. Another explanation for the emasculation of civil society are the links or affiliations that individual trade unions have established with political parties from the inception of the nationalist movement. It has been the national experience that when one political party is in office, the unions associated with the other party are accused of taking anti-government positions.55 Yet another contributory factor to the limited role of civil society is the division of the electorate along ethnic lines and adherence of the two major ethnic groups, the Indo-Guyanese and the Afro-Guyanese that together constitute 85 per cent of the population, to the PPP/Civic and the PNC respectively. In this polarised environment, there is the perception that the political parties have exercised, on occasions, a restraining influence on their participation in NGOs and other civil society organisations. Few civil society organisations are organised or function across these differences of ethnicity and culture. The sectarianism that prevails contributes to their weakness.56 A fourth explanation is the disregard by both the political parties and the civil society organisations of the distinction between civil society and political society. The disregard reached its zenith in the wake of the widespread belief that the conduct of the 1992 elections would not be free, fair and transparent. The Patriotic Coalition For Democracy (PCD), an umbrella organisation comprised of the opposition parties and the newly established CIVIC group facilitated the PPP/CIVIC’s victory. Elements of the civil society, notably the Guyana Council of Christian Churches and its kindred organisation, the Guyana Human Rights Association, either joined the PCD or overtly supported it. Attempts to present a single presidential candidate who was not from the opposition political parties were overturned by the PPP. The outcome was a multiplicity of presidential candidates. The CIVIC was the only group that did not field a candidate but placed its electoral forces at the disposal of the PPP.57 Subsequent to the change of government, the PCD evaporated and the role of civil society became unclear. In straddling the civil society and the political society, the civil society organisations had denied themselves the best of both worlds. From the perspective of the opposition PNC, these actors had compromised their civil society role by associating with the PPP. For its part, the PPP/Civic government moderated its new-found enthusiasm for the interpositioning role of the civil society actors on the ground that the consolidation of democracy was in the PPP/Civic’s capable and trustworthy hands.58 Efforts to establish an umbrella NGO organisation in accordance with the high expectations that the change of government had engendered quickly stalled. At times the question seems to be whether there was much left of a suddenly and unexpectedly revitalised civil society after co-optation, wariness, internal conflicts, disillusionment and the channelling of opposition into political parties

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took their toll. Furthermore, in the conduct of their dialogue that the Herdmanston Accord envisioned and that was perpetually deadlocked until it fizzled, the two political parties showed no inclination to summon the political will to share the negotiation space with the civil society organisations. On occasions, both political parties have openly expressed their reservation about civil society. The PNC leader has held meetings with representatives of civil society, but on one occasion, when addressing an issue relating to governance, referred to the actions the party had taken “amidst the deafening silence of so called civil society”.59 In response to the charge of incompetence against the government ministers levelled by a prominent member of the Private Sector Commission, a PPP/CIVIC leader stated that civil society actors must enter the political fray if they are to criticise the politicians.60 Appeals from the CARICOM facilitator, Maurice King, QC, to the leaders of the two political parties to engage civil society in the process of normalisation were virtually unheeded. So also was the advice from Prime Minister Owen Arthur of Barbados for Guyana to find the political solution [to its difficulties] not in any Herdmanston Accord or in the role of any CARICOM appointed mediator, but in the formation of a social contract, subscribed to by every class and creed in Guyana, to work to make Guyana succeed. The other school of thought claims that the negligible influence of the civil society is largely self-imposed. There is the apparent reluctance of the civil society to be more vigorous in performing its advocacy functions on governance issues, especially those that are conflictual. In 2002, representatives of an array of civil society organisations, in association with prominent individuals and one parliamentary political party, ROAR, made the following statement: “As members of the civil society we admonish ourselves for not being forthright in our advocacy for good governance and the process of reconciliation.”61 In terms of the civil society organisations empowering themselves, the CARICOM facilitator reportedly urged them, specifically the trade union movement, the professional associations and the Private Sector Commission “to articulate their vision of Guyana and so organize themselves that the political parties would feel constrained to listen to them”.62 Within and outside the trade union movement there have also been calls for a changed relationship between the trade unions and the political parties. In 1999, the general secretary of the Guyana Trade Union Congress (GTUC) called on the workers “to resist the formal entrenchment of party politics in the labour movement”.63 He emphasised that “the independence of the labour movement cannot be guaranteed as long as trade unions remain hostage to the whims of political parties”.64 Similarly, in an address to the Third Biennial Conference of the GTUC, Clive Thomas stated that political unionism was outdated. He called on the movement “to ensure at all times that the trade union is an active participant in promoting and shaping national dialogue on development”.65

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The most vibrant and effective groups within civil society are those that work with the most disadvantaged segments of the society – women, children, youths and the Amerindian people. These groups often fill a void that the limited capacity of the government creates. Their effectiveness also depends on whether the issue is mired in party political controversy. The financial support that they receive directly from the international donor community also renders them less susceptible to shifts in the political environment. There are examples of the involvement of civil society in the solution of national problems either through its own initiatives or as a result of interaction with the government and the major opposition party. One example is the negotiations for, and composition of, the Constitutional Reform Committee of Parliament in which civil society representatives were included. Another is the settlement of a public strike relating to a salary dispute between the government and the public service union in 1999 that the private sector and other civil society actors brokered. The third example is the initiative for the articulation of a National Development Strategy in which civil society was prominently involved. These inclusive measures, however, are rare and are overshadowed by the recurring incidences of mistrust, suspicion and minimal involvement of civil society whether as a result of exclusion or default. The efforts of three social partners – The Private Sector Commission, The Trades Union Council, and the Guyana Bar Association – to negotiate a Joint Communiqué on Crime between the president, the leader of the Opposition, the parliamentary parties and the social partners have been protracted and their outcome unpromising. The idea of the Joint Communiqué on Crime grew out a Joint Consultation between the same group of participants in September 2002 which set the social partners the task on expanding the latter’s proposal for a structured ongoing and permanent consultative mechanism on shared governance. But this initiative has also ground to a halt. Civil society is therefore still to emerge from the shadows of the two major parties and from the margins of effectiveness. The view that there are circumstances under which civil society can be more a hindrance than help is still to be discounted. Consequently, the role of civil society as an indispensable carrier of the democratic culture and good governance and as a key player in the management and resolution of conflicts is often contained or grudgingly acknowledged.

CONCLUSION The study has highlighted the definitional problem of civil society. Its meaning is clear when it is used interchangeably with NGOs. But its usage is wider and the context in which it is used could assist in reducing the impression

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and confusion that surrounds the concept. There is widespread agreement about the role of civil society in cases where interested groups, social movements such as human rights organisations, women’s groups and lawyers associations and other democracy activists are making their demands for change from the negative to the positive side of the democratic continuum. Civil society is not concerned primarily with power although it may be arraigned against its concentration and abuse in any quarter. The civil society organisation credentials become doubtful when it pursues power and more so when it acquires it, as did the Solidarity Movement, when its leader, Lec Walesa, became the president of Poland. There is less agreement about the place and role of civil society once the democratic transition or renewal is achieved and the consolidation or enhancement of the process is underway. The uncertainty is reflected in the vigorous debate on the nature and boundaries of civil society. Some of the groups that demonstrated in St Vincent and the Grenadines initially to express their dissatisfaction with the Pensions and Gratuities bill and the outcome of their negotiations with the government on their salaries emerged from the political impasse transformed, as leaders of a political umbrella organisation, ODD. Demobilisation became an option for this organisation, which it exercised. In Guyana, the CIVIC group that had been formed to demand political change emerged from the PCD similarly transformed; first in pursuit of power and then as a partner in the exercise of it. On the other hand, some groups returned to the margin of relevance and effectiveness. While the rethinking of its role in national governance is underway, civil society has inserted itself in the global decision-making process by leaps and bounds. It has contributed to the democratisation not only of states but to the relationships among them and between peoples. The measures and initiatives that CARICOM has taken to increase the regional role of civil society and to promote the expansion of civic participation in the member states, as part of regional governance, are necessary for the deepening of the integration process that is occurring. Growing or perennial instability within the national jurisdiction would slow the process. The view that CARICOM went too far in brokering the termination of the life of two governments should be measured against the violence that threatened St Vincent and the Grenadines and the likelihood of a more extreme development in multi ethnic and conflict-ridden Guyana. In CARICOM, the warnings about the need for democratic renewal and consolidation is directed to every member state but especially to those that are slow to embrace inclusiveness as a methodology of governance and that experience a deficit in the contribution of civil society to the decision-making process. The absence of the national capacity to settle major problems through dialogue and consensus building leads over time to regional and other external

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intervention in the search for solutions. While the regional intervention diffused the situation in Guyana and St Vincent and the Grenadines, it could be counter productive over time if it results in encouraging countries to develop a certain dependency on outside actors to mediate local conflicts rather than to motivate them to progressively rely on their own resources to resolve these conflicts. Like charity, enhancing regional governance should begin within the national home.

NOTES 1

Samuel P. Huntington, The Third Wave: Democratization in the Late Twentieth Century (Norman and London: Oklahoma Press, 1993).

2

Rashleigh Jackson, ‘The Role of Civil Society in Guyana’. Unpublished paper 2001.

3

James P. Mouldeon Jr., JoAnn Fagot Aiel, Richard Reitano, Earl Sullivan, eds.

4

Michael J. Trebilcock, The Prospects for Reinventing Government, Ottawa, Renouf

Multilateral Diplomacy and the United Nations (Boulder: Westview Press, 1999). Publishing Company Limited, 1994. 5

The West Indian Commission, Time For Action: Report of the West Indian Commission (Barbados: Black Rock, 1992): 490–93.

6

The Liliendaal Statement of Principles on ‘Forward Together’, 2–3 July, 2002. www.caricom.org

7

Jean L. Cohen and Andrew Arato, Civil Society and Political Theory (Boston: MIT Press, 1992).

8

Larry Diamond, ‘Toward Democratic Consolidation’, Journal of Democracy. Vol.5, No. 3 (July 1994): 4–17

9

Norberto Bobbio, ‘Gramsci and the Concept of Civil Society’. In Civil Society and the State, edited by John Keane. See also, Larry Diamond op.cit. p.7.

10 Wilfred David, The Humanitarian Development Paradigm (University Press of America. Forthcoming 2003). 11 Larry Diamond, op.cit. 12 Wilfred David, ibid. 13 C.H. Grant, ‘Ideological Pluralism in the Caribbean: Challenges and Prospects’. The Round Table, Commonwealth Journal of International Affairs. Volume LXXII, No.290 (1984): 174–87. 14 Cedric Grant, ‘An Experiment in Supra-National Governance: The Caribbean Regional Negotiating Machinery’. In Contending with Destiny: The Caribbean in the 21st Century, edited by Kenneth Hall and Dennis Benn, (Kingston: Ian Randle Publishers, 2000). 15 For an overview of several of the initiatives see Duke Pollard, ‘The Community: Restructuring for the New Millennium’ in Caricom Perspective: CARICOM 25 1973 – 1998, Sharing the Vision, No.68, (June 1998): 25–32.

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16 Charter of Civil Society for the Caribbean Community, Caribbean Community Secretariat, Georgetown, 1997. 17 Ibid. 18 Caribbean Community Mission to Guyana: Measures for Resolving Current Problems. May 17, 1998. Georgetown, CARICOM Secretariat, 1998. 19 Caribbean Community Mission to Guyana: Statement at Conclusion of the Mission, January 17, 1998. Georgetown, CARICOM Secretariat, 1998. 20 The St Lucia Statement, July 2, 1998. Georgetown, CARICOM Secretariat, 1998. 21 Report of the Advisory Committee on Remuneration for Members of the Legislature and Ministers of Government in St Vincent and the Grenadines, December 1999. 22 Ralph E. Gonsalves, The Politics of Our Caribbean Civilization: Essays and Speeches, (Kingstown, 2001). 23 Ibid. pp.331-35. 24 The Grand Beach Accord: Between the Government of St Vincent and the Grenadines, The St Vincent and the Grenadines, Grenadines Unity Labour Party and the Social Partners of St Vincent and the Grenadines, 4th May, 2000. Grant Beach Resort, Grenada, Castries. Organisation of Eastern Caribbean States. 25 Communiqué Issued on the Conclusion of the 21st Meeting of the Conference of Heads of Government of the Caribbean Community (CARICOM). Canocian, St Vincent and the Grenadines. 2–5 July 2000. www.caricom.org. 26 Address Delivered by Sir James Mitchell, Prime Minister of St Vincent and the Grenadines, at the Opening Ceremony of the 21st Meeting of the Conference of Heads of Government of the Caribbean Community (CARICOM). Canouan, St Vincent and the Grenadines, 2 July, 2000. www.caricom.org 27 Statement by H.E. Bharrat Jagdeo, President of the Cooperative Republic of Guyana at the Opening of the 21st Meeting of the Conference of Heads of Government of the Caribbean Community, Canouan, St Vincent and the Grenadines, 2 July 2000. http://www.caricom.org 28 Ibid. 29 Ibid. 30 Author’s conversations with Prime Minister Ralph Gonsalves and Sir James Mitchell, St Vincent, March 2002. 31 Address by Dr Keith Mitchell, Prime Minister of Grenada at the Opening Ceremony of the 21st Meeting of the Conference of Heads of Government of the Caribbean Community (CARICOM). Canouan, St Vincent and the Grenadines, 1 July, 2000. www.caricom.org 32 Ibid. 33 Ibid. 34 Neville Duncan, ‘Anglophone Caribbean non-state sectors in national integration: a vital step in CARICOM and Greater Caribbean integration’. In Elements of Regional Integration: The Way Forward (Critical Issues in Caribbean Development Series) edited by Peter Wickham. (Kingston, Ian Randle Publishers, 1998): 45–58.

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35 Communiqué Issued on the Conclusion of the 20th Meeting of the Conference of Heads of Government of the Caribbean Community (CARICOM). Castries, St Kitts and Nevis. 1–4, July, 1999. www.caricom.org 36 For extended studies of civil society see Peter Wickham et al op.cit. and Rashleigh Jackson, CARICOM Integration: The Role of Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs). Prepared for UNDP. (Unpublished, 1999). 37 PM Keith Mitchell’s Statement, op.cit. 38 First Meeting of the Planning Committee for the Conference with Civil Society, Port of Spain, Trinidad and Tobago. 7 October, 2000. 39 The National Monitoring and Consultative Mechanism Final Report on the St Vincent and the Grenadines Election, 2001, Kingstown, St Vincent. n.d. 40 Ibid. 41 Ibid. 42 Ibid. 43 Ibid. p.9. 44 Ibid. p.10. 45 ‘ODD Remains Active’, The News, Kingstown, St Vincent. December 1, 2000, p.22. 46 Ralph E. Gonsalves, op.cit. p.297–8. 47 ‘ODD Public Education Programme and Other Activities’, The Vincentian, June 2, 2000. p.4. 48 Ralph E. Gonsalves, op.cit. p.297–8. 49 Ibid. p.292–305. 50 Rt. Honourable Gonsalves, ‘Westminster System in the Caribbean: Viability Past, Present, Prospects for Reform or Radical Departure’. Keynote Address delivered at the Conference on Constitutional Reform in the Caribbean, Bridgetown, Barbados. January 20– 22, 2002. 51 Ralph E. Gonsalves, The Politics of Our Caribbean Civilization, p.306– 17. 52 Ibid. p.307. 53 Rashleigh Jackson, The Role of Civil Society in Guyana. p.4. 54 Ibid. 55 Ibid. p.5. 56 Cedric Grant, ‘Civil Society Democratization and Conflict Resolution in Guyana’. Paper presented at the 25th Annual Conference of the Caribbean Studies Association in St Lucia. May 29–June 3, 2000. pp.22. 57 Ibid. 58 Ibid. 59 ‘PNC Will Proceed with Cautious Optimism’, Stabroek News, Georgetown, May 11 1999, p.8. 60 Clement Rohee, ‘Government Ministers Have the Right to Respond to Critics’, Georgetown. Stabroek News, Georgetown, January 22, 1999, p.6. 61 ‘Citizens Statement’, Stabroek News, Georgetown. July 14, 2002, p.9.

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62 ‘Civil Society Should Exert Influence on Dialogue Process – facilitator’, Stabroek News, Georgetown, December 18, 1999, p.18. 63 ‘Labour Movement Independence is Pivotal Issue’, Stabroek News, Georgetown, October 1997, p.20. 64 Ibid. 65 ‘Political Union has outlived its Usefulness’, Stabroek News, Georgetown, October 1999, p.1.

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Guyana: GovernanCe and PatternS of ethniC ConfliCt RALPH PREMDAS

INTRODUCTION Cultural pluralism tends to throw up persistent problems in stable intersectional coexistence.1 In this paper, an attempt will be made to abstract the patterns of communal conflict that were generated by one case, Guyana, with the view towards constructing a framework of ethnic conflict regulation. As such, the effort will be both analytic and prescriptive. It is important to underscore the point that our interest is not in eliminating conflict as such since, in the nature of things that is impossible, but in offering insights into its management. Professor John Darby puts this idea nicely as follows: . . . it is as pointless to attack conflict as it is to attack the aging process. Conflict is neither good nor bad, but intrinsic in every social relationship from marriage to international diplomacy. Wherever two or more people are gathered, there is conflict or potential conflict. The real issue is not the existence of conflict but how to handle it.2 In the case that I have chosen, the state is characterised by a predominant ethnic bipolarity in its demographic structure; small population size and physical land space; a common ex-colonial master; and its multi-ethnicity has been created mainly by the importation of immigrants from other countries to meet the demands for labour on plantations.3 It is argued that the bipolar structure establishes a particularly virulent context of communal relations and that this imposes its own peculiarities in crisis management. In game theory, the metaphor of two spiders sealed in the same bottle and locked inescapably in face to face rivalry for space resulting in intensely intransigent struggle and inevitable death is taken as illustrative of bipolar conflicts. In approaching the problem of making prescriptions in relation to ethnic conflict resolution, it is important that analysis of the case in question be

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systematic. In effect, proposals that seek to regulate an ethnic conflict should be stated in terms of a causal model. Professor Richard Rose underscored this point arguing that a policy lesson does not emerge from a disjointed set of ideas about what to do. It requires a cause and effect model showing how a program designed on the basis of experience elsewhere can achieve a desired goal if adopted in the advocate’s own jurisdiction.4 In Part I of the presentation, an attempt was made to situate solutions within the historical circumstances which provided a causal empirical background to the prescriptions that would be offered in Part II. To be sure, the causal sequences that I have depicted are not rigorously quantified and tested by the protocols of the so-called scientific method. However, they do emerge from empirical data derived from extended field observation. As a whole, the exercise moves away from the quest for “pure theory” into the realm of practical knowledge.

PART I: THE MAKING OF A MULTI-ETHNIC STATE IN CRISIS The Ethnic Segments Guyana is a multi-ethnic Third World state situated on the north-coast shoulder of South America. Although geographically part of the South American land mass, culturally it falls within the Caribbean insular sphere marked by plantations, monocrop economies, immigrant settlers and a colour-class system of stratification.5 The country is populated by six ethnic solidarity clusters – Africans, East Indians, Amerindians, Portuguese, Chinese and Europeans. A significant “mixed” category also exists, consisting of persons who have any combination of the major groups. Racial and ethnic categories are apprehended in a rather peculiar way among Guyanese. In the popular imagination, everyone is placed within a communal category which, as anthropologist Raymond Smith has noted, “is believed to be a distinct physical type, an entity symbolized by a particular kind of ‘blood’”.6 Hence, even though objectively there is a wide array of racial mixtures, a person is soon stereotyped into one of the existing social categories to which both “blood” and “culture” are assigned a defining role. In a “we-they” dynamic, each person accepts his/her assignment to a communal category which in turn separates and establishes individual and collective identity from other similar groupings. From this, a society of ethno-cultural compartments has emerged with various forms of intercommunal antagonisms of which the African-Indian dichotomy dominates all dimensions of daily life. Nearly all of Guyana’s 850,000 people are concentrated on a 5 to 10 mile belt along the country’s 270 mile Atlantic coast. The multi-ethnic population is

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loosely integrated by an indigenous creole culture which has evolved from the admixture of experiences of the immigrant population during the last two hundred and fifty years of Guyanese history. Sub-cultural patterns of consciousness are dominant in identity formation even while social integrative institutions are not entirely non-existent. In moments of inter-ethnic confrontation and conflict, the strong sub-cultural patterns threaten to burst the society asunder at its ethnic seems. The interplay of integrative centripetal institutions such as commonly shared schools along with the fissiparous ethnic cultural features such as different religious faiths have created a split national personality. The Dutch were the first European settlers; they established plantation production of coffee, cotton, and sugar. Importation of Africans, East Indians, Portuguese, Chinese and “poor Whites” into Guyana resulted from the nature of the plantation system which required massive amounts of cheap labour. The Dutch began plantation production in the 17th century; when they were evicted finally by the British in 1803, the dominant economic organisation of the colony was the plantation. In the Caribbean, including Guyana, the establishment of plantations witnessed the introduction of massive numbers of African slaves, after the Amerindians and “poor Whites” were experimented with earlier. In 1807, the British slave trade with Africa was halted and in 1833 slavery was abolished. Few Africans returned to the sugar plantations, for their place was taken gradually by the arrival of indentured labourers. Government activities in urban centres were proliferating to cope with the administrative complexity of post-emancipation Guyana, however. Employment in urban centres attracted many Africans who, at this time, were the non-Europeans group most capable of filling the government vacancies. Migration to the cities proceeded apace; by 1891 Africans constituted about 47.19 per cent of the colony’s urban population. Between 1900 and 1965, the African population as a percentage of urban dwellers stabilised at roughly 50 per cent. Africans who have remained in villages constitute about 20 per cent of the total village population; most live predominantly in African villages. African plantation population has declined from 11.3 per cent in 1891 to 6.8 per cent in 1960. In 1960, the totally African sector amounted to 183,950 persons, or 32.83 per cent of the total population. Paralleling their concentration in urban centres, Africans increasingly provided the staff for government service. “By 1950, the Africans dominated every department of the Civil Service”.7 In 1960, some 73.5 per cent of the Security Forces, 53.05 per cent of the Civil Service, 62.29 per cent of the Government Agencies and Undertakings and 58.87 per cent of teachers in primary education were Africans. The ascendancy of Africans to positions of dominance in the Guyanese governmental bureaucracy was due substantially to their adoption of British cultural patterns. Centuries of close contact with Europeans, urban dwellings,

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ready attendance at British schools, all contributed to make this possible. Labour shortages following emancipation of the Africans explain the addition after 1833 of Chinese, Portuguese and Indians (from the Indian sub-continent, including Hindus and some Muslims) to the already existing ethnic groups in Guyana. The anticipated dearth of labour after the freeing of the slaves prompted the planters to seek new sources of manpower. Once again the Old World was tapped. Between 1835 and 1840 experiments were made with small batches of German, Portuguese, Irish, English, Indian and Maltese labourers.8 During 1853, even Chinese were tried. In the end, Indians proved most adaptable, economical, and available, although Chinese and Portuguese immigrants trickled in for over half a century. Nearly all the Indians, Portuguese and Chinese who were imported to replace African slaves came under contract indentures that required their labour for a five year period. The first batch of Indians (396) arrived in the colony during May 1838. With the exception of a brief interruption in the early 1840s, Indian immigration continued at the average pace of two or three shiploads annually until the indentureship system was abolished in 1917.9 Between 1838 and 1917, approximately 238,960 Indian indentured labourers arrived in Guyana.10 An additional 707 Indians were imported as free settlers between 1917 and 1926. At the expiration of their indentures, nearly two-thirds of the colony’s Indian population opted to remain as permanent residents. Indians who remained in Guyana at first continued some sort of association with the sugar plantations. Many acquired farm land contiguous to the estates in exchange for giving up their contractual right to return to India. Gradually, however, many Indians moved away from the sugar estates, first sharing their labour between their farm plots and the plantation, then turning completely to peasant farming, often on lands separate from the plantations. By 1881, out of a total Indian population of 79,929, thirty-four per cent lived outside the plantations. A series of Indian villages sprang up, mainly within a radius of ten to 15 miles of plantation lands. By 1911, the gradual but steady movement of Indians away from the plantations resulted in less than half of them remaining on the sugar estates but, significantly for this study, only 5.7 per cent gravitated to urban centres.11 To put it differently, in 1911, about 94 per cent of all Indians were rural dwellers and this residential pattern continued without much change right up to the 1960s. By 1946, the Indian outflow from the sugar estates left only a third of this population sector as plantation residents, but the Indian urban percentage had increased only to 9.9 per cent. In the 1960s, 25.5 per cent of the Indian population was on the sugar plantations, 13.4 per cent in urban centres, with the remaining 61.1 per cent found in villages. Guyana’s Indians are therefore predominantly rural dwellers, living mainly in Indian villages and on land adjacent to the sugar plantations.

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Indians, known for their thrift, invested their savings in small businesses and in the education of their children. Increasingly after the first world war, they began to compete for places in the civil service and the teaching profession, but prior to World War II Indian participation in the governmental bureaucracies was negligible. According to the 1931 census, Indians “constituted 8.08% of all persons in the public service and nearly half of them were in the lower grades such as messengers. Out of 1,397 teachers only 100 were Indians . . .”12 By 1964, when Indians constituted slightly over half the country’s population, their social, political and economic condition had improved so dramatically that they constituted 33.16 per cent of the Civil Service, 27.17 per cent of government agencies and undertakings and 41.49 per cent of teachers in primary education. The involvement of many Indians in the governmental bureaucracy points to their assimilation of at least some British values. Generally, Indians speak a broken form of English and wear Western-type clothes; they have been partly “creolised”. But this should not distract attention from the persistence of a subculture of Indian norms in Guyana. The overwhelming majority of Indians dwell in rural areas and display certain distinctive patterns of living that set them apart in significant ways from their non-Indian compatriots. Most Indians worship in Hindu temples and Muslim mosques, marry according to Hindu and Muslim rites, celebrate Hindu and Muslim festivals and practice their respective religious rituals. Besides, Indian family practices require Indians to marry Indians, thus perpetuating existing Indian traditional patterns. Indians not only regard themselves as a separate community in Guyana, but are perceived by other Guyanese as a distinct entity. Portuguese also were imported as indentured labourers to serve on plantations. Between 1834 and 1890, the period of Portuguese immigration, over 32,000 Portuguese from Madeira arrived in Guyana. Many Portuguese returned home with savings after serving their indentures, but most stayed in the colony. Those who remained immediately abandoned the estates and entered the retail trades. Within a few years following the termination of their indenture, the Portuguese literally dominated the retail trades. By 1851, out of 296 shops licensed to Georgetown, 173 belonged to Portuguese; in New Amsterdam 28 out of 52; in the rural areas, 283 out of 432. Part of the Portuguese success was attributed to the preferential treatment they received. Portuguese obtained credit from Europeans, but Africans did not. As a result, many Africans were driven out of the retail business, and Afro-Portuguese hostilities naturally ensued. In 1856, “practically every Portuguese shop in the country was destroyed” by rioting Africans.13 The Portuguese were compensated by a Registration Tax which was designed to fall primarily on African peasants. Similar Afro-Portuguese hostilities occurred in 1889 and 1905. The Portuguese did not remain in the petty retail business which, in the 20th century was taken over by Indians and Chinese. They gradually moved to

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urban centres where they diversely engaged in pawnbroking, the professions and big business. From the status of indentured labourers, they have moved to occupy upper-middle to upper class positions in Guyanese society. This is the case despite the fact that Portuguese constitute approximately only a minuscule part of the population after large numbers migrated from Guyana in the 1960s and 1970s. The Portuguese immigrant came to Guyana with a culture different from the prevailing one. Although he was white, his alien ways, Catholic religion, indentured condition and subsequent petty shopkeeping activities denied him the high status that most other Europeans were accorded. He generally was despised partly because he “lived in such a different manner to the ‘white’ gentleman”.14 Low status was the condition of every recently arrived immigrant group and the Portuguese was no exception. The main difference was that the Portuguese caucasoid phenotypical features potentially prepared him to occupy a high position in the existing class-colour system. The Portuguese eventually acquired English culture, education and wealth and entered “the higher status group with relative ease”.15 In contemporary Guyana, the Portuguese section of the population enjoys social status next to the Europeans. Nearly all Guyanese, however, differentiate between the Portuguese (derisively pronounced “Potagee”) and his European counterpart, partly because of the stigma of the indentured past. Moreover, the Portuguese do not enjoy the same measure of isolation as the Europeans. They interact daily with ordinary non-white Guyanese and have absorbed many creole norms. Nevertheless, the Portuguese community in Guyana regards itself and conducts most of its social life as a separate group. Chinese were the last of the indentured labourers brought to Guyana. The first Chinese immigrants landed in 1853; by 1880, a total of only 13,533 had arrived.16 The largest number of Chinese to live in Guyana at any one time was in 1866, when there were about 10,000 in the colony (Ibid.,p.58). The Chinese population declined to its lowest level, 2,118, in 1910; slow gains increased their numbers to 3,528 in 1947, and to 4,074 in 1960. The marked decline of Chinese numbers immediately after their arrival underlined the extent to which they suffered in plantation Guyana. Following their indenture, the Chinese attempted in 1865 to establish an exclusive Chinese ethnic settlement in Hopetown. The effort failed, mainly because of soil exhaustion and the scarcity of women. By 1902, Hopetown disappeared as a Chinese settlement. The Chinese did not choose to stay with agriculture; most entered the petty retail business as shopkeepers. By 1960, about 72.2 per cent of them had moved to urban centres where they engaged mainly in the restaurant, laundry and supermarket business. A few Chinese also are found in the professions and the governmental bureaucracy. In fact, in the immediate post-independence period, the Chinese were the only ethnic group in Guyana that had proportional representation in the governmental bureaucracy. They constituted 0.75 per cent

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of the total population, and held 0.75 per cent of governmental positions (Report on Racial Problems in The Public Service, 1965: 33).17 Culturally, most Chinese in Guyana have only “the skimpiest appreciation for the history and culture of China.”18 They speak English, wear Western clothes and are losing their Chinese names. Although their numbers were replenished in recent years by immigrants from Mainland China, their living patterns and economic activities appear comparable to urban Guyanese of similar socioeconomic status. However, there remains a certain residuum of institutions, behaviour, and values that mark them, perhaps not as Chinese in terms of Chinese culture, but as distinct from people who surround them. Perhaps the most important element of distinction is their self-recognition as a group and their action upon this recognition, a certain withdrawal from the total society and an explicit tendency to marry among themselves.19 Most Chinese accept the colour-class system. They benefit from it on account of their clear skin and straight hair. The members of the Chinese community enjoy relatively high social prestige among other Guyanese as a result of their assiduous work habits, internal cohesion and high economic well-being. No group demonstrates more effectively the operating nuances of the colourclass stratification system than the “Coloureds”.20 This mixed category is mainly the product of European-African miscegenation, although mixes of any light skinned group with persons of African descent could produce a person of “colour”. Unlike the United States, in Guyana coloureds are not considered Negroes, but are perceived of being and treated as a separate group. Their relatively light skin has placed them in an intermediate position in the social status system, provide them with greater educational opportunities and has generally accorded them intermediate white collar and administrative jobs. The very light skinned coloured is likely to occupy a position of greater responsibility and pay than a coloured of medium light pigmentation. Nearly all coloureds are privileged, English-speaking, and enjoy middle to upper middle class socioeconomic status. Coloureds act and behave as a separate group, although many still identify with the Europeans in economic and political matters. Coloureds constitute about 11.99 per cent of the total population, live mainly in urban centres and are dispersed occupationally in the Civil Service, the professions and business. Thus then would a multi-ethnic plural society be formed constituted of East Indians, Africans, Amerindians, Coloureds (Mixed Races), Portuguese, Europeans and Chinese. (Table 1.1 gives the ethnic population distribution). Slavery and indenture were the twin bases on which successful colonisation of the climatically harsh tropical coasts occurred. A work force of culturally divergent immigrants was recruited to labour on plantations in the New World. The

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different patterns of residence, occupation and political orientations by the imported groups reinforced the original differences of the settlers laying, from the inception of colonisation, the foundations of Guyana’s multi-ethnic politics. TABLE 1.1. Ethnic Distribution of the Guyanese Population

Ethnic Group

% Per Cent of Total

Indians

51.4

Africans

30.5

Mixed Races

11.0

Portuguese & Europeans

1.2

Chinese

0.2

Amerindians

5.3

(Source: Ministry of Information: 1980 Census)

By the beginning of the 20th century, certain features were clearly embedded in the social system. A communally-oriented, multi-ethnic society was being fashioned and institutionalised. Several layers of cleavage appeared and reinforced each other. Hence, separating East Indians and Africans were religion, race, culture, residence and occupation. Multiple coinciding divergencies deepened the divisions without the benefit of a sufficiently strong set of countervailing integrative forces. To be sure, most immigrants participated in varying degrees in a commonly shared school system, national laws, colourclass stratification system and experiences in suffering. At an elementary level there was even a measure of shared cross-communal class unity at places where Indians and Africans worked such as certain factories or labour gangs. But these were few and far between. The trajectory of social organisation was firmly launched from the multi-layered foundations set in the colonial period. These patterns would be sustained by voluntary associations that were formed.

The Structuring of Communal Identities The logic of the communal society implanted in Guyana pointed to a future of inevitable sectional strife. Not only were many layers of fairly distinct

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communal divisions erected, but in the absence of equally strong rival overarching integrative institutions, the immigrant groups viewed each other from the perspective of their respective compartments with misinformed fear and much hostility. The colonial pie was small, most of it allocated to the governing European coloniser element occupying the top echelon of the colourclass stratified system. Of the remaining jobs and other opportunities, the nonwhite segments fought among themselves for a share. African/Indian rivalry for the few scarce values of the colonial order would feature as a fundamental source of intercommunal conflict from the outset of the creation of the multitiered communal society. It would be sustained by a deliberate policy of divide and rule but would be mitigated by the urban/rural pattern of residence especially of Africans and Indians respectively. What had evolved, assuming the pretensions of a society, was an order based on sustained and manipulated communal conflict without any prospect of overcoming these basic divisions in the foreseeable future. Institutionalised division and embedded conflict were the defining features of the system in perpetuity. Or so it seemed even at the end of the 19th century. The 20th century would witness the unleashing of new forces which would erode and eliminate the seemingly permanently set colonial structures of dominance in Guyana. The mutual antagonisms shared among the subjugated ethnic elements would be diverted towards a unique opportunity to unite against the plantation society and its rulers. In particular, Indians and Africans under the leadership of sectional charismatic leaders acting in unison under the umbrella of the same political party would commence a shared struggle to uproot the colonial oppressors. Against the trajectory of a divided society consigned to perpetual internal strife dominated by a manipulative coloniser, a new tidal force of unity was unleashed in the independence movement. A common enemy in colonialism impelled the emergence of cross-communal leadership which mobilised non-white workers and others to challenge the plantocracy, the colour-class value system, the unjust distribution of jobs and privileges and all the other iniquitous aspects of the multi-ethnic immigrant society. A multiethnic independence movement called the People’s Progressive Party (PPP) was formed under the leadership of two charismatic sectional leaders, one an African (Forbes Burnham) and the other, an Indian (Cheddi Jagan). They successfully won the first elections, but almost immediately after victory engaged in a rivalry over sole leadership of the PPP. In the end, this led to a fatal split in the independence movement along ethnic lines. The two leaders parted company, formed their own party and thereafter Guyana was transposed into a territory riven by deep and destructive ethnic and racial politics. The moment of opportunity to build a new basis of inter-group relations and a new society was lost when the two sectional leaders parted company, formed their own party and pursued their own ambition for personal acclaim

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and power. The moment of reconciliation is a rare event in a multi-ethnic state suffused with all sorts of underlying predispositions for ethnically inspired divisive behaviour. What makes the loss of that opportune moment even more unbearable is the following sequence of events in which the old divisions embedded in the social structure were exploited and exacerbated by a new form of mass politics. A new type of party emerged, constructed on the discrete ethnic fragments into which the old unified party had broken. Mass politics invited rival mass organisations to capitalise on ethnic loyalties for votes. The new system of politics was adopted from a model of political competition derived from European contexts marked by an underlying unity and consensus. Many colonies with fragmented ethnic sections were bequeathed political institutions designed around adversarial zero-sum politics. The new parties in Guyana were encouraged to design vote-getting campaign strategies aimed at capturing a government and vanquishing an opponent as in a war of all against all. To win is to conquer; to lose is to die. Ethnic conflicts that are organised and acted out in an arena of partisan competition bound by zero-sum rules of rivalry tend to exacerbate the underlying deep divisions of the society. Party organisation and electoral competition together consign an ethnically multi-layered polity to a route destined to self-destruction. It seems that once the moment of reconciliation is lost, the ethnic monster is unleashed in the theatre of mass politics wreaking uncontrolled havoc, negating all efforts at development.

Political Parties and Voluntary Associations: Organising Ethnic Constituents for Electoral Victory In Guyana, like other Third World multi-ethnic states, competitive parties formed around a nucleus of members from one or another sub-system, do not serve to unify the society or to establish legitimate authority. In those societies which are relatively well integrated, already bound by a widely shared body of basic values, political parties have served as effective linkages between the identity of citizens and the policies of decision-makers at all levels of government. Competitive parties that are formed from exclusive ethnic blocs in internally fragmented states such as Guyana do not serve as agents of national integration and do not mobilise energies and scarce resources for national development. Instead, they exacerbate the underlying cleavages and sectionalism. The way they organise their lives and those of their constituents in a competitive arena of zero-sum stakes results in the wreckage of all human endeavour aimed at developmental amelioration. The new competitive parties in Guyana illustrate this well. Following the historic split of the national independence party, the PPP, two new factional parties emerged around the leadership of Dr Jagan and Mr Burnham. Each claimed the mantle of the old popular and victorious PPP so

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that, at least temporarily, there was a Burnhamite and a Jaganite PPP. Later, the Burnhamite faction would alter its name to the People’s National Congress (PNC hereafter), while the Jaganite faction retained the PPP label (PPP for Jagan’s faction hereafter). After the 1955 split, a general scramble commenced between the Jaganite and Burnhamite factions to ensure that Indians and Africans respectively stayed with their ethnic leaders. This occurred at the same time that each partisan grouping proclaimed its adherence to socialist ideals and programmes. Notwithstanding the appeals of the PPP and PNC for supporters in all classes and from all communities, the reality was that each party attracted virtually only Indians or only Africans. With the historic split in 1955, the coalition of African and Indian votes that supported the old PPP was destroyed. Progressively from 1955 to the present, Africans and Indians not only consolidated and completed their move to Burnham and Jagan respectively, but also, and most importantly, ethnic declarations for these leaders and their personalistically led parties by the Indian and African communities became overt and vociferous. Sectional identification with the two major parties became a fundamental fact of contemporary Guyanese politics. Paradoxically, in a political field of selfdeclared socialist parties, class criteria as a determinant of party identification was practically negligible or absent. Apanjaat, the local colloquial term for “vote for your own kind”, was the dominant factor which governed the political choices of nearly all Guyanese. Everyone expected an Indian to support and vote for the PPP and an African for the PNC. The fateful fall into the spiral of intensifying ethnic politics was also facilitated by the role of voluntary associations after the 1955 leadership split of the independence movement. Thereafter the relationship between political parties and voluntary associations accentuated the continued ethnic bifurcation in the Guyanese cultural system. All major economic and cultural intermediate associations became affiliated directly or indirectly with one or another of the political parties in Guyana. The rigidity of this close affiliation was underlined by the consistent similarity of policy positions on issues of public concern between particular parties and specific interest groups. To a substantial extent this was inevitable since, historically, each section gravitated to and developed around a particular occupation. The large economic organisations such as trade unions and the more important cultural groups such as religious associations are identified today by the public as belonging to the “blackman”, the “Coolie,” or the “Potagee”. From 1955 onwards, the period that coincides with the Jagan-Burnham split, the parties succeeded in capturing all the major voluntary organisations in Guyana.

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Ethnic Conflict Explodes into Civil War The spiral of intensifying ethnic conflict slowly but inexorably exacerbated by the way the political parties organised the lives of their constituents, the manner in which election campaigns were waged and the method by which voluntary associations were enlisted in the struggle for communal ascendancy, led almost inevitably to cataclysmic inter-ethnic confrontation and civil war. Between 1961 and 1965, the screws of communal conflict were slowly tightened so that few persons could escape being a co-opted participant in a system of mutual communal hate. Inter-ethnic relations, especially between Africans and Indians, were increasingly marked by covert contempt and distrust. The elements of an impending explosion were registered first in the fear of ethnic domination of Indians by Africans and of Africans by Indians. A new drama was unfolding in which the main motif was a struggle for ethnic ascendancy compounded by a politically instigated terror of internal communal colonisation. While interethnic interaction was still carried on in the familiar routine of daily life, the same persons in the privacy of their homes and communities enacted a script of racist and communal antipathy drawing, every day, perilously close to open conflagration. In public, the political drums continued surreptitiously to beat on the theme of ethnic claims and exclusivity; in public interaction each side had contrived a set of secret intra-communal symbols, idioms and nuanced expressions to silently communicate group solidarity erected on an understanding of collective contempt for the other side. Dual roles and schizophrenic personalities dwelt simultaneously in an ethnically split society. Forced to live together by the designs of a colonial conqueror, the sectional elements possessed no experience for inter-communal accommodation. Introduced mass politics was betrayed by sectional leaders jockeying for power. A moment of opportunity for reconciliation and reconstruction was squandered and the innocence of legitimate inter-ethnic suspicion was nurtured into a monster obsessed with the fear of communal dominance. One cleavage after another that separated the ethnic segments – race, traditional values, religion, residence and occupation – was reinforced by a mode of modern mass ethnonationalist politics that drove the society to the brink of self-destruction. After the 1961 elections, in the aftermath of an intensively organised ethnicised election campaign and with the promise of independence soon thereafter, the victory by Cheddi Jagan’s Indian based PPP posed a fundamental threat to the survival of Africans, Mixed Races, Europeans, Amerindians, Chinese and Portuguese. The system of electoral politics enabled the victor in a zero-sum game of competition to assume complete control of the resources of the government. The chance, even a slim one, that this power could be perversely applied to systematically and permanently exclude political and communal opponents was all that was necessary to mobilise massive and crippling

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opposition to any ethnically-based government. In the multi-layered communal order established by the colonial power, an interdependent economy of specialised parts, each part dominated by one ethnic group, was institutionalised. No ethnic group could live without the other. Fear of ethnic domination was also a critical feature in the politics of independence after the accession of Jagan to power in 1961. That the British promised independence to the victor of the 1961 elections only magnified the fear that the party in power would be able to redefine the rules of the game permanently without colonial external intervention. Independence evoked visions of ethnic discrimination, repression and servitude in the functional equivalence of a new kind of internal colonialism. The impending ethnic catastrophe in Guyana following the 1961 elections was compounded by a second factor apart from the inter-communal conflict and the attendant fear of ethnic domination. Ideology assumed a salient role, for Dr Jagan’s PPP unabashedly espoused a Moscow-oriented socialist policy for the transformation of colonial Guyana. More specifically, Guyana under the avowed Marxist-Leninist Cheddi Jagan, sought a new radical direction at the inopportune time that Cuba under Castro had become an acutely uncomfortable thorn in the side of the United States. After the Bay of Pigs fiasco, President Kennedy had firmly decided that there would not be another Cuba in the Western Hemisphere. Defiantly, Dr Jagan had declared unreserved support for Fidel Castro, calling him the greatest liberator of the 20th century. Guyana was still a colony at the time. Hence, the PPP government posed a triple threat to various opponents, both internal and external. First, the Burnham-led PNC, representing mainly the African section, saw Jagan’s PPP as a communal threat in the possibility of permanent ethnic domination. Second, the laissez-faire capitalist-oriented United Force (headed by Portuguese businessman Peter D’Aguiar) representing for the most part the well-off non-African non-Indian sections of the Guyana population, feared the PPP because of the communist threat to private property. Third, the Kennedy regime feared the PPP because of its threat to the geo-political security interests of the US in the Western Hemisphere in the context of Cold War politics.

Prelude to Full-Scale Ethnic Domination: The PNC/UF Coalition After the historic 1964 elections which witnessed the defeat of Jagan’s PPP, the new coalition of Forbes Burnham and Peter D’Aguiar acceded to power. No attempt was made by the two largest sectional parties, the PPP and the PNC, to forge a grand coalition in a new government of national unity. Neither Burnham nor Jagan would serve in a subordinate role to each other even though a grand coalition need not involve a hierarchy of leaders. The trajectory of events after the 1955 leadership split clearly indicated that Jagan and Burnham held

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irreconcilable personal and programmatic differences. The upshot was a reaffirmation of the plural society expectation, if not prescription, of a system of government based on ethnic domination. It would not be until the middle 1970s that the two leaders would be forced by circumstances to come close to reconciliation. In the meanwhile, however, Burnham would proceed to erect, slowly initially, a thoroughgoing system of ethnic control in Guyana. In the field of economic development, Guyana adopted a strategy of “industrialisation by invitation”. Essentially, this economic strategy aimed at attracting foreign investment by providing incentives in the form of tax holidays and duty free concessions to foreign businesses. The government’s major preoccupation was developing an infrastructure of roads, electricity, ports, education and other basic services. The fact that Peter D’Aguiar controlled the finance ministry underscored the strong private enterprise bias of the country’s chosen path to economic salvation. By 1968, private investment had reached over (G) $62 million annually, of which (G) $32.4 million was from foreign sources. While complaints were loud and frequent from the PPP, the coalition partners boasted of unprecedented prosperity in Guyana. Communal peace was restored, the PPP was practically silenced, and a pro-Western economic and foreign policy was solidly launched. Burnham’s relationship with D’Aguiar, however, was an uncomfortable one. Disenchantment between the UF and PNC grew to intense proportions the longer the coalition lasted. The UF charged that the PNC was heavily proAfrican and biased therefore not only against Indians but against UF supporters as well. The meaning of this separation of the UF from the PNC was clear. Now not only Indians, who make up over 50 per cent of the population, were against the PNC but also UF supporters, who were about 10 per cent of the population. With over 60 per cent of the population against it, the PNC regime was in even greater danger of political disruption than even before. Elections were scheduled again for mid-1968 and the PPP, although substantially weakened, berated the PNC association for allowing “a splinter group” to run the government. About six months before the elections, party crossings in Parliament, giving the PNC a majority, allowed the party to evict the UF from the coalition government. With D’Aguiar out, the PNC for the first time gained sole control over the government. The PNC reconstituted the Electoral Commission, staffing it with its own sympathisers and changing the procedures of administering the elections. In the 1968 elections in what would be established incontrovertibly as rigged elections, involving tens of thousands of fictitious votes, an astounded UF and PPP witnessed a PNC “victory” at the polls. We refer to the 1968 elections as “a seizure of power”. The electoral fraud was committed under the tight supervision of a politicised communally lopsided police and military force. The central election office in Georgetown was barricaded like an impregnable fortress with

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high security fences, barbed wire, flood lights and armed guards protecting its activities under utmost secrecy. The “overseas vote” was a new creation literally extending the domestic electorate to England and the US. It was wholly administered by the PNC politically appointed ambassadors to the UK and USA. It supplemented padded domestic voter lists. The PNC won nearly all the overseas votes and in a number of local constituencies it alone won more ballots than eligible votes on the roll. Both the PPP and the United Force were shocked by the results, but they could do nothing against a government that now controlled both “the ballots and bullets”. Hence, after the 1968 elections, in which the prior pattern of ethnic voting preference continued, Burnham had the support almost only from his own communal group. Indians and other non-Africans (mainly Europeans, Chinese, Amerindians, Portuguese, and part of the Mixed Races population constituting about 10 to 15 per cent of the population) lost the franchise and became alienated. By declaring Guyana a republic, Burnham thwarted legal challenges to the election results that would have led to adjudication by the Privy Council in England. A predominantly African army and police ensured that the election results were not forcibly overturned by riots and demonstrations. From mid-1968 onwards, Burnham would preside over a minority government kept in office by repeated electoral fraudulence and a politicised and ethnically sanitised army and police. Needless to point out, democracy was now dead; its crucial vehicle of representation through fair elections, was tampered with. Legitimacy was lost; the state coercive machinery was the main guardian of the illegal PNC regime. A minority party seized power. No colonial or external power had aided the PNC in rigging the 1968 elections. The colonial precedents of manipulating democratic devices to serve imperial interests were well learnt by the Burnham government. Guyana had come full circle from colonial domination, to freedom and back to domination, this time of one nonwhite group dominating another.

The Consolidation of Ethnic Domination The “seizure of power” in 1968 was a watershed in ethnic relations in Guyana. In a multi-ethnic society, the PNC representing a minority African group (32 per cent) grabbed the government. To avert internal disruption, the PNC government embarked on purging the critical pillars of its power – the coercive forces and the civil service – of most of its non-African elements. Where communal malcontents did not strike and demonstrate, many migrated to Europe and North America. Especially this became the case of the Europeans, Chinese and Portuguese. The massive migration of this group from Guyana left a society predominantly polarised between Africans and Indians.

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When Burnham seized power in 1968, he realised that the economy was controlled essentially by his communal opponents. He therefore embarked on a programme to alter the country’s economic structure which had favoured big businessmen, large property owners and foreign companies. In part, the membership of these privileged groups coincided with many of the more powerful of his communal supporters’ bases of existence. To the PNC, the economic structure did not favour most if its own communal supporters who were mainly urban-based, underprivileged and poor. Burnham’s own survival depended on an altered economic order that addressed the needs of his communal constituents. Several critical events prompted the PNC to drastic action. First, US aid to Guyana was reduced substantially since the “communist menace”, Jagan’s PPP was ousted from power. Second, foreign investments decreased from about (G) $60 million in 1968 to (G) $17.3 million in 1971. Third, rice production plummeted from 5.7 per cent of the GNP in 1966 to 2.9 per cent in 1971. Finally, the sugar industry which was not only the country’s principal source of foreign exchange, but also substantially dominated by the PPP’s communal segment, was frequently crippled by politically-inspired PPP opposition strikes. Economic conditions as well as political interests prompted Burnham to radical action. Towards the end of 1969, then, the PNC regime proclaimed a socialist framework for Guyana’s reconstruction. In 1970, Guyana was declared a “Cooperative Republic”. From private enterprise, the economy was to be founded on cooperatives as the main instrument of production, distribution and consumption. But crises continued to bedevil the regime. The government ran a gauntlet besieged by high unemployment (30 per cent), under-employment (36-40 per cent), double-digit inflation, demonstrations, boycotts, strikes and later on as a result of the Arab-Israeli war, prohibitive fuel costs. A vicious cycle of poverty was created by a pattern of polarised and unstable ethnic politics intermixed with the salve of socialist rhetoric and programmatic justifications. Between 1971 and 1976, the government nationalised nearly all foreign firms bringing 80 per cent of the economy under state control. This unwieldy public sector supplied the job opportunities necessary to quell the increasing demands of PNC supporters for equitable participation in the economy. State corporations proliferated but most were placed under an umbrella state agency called GUYSTAC which controlled 29 corporations and several companies valued at (G) $500 million. Government ministries increased from 12 in 1968 to 21 in 1977. The government also ran five banks, three bauxite companies, and a gigantic sugar corporation which, at one time, dominated the country’s entire economy. These public agencies were staffed overwhelmingly by the regime’s communal supporters. The police, security and armed forces, in particular, were expanded to protect the besieged PNC government. The judiciary also came under the PNC’s regime’s direct influence. The appointment of judges and magistrates was routinely based on party loyalty.

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Thus, the use of the courts to challenge the legality and constitutionality of decisions of the regime was futile. The overall policy output of the PNC regime, even if it were to be interpreted foremost in socialist terms, pointed indisputably to ethnic favouritism and preference. The polarisation of the two main ethnic races was probably attributable as much to ethnic chauvinism among PNC activists as to PPP boycotts and strikes against the government. The economic situation had deteriorated so badly that towards the end of the 1970s, the impact reverberated adversely on everyone alike, regardless of ethnic membership. Strikes and demonstrations and other challenges to Burnham’s power increasingly came from all ethnic segments including Africans. The arsenal of coercive powers previously used against Indians was now used against African dissidents also.

Part II: Governance and Prescription for Ethnic Conflict Regulation In light of the foregoing pattern of ethnic conflict in Guyana, the analysis and prescriptions that follow on the issue of governance is organised by looking first at one political cause, the role of the state, as an important actor in contemporary ethnic conflicts. We stay close to our data generated by the Guyana case to show how the colonial state created a multi-ethnic society, how the institutions and practices of the state promoted and exacerbated communal strife and how much of this could have been circumvented. In doing this, we draw into the analysis an array of other causative factors and forces as described in above categories. In effect, we follow a procedure that looks at other forces and features of the “ethnic state” which contributed to the communal conflict in Guyana. We attempt to set forth recommendations via de negative in constructing what is labelled an “anti-model”. Put differently, apart from a list of prescriptions which decision-makers should do to regulate ethnic conflict, there is equally a powerful potion of recommendations emanating from the Guyana case which multi-communal states must seek to avoid at all cost. Together the positive and negative list of recommendations do not fully comprehend and exhaust the full range in the repertoire of conflict regulation mechanisms (as set forth earlier) which can be derived from studying a collection of dissimilar country cases. We try to stay as close as possible to the empirical evidence embodied in the Guyana case referring periodically to other country cases of multi-ethnic politics.

The State Essential to the analysis of Guyana’s communal strife is the creation of an “ethnic state”, a concept that alludes to the descensus in the social demographic

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structure created by colonialism. The multi-ethnic state in Guyana, as in many parts of the Third World, was a colonial artifact. State and nation were not coterminus entities; rather, the colonial state deliberately spawned an ethnically segmented social and cultural fabric. The role of the state in the creation of the underlying conditions of communal conflict is therefore critical to an understanding of Guyana’s difficulties. In looking at the state, attention is focused not only the policies related to the formation of a multi-ethnic society, but also on the political institutional apparatus through which state power is contested. Specifically, this refers to the competitive parliamentary system that was engrafted onto Guyana as part of the state apparatus and that engaged parties in zero-sum struggles for power.

A Zero-Sum Competitive Parliamentary System When Guyana obtained independence, the state apparatus that was bequeathed to the local rulers was the most highly articulated and developed set of institutions in the entire society. However, it was trammelled by an institutional political apparatus that tended to accentuate the ethnic segmentation in the society. A particular variant of the imported parliamentary system fashioned on the zero-sum electoral and party system in Britain played a major role in structuring and institutionalising ethnic conflict and competition in the state. In Britain, a body of consensual values had evolved nationally serving as a means to moderate rivalry over the values of the state. Guyana lacked such a system of settlement over basic issues. The rival parties, linked to discrete ethnic clusters, confronted each other in a manner similar to military warfare over fundamental issues on the form of the society, economy and polity. The salient issue was that the mode of conflict resolution in collective decisionmaking that was adopted tended to encourage the formation of ethnic groupings which in turn competed for outright control of all the values of the state. Zerosum parliamentary contests do not encourage sharing or fixed proportions. This meant that the stakes were high in the contest for political power and victory viewed as conquest. A system of pre-arranged results with guaranteed minimum rewards would have tended to depoliticise the intensity and stakes in the contests enabling the defeated a share in the polity and society. This is particularly important in a setting where the constituent elements in the population are cultural communities which share few overarching traditions and institutions. There is controversy, to be sure, over the prescription of pre-established shares as a device to regulate ethnic conflict, but this tends to occur in societies such as the United States and Canada which are already relatively integrated. The social structure of these societies bear little resemblance to the fissiparous features which characterise the plural societies in the Third World.

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The zero-sum parliamentary contest takes place in the electoral process and, as demonstrated in the chapter on election campaigns in Guyana, the result is a rising crescendo of ethnic tensions over successive elections thereby exacerbating the sectional divisions that already exist. But this is not the full extent of zero-sum competition for power. The repercussions permeate all aspects of inter-group relations in spheres of social interaction and daily cross communal communications which previously were benign. The zero-sum electoral struggle, in effect, spills over into and permeates all areas of life adding to communal fear, suspicion and stereotyping. To contain the competition over power by eliminating zero-sum electoral struggles is to constrain and contain the ravages of ethnic strife in a strategic area of political life. Could not the system of zero-sum competition for exclusive control of the state be supplanted by an alternative order based on power-sharing? The postWorld War II history of Guyana shows how this option availed itself and was lost. In the independence movement, the opportunity was created for a formula for sharing office. The PPP headed by Jagan and Burnham was, however, too preoccupied with winning the first general elections under universal adult suffrage than with inventing a formula for sharing power. Besides, it was not clear that the PPP would win the elections. Moreover, while the popular euphoria in political campaigning submerged all fears and anxieties between Africans and Indians, it was probably unwise to open the potentially contentious issue of power-sharing and resource allocation and invite unnecessary internal friction in the independence movement. For all of these reasons, no attempt was made to develop a formula for the sharing of power. This is a familiar situation which was also enacted in many multi-ethnic Third World countries that mounted unified struggles for independence. In Guyana, almost immediately after virtual victory over the antecedent colonial regime, the independence party was riven by divisive squabbles over power. Because the jockeying was between the two major charismatic ethnic leaders, the rivalry assumed a communalist connotation to followers. As the internal struggle continued, correspondingly the inter-ethnic mass following was fractured. Inter-elite intransigence triggered a situation that they literally lost control over. The opportunity to establish a stable formula for power-sharing was overcome by events. Once fed into popular emotions, the chance of rational solution were greatly diminished. In Guyana, the opportunity for power-sharing was lost to a new order marked by open zero-sum rivalry. After this, the fear of ethnic domination became part of the vocabulary of inter-ethnic interaction. Stated in this way, the stakes in the competition became co-terminus with both the survival of an ethnic group and the state itself. Through a few fortuitous events, one section acquired power and retained it through the armed forces and fraudulent elections. Thereafter, ethnic repression and discrimination ensued and was met by

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collective ethnic retaliation. A spiral of violence and counter-violence had created a situation in which all prosperity ceased.

Resource Allocation Apart from the fact that the state was created and marked by a system of ethnic stratification from the outset and at independence lacked a consensus over its basic institutions, it was also in its totality the most well-equipped and endowed apparatus in the society. In many ways, the state was larger than the society. Anyone who captured it could overwhelm the society bringing it to the service of its own particular interests. Civilian institutions were weak and fragmented and could not rival the state as a countervailing force. The ecclesiastical bodies were divided, the political parties were polarised and the voluntary associations weak and dependent. The main rival political parties, each representing one or the other of the major ethnic groups, recognised the value of capturing the government in its entirety. State power was so overwhelmingly, powerful concentrated and centralised that it could be used as an instrument for promoting personal ambition as well as ethnic domination, even genocide. It was this sort of predisposing situation in which basic institutional consensus was absent and in which ethnic mass parties operated that invited ethnic politics in its extreme pathological form. The cultural pluralism, the absence of overarching values and institutions, and the implanting of zero-sum political competitive institutions can, together, be conceived as the predisposing factors that laid the foundation of ethnic conflict in the state with its attendant destructive effects on all development efforts. The factors that triggered ethnic conflict were clearly identifiable but occurred at different times during the evolution of the problem. These factors were : (1) colonial manipulation; (2) introduction of mass democratic politics; and (3) rivalry over resource allocation. It is necessary to conceive of the problem cumulatively in which these factors at different points served as precipitating “triggers”. At various times, a particular triggering factor deposited a layer of division which in turn provided the next step for the deposit of a new layer of forces to the accumulating crisis. However, these accumulations could have been neutralised if not entirely reversed by some form of deliberate state intervention. There was nothing inevitable or automatic about the transition from one stage to the next. To be sure, it would appear that after a number of successive reinforcing deposits of divisive forces, a critical mass in momentum had been attained so that every ethnically related issue became magnified and inflammable. Despite this, many opportunities for change from this compartmentalised stranglehold often avail themselves. There is nothing inevitable that the colonially-derived communal system should be permanent. Ethnic boundaries

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are notoriously fluid in rapidly changing environments; ethnically communalised life can be modified so as to submit sectional claims to regulation. Deliberate state intervention can moderate the combustive properties of ethnic mobilisation which ethno-nationalist leaders thrive on. One such area of planned intervention relates to the allocation of shares and benefits bestowed by the state. It is difficult to locate precisely the time when the question of ethnic shares became an issue in the struggle among the communal sections in Guyana. In a sense, the entire colonial pyramidal ethnic structure not only embodied resource allocation but explained its existence. The colonial state in Guyana was constituted of a hierarchical ranking of ethnic groups with the European section occupying the dominant position. Through a colour-class system of stratification, the skewed distribution of values and statuses was rationalised and regulated. As long as the European retained his pre-eminent position, African-Indian rivalry was restrained. Besides, the separate ethnic compartments provided territorial zones and a buffer against direct rivalry. Inter-ethnic suspicion and fear, however, materialised from the moment of Indian entry into the society and their subsequent migration from rural areas to towns for government jobs. Indians were cast in the role of a late-comer who diluted the entitlement of the African. When Africans became acculturated to English ways and accepted Christianity and the English school system, this gave them prior and strategic entry into public service positions and to many urban-based jobs in the private sector. Indian acquisition of English education came relatively late, only after Africans had already consolidated their hold on the lower-level echelon positions available to them in the public and teaching services. Indian-African conflict can therefore be explained by this competition over public jobs and, generally, public resource allocation. As independence approached, it became evident that the European section would lose its preeminence. How Indians would relate to Africans became a source of anxiety. Already Indians had started to acquire westernised skills and education. Some had commenced to claim jobs in the public and teaching services. Intimations of inter-sectional conflict were already appearing in the immediate post World War II period. Especially, rivalry between middle class Africans and Indians reared its head at various points in the conflict. How power and privileges should be distributed between these two dominant groups was, in some ways, an open issue. The transfer of the British political institutional model meant open competition on merit for the allocation of public service jobs. In the long run this was bound to challenge African hold on the public service and, given the rapid growth and education of the Indian population, convert an unranked African-Indian ethnic system into one that was ranked. It would have lent itself not a system of regulated sharing but to a

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new hierarchical system of ethnic differentiation. Such an eventuality was, however, not inevitable. It is easy to overestimate the importance of the material basis of ethnic conflict by making it the single most significant factor in communal strife as the Marxist-Leninist political economy school does. If it were true that this material basis was the main explanation of communal conflict, then one would expect that with enough jobs being created, this competition and conflict would diminish and disappear. The evidence from the Guyana case suggests that in many occupational sectors where jobs were available in plentiful supply, AfricanIndian antagonisms persisted. Transposed overseas and no longer in competition with each other over jobs and resources, Guyanese-Africans and Indians continue the ethnic feud with even greater intensity. It is therefore necessary to place this resource allocation variable in a facilitating role that can be significant but not determinative of the outcome of communal conflict. Put differently, the regulation of resource competition can act as a significant brake on the movement of the society into polarised warring camps.

Need for Capability to Suppress Inter-ethnic Violence Ethnic violence seems to have a special combustive property to overwhelm all rationality and engulf the entire society in total war of all against all. For this reason, control of ethnic strife to non-physical disagreements is essential to the prospect of restoring harmony. Besides, open warfare tends to add a new almost indelible encrustment of complaints and grievances that drive communities farther apart. To be sure, there was considerable ethnic tension among Guyana’s communal sections, but much of this during the colonial period was regulated by rituals of interaction that confined and concealed the strains. For all practical purposes, Guyana, like many ethnically segmented societies, was quietly but perpetually at war with itself. Surrogates for physical violence suffused the system. These encompassed such forms as rivalry around the celebration of their respective religious holidays, competition in business and government, etc. Stereotypes which tended to belittle and depreciate entire communal sections nevertheless served as a defense mechanism that offered a private and quiet victory of the mind over the communal opponent. However,they also tended to dehumanise ethnic enemies setting the stage for violence. When democratic politics and mass parties were introduced and ethnically-based parties emerged, these underlying stereotypical antipathies were harnessed to them. The new collective forces accentuated ethnic hostilities. Competition at elections tended to provide the occasion for these antagonisms to be vented openly; often political campaigns seemed like military engagements. All of this always kept the society unstable, lingering on the brink of violence.

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Collective ethnic violence occurred in civil war proportions in Guyana in the 1963-64 period as the two major political parties confronted each other over the control of the government. In many ethnically mixed villages where a preponderance of either Indians or Africans resided, ethnic violence or its threat occurred against the minority group. This sort of “ethnic cleansing” led to the migration of these minorities from these villages adding to the concentration of self-segregated communal residential settlements in Guyana. For many months protracted ethnic violence convulsed the small multi-ethnic state until foreign British troops were called in to restore order. For many Guyanese, the civil war marked by ethnic violence was a traumatic event that led to irreversible commitment to communal solidarity. While it was true that throughout Guyanese history, Africans and Indians maintained tense relations marked by mutual suspicion and covert hostility, the outbreak of physical violence seemed to have crossed a psychological threshold of no return to cross-cultural cordiality. A new level of ethnically oriented physical violence was unleashed in Guyana when in 1968 the African-based PNC government, with police and army support, rigged the elections. The legitimacy of the government was lost and opposition challenges mounted. Over the next decade the size of the coercive forces expanded dramatically. Expenditures for them increased by over a thousand times. What emerged was a state apparatus, having lost its legitimacy, that sought to maintain its power and control by repressing its communal enemies. The Burnham regime, however, did not go about physically exterminating its ethnic enemies. Rather, a system of non-violent terror was established to control the behaviour of its opponents. State institutions such as the courts were ethnically politicised and converted into instruments of communal discrimination. State terror and threat of violence were met by Indians’ response in the sabotage of the economy. Since the economic system, during colonial times, was crafted so that there was a coincidence of economic specialisation and ethnic concentration, this meant that, unless all segments cooperated, the economy could fall apart. Hence, African control of the public service was utilised as the lever to destabilise the Indian-based Jagan government, while Indian control of the sugar and rice industries was used to sabotage the Africanled Burnham government. Economic interdependence invited mutual sabotage. The impact of persistent Indian strikes and boycotts in their economic sector, accompanied by mass migration and the loss of essential skills from Guyana, reverberated adversely on all ethnic groups alike. Economic collapse imparted universal suffering. African workers who, like Indian workers under the Jagan government had supported discriminatory policies, soon felt the full brunt of the diminishing economy and a bankrupt government. When they went out on strike for more pay and for job security, the state apparatus turned

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its coercive arsenal against them. When the regime unleashed its violence against its own communal members, it did so as if they were misguided and as if they betrayed an ethnic trust. The communal members of the regime who opposed the government were made special objects of terror and violence. They were treated as traitors with a sort of passion and hate that only brothers could concoct against each other. The state in this instance did become strong to contain dissent, especially that which came from its ethnic adversaries. Clearly, capability to contain violence is not the unqualified prescription to regulate violence in multi-ethnic states. One additional ingredient is vital. That is the institution charged with administering law and order, including the police and the judiciary, should be multi-ethnic in composition. In some ways this is almost an impossibility to implement because those who govern are likely to have relied on the ethnic composition of the coercive institutions in bringing them to power. To alter the composition of these institutions may be tantamount to committing political suicide. There, is however, no way around this kind of a policing force apart from one supplied by an external mediator such as the United Nations. In the end, this can only be a temporary device, albeit one that can recruit and train a multi-ethnic force so as to detribalise it and render it neutral and formidably effective in controlling all outbreaks of ethnic violence.

Will and Compromise One of the grievous harms caused by persistent and protracted strife in a multi-ethnic society, is the loss of will and capability to reconcile. After many years of ongoing communal struggle, it would appear that a sentiment of fatalism enters through the backdoor of consciousness compelling the battered psyche to accept the ethnic battle lines and many adaptations to it as inevitable and permanent. A new sociocultural architecture of human settlement and communal interaction had emerged with ethnic roles and social institutions defined in neat niches of unholy compromises and concordances. Usually, while the struggle continues, an odd sort of social stability in personal and group relations emerges and persists. It is, in effect, a dual-level social structure, one marked by clever cordiality, the other more subterranean, marked by communal anger, hate, plots and silent violence. A broken will, enfeebled and unprepared for reconciliation, emerges reinforced by countless symbols of old battles won and lost as well by organisations and interests which institutionalise and structure the conflict. To be sure, at any earlier time, the leaders and elites in the various ethnic communities were able to communicate and beat out compromises for intercommunal co-existence. But as the conflict continues and deepens, even this upper layer becomes a victim of inter-communal intransigence. The ethnic monster devours everyone in the end.

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Compromise and cooperation are the very heart of the developmental process. This is true of all social structures, integrated and divided alike. The democratic fabric itself is constituted of not only substantive give and take in beating out public policy, but this is undergirded by a culture and psychology of mutual trust in exchanges. The mortar of cooperation and compromise maintains the integrity of the edifice of society. In the multi-ethnic states of the Third World, the tension in working out mutually satisfactory exchanges is often over-strained by the fact the cleavages and differences are ethnicised. Protracted institutional ethnic conflict is the stuff out of which a culture and psychology of cooperation is undermined, rendering collective development difficult if not impossible. Compromise and cooperation are embodied in devices for conflict resolution. In Guyana, compromise and cooperation came alive and were implemented in the first unified independence movement under the original PPP. Internal differences accompanied by external manipulation torpedoed the coalition of personalities and interests that held the PPP together. Thereafter, even in the midst of the ethnic division that ensued, there have been many efforts at restoring the old compromises in unity, but as one party captured power and especially after it maintained it by electoral fraudulence, the two ethnic groups drew farther apart and the periodical talk of a government of national unity assumed the air of a mechanical public relations exercise. Each group settled into its own ugly niche in an ethnically-influenced structure that, in a weird way, sustains each other. With the will to compromise broken, the new forms of conflict resolution assume the form of a divorce.

The Guyana Anti-model Theorists must be willing to examine both failed and successful cases in ethnic conflict to adduce evidence towards a framework of ethnic conflict resolution. In this regard, the Guyana case can be conceived as “an anti-model.” It tells more of what not to do since Guyana committed many of the critical false steps that catapulted the state towards a disastrous destination. As an “antimodel”, the Guyana case points to the destructive role of leaders who pursued private ambition before the long-term interests of citizens in a unified state. The leadership factor is clearly critical; it almost alone was accountable for both successful communal mobilisation of each section making it possible to pressure the colonial power out of Guyana and at the same time it was primarily culpable in launching the state into an irretrievable tailspin of ethnically-ignited passions that led to collective catastrophe. If it is true that the main communal leaders, after they won the elections of 1953, led Guyana down the road to communal self-immolation, it is equally accurate to assert that in the immediate pre-1953 elections period they had

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discovered a formula for inter-ethnic unity. This was incorporated in the organisation of the independence movement itself. The lessons show that multiethnicity is not inevitably destructive. It can be harnessed for constructive ends. In Guyana, ethnic sentiments were mobilised during the independence movement and harnessed to a multi-ethnic mass party that promised to mobilise the collective energies of citizens from the culturally diverse communities towards the development and transformation of the state. In the successful effort at cross-communal accommodation between 1950-1953 resides suggestive ingredients for a theory of consolidation. How did a broadly-based crosscommunal party emerge? What factors featured in the amalgam and which ones were critical and peripheral in the process? Can the process be replicated and generalised to other multi-ethnic states? The Guyana case from 1950 to 1953 does generate some important insights such as the role of recognising the identity and interests of the separate communities; the importance of leaders in the different communities to subordinate their private ambitions to the larger goal of maintaining peace in a just distribution of values; the value of compromise and a mechanism to resolve ongoing disputes free from the immediate pressures of outbidders and mass passions; the search for a mutually agreeable formula for sharing jobs, titles and political offices; the need to exclude external actors who tend to intervene for their own goals; and the importance of evolving institutions and practices for a shared citizenship. The presence of some of these factors but the absence of others together caused the independence movement to disintegrate into discrete ethno-nationalist parts. The Guyana “anti-model” also points to the lack of understanding of the dynamics of the ethnic factor once it has been aroused and directed to promote rival communal claims for jobs, self-protection and self-assertion. It was clear that the communal leaders, while cultivating and feeding the ethnic monster for practical gain, could not constrain it to rational appeal and national reconstruction thereafter. They became victim to a monster of their own creation: did they understand that the nature of the ethnic creature was as uncontrollable and volatile as it turned out to be so that they were not masters of it but were in time captured by it instead? The Guyana case describes the descent into a vertigo of self-reinforcing, ethnically-charged forces once ethnic solidarity was entertained for narrow political gain. Political leaders in multi-ethnic states can learn from the Guyana “anti-model” as well as from similar cases about the irrational features of the ethnic factor. Ethnic solidarity can contribute to identity formation and energise a state towards development when properly harnessed but when antagonistically attached, as almost inevitably tends to be the case, to rival communities occupying the same territory and government, it can wreak irreparable harm and havoc. The Guyana “anti-model” has its institutional lessons. While on one hand it can be argued that a participant democratic system is essential for the establishment of legitimate authority and for the mobilisation of citizens for

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development challenges, it is clear from the Guyana case that an institutional competition party system with its zero-sum implications for the distribution of power and privileges is inappropriate for the maintenance of elementary order and stability in multi-ethnic states. After the leadership split between the two communal leaders in 1955, probably more than any other factor, successive electoral campaigns conducted in a zero-sum warlike combat exacerbated ethnic strife in Guyana. In the Guyana experience between 1950 and 1953, an example of consociation and accommodation was successfully experimented with. Institutional engineering can seek to depoliticise many areas of contention such as minority rights, distribution of jobs and contracts, and the protection of cultural identity, etc. In the consociational arrangement set forth by Arend Lijphart, the main ingredients of an accommodation are a coalition government and a system of proportional sharing of values.21 A coalition is clearly required and its forms and variations can be many. Its main limitation pertains to the secret diplomacy that accompanies the deliberations of sectional elites in working out the terms of a compromise package for rule. The “proportionality principle” in the Lijphart model of consociation pertains directly to problems in the Guyana “anti-model” (Premdas 1986).22 A familiar interpretation of the ethnic conflict in Guyana coming from Marxists in the political economy school argues that the struggle for material rewards explains the struggle. Put differently, if the issue of rewards can be settled or depoliticised, then the conflict will disappear. The Guyana “anti-model” case illustrates the limitations of the “politics of preference” or “resource allocation” school. It aptly points to the irrational nature of ethnic conflict showing that even where material resources cease to be a variable, in the context of the shared poverty of both Indians and Africans, the communal strife persisted. To be sure, resource allocation has served as a major instigator of ethnic conflict in Guyana especially among the middle classes of both Indians and Africans. When Indians and Africans migrated to overseas destinations and became well-off and were no longer in competition with each other for scarce resources, they continued their communal antipathies and animosities. Perhaps what better explains the persistence of the ethnic conflict from a materialist and a resource allocation perspective is the idea of “relative deprivation” and “comparative advantage”. Even when ethnic communities identified with a particular regime have been impoverished, they would continue to support “their government” simply to keep out an alternative regime with a better potential for performance but associated with an ethnic community. The resurgence of ethnic solidarity in Guyana after years of repression that hurt everyone confirms Horowitz’s perception. The Guyana “anti-model” also contains abundant materials on the process of withdrawal and escape mainly through mass migration. Engaged in an intense

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struggle that damages the well-being of both of the ethnic communities economically and psychologically, Guyanese sought refuge everywhere and anywhere. Some left for adjacent Suriname, Venezuela, and Brazil, while most migrated legally and illegally to North America. They voted with their feet, literally having lost the franchise at home. The important part has been in the loss of the best resource in the country adding to the impoverishment of the Guyanese people. To those who ruled and who survived as opposition politicians, the lesson was clear. Population loss means the debilitating destruction of the state in an area that defines the very viability of its existence – the loss of people in haemorrhaging proportions. The people who left, many middle class, were however the very people who espoused ethnic attachment but who now found it convenient to escape from the very abode that they had lit afire. The paradox of the situation underscores the larger point that the ethnic monster consumes its own children and makes a mockery of ethno-nationalist pretences to patria and group loyalty. In the end, everyone wants out. The highest aspiration of the Guyanese child is not to be physician or professor but simply to escape by migration. This aspect of the “anti-model” has created among Guyanese as a whole much cross-communal cynicism of politicians and the polity. The very outbidder who appealed to ethnic sentiment and mobilised followers to hate and violate the ethnic enemy runs away from the holocaust that he/she ignites. The true believer in ethnic solidarity becomes nauseated to the extent that he/ she takes flight. Ethnic loyalty and fanaticism spawns its own disloyalty and alienation. Another feature of generalisable use that can be derived from the Guyana “anti-model” refers to the manner in which early initial and limited ethnic actions progressively spreads like a cancer to take over and reorganise the entire state into communal compartments. At all levels, parties, unions, associations, parliaments, the public service, private businesses, corporations, armies, churches, for example, the entire system and all its institutions are suffused by the ethnic toxin. To be sure, in early colonial times, the seeds of division were laid so that residential, occupational, and value cleavages separated the communities. What the ethnicisation of a state entails is the release of the arsenal of latent prejudices into active hate and discrimination, erecting a garrison state of ethnic encampments and armies. Little room for tolerance and cross-communal institutions exists thereafter. The system is choked to death by its own arteries filled with hate. The Guyana “anti-model” teaches that the ethnic factor is appropriately likened to the embrace of a hostile octopus. Some of the tentacles spread everywhere and squeeze the state into paralysis. At the same time that the ethnic sectors are consolidated and fossilised by the ethnonationalist parties and leaders, hypocritical talk of cross-communal amity increases among the very politicians who promote ethnic loyalty. This brings in the element of “hypocrisy” displayed in the Guyana “antimodel”. Both the ruling and opposition parties in Guyana’s ethnically bipolar

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state openly professed to be Marxist with class-based interests but were in fact preponderantly ethnically-based groupings. They spun out an elaborate system to parade a picture of representing and promoting cross-sectional interests. They decorated their organisations with a facade of officers from the other cultural community. They sported Marxist-Leninist jargon ad nauseam and in public conducted their debate as if ideological issues were most significant. Overseas observers bought into this cynical circus but not local citizens who knew what the game was about. This practice of deliberately camouflaging the colour of partisan politics is probably a pattern of public denial that is found in democratic politics in other multi-ethnic Third World countries. What the Guyana “antimodel” suggests is that the leaders are quite aware of what course of action is morally correct but cleverly seek to conceal their defiance of this moral ethic by engaging in repugnant hypocritical behaviour. The ethnic monster is seen by all as loathsome yet it is indulged. Ethno-nationalist leaders are allowed to parade before the international community not as pariahs who pander to ethnic and racial sentiments but as persons pretentiously in genuine pursuit of toleration and cross-communal nation-building. The Guyana “anti-model” suggests the need for a critical monitoring of such hypocritical behaviour and the exposure of them internationally. That apart, the Guyana case points to a moral dilemma that ethno-nationalist leaders face; on one hand needing to pander to ethnic appeals to retain sectional popularity and on the other needing cross-communal endorsement to obtain regime legitimacy and to govern effectively. Yet another perspective that can be derived from the Guyana “anti-model” pertains to the role of international actors in exacerbating the internal divisions in a multi-ethnic state. External actors, be they other states or private groups, have their own interests to pursue. They are sometimes economic predators such as those multi-national corporations which see some benefit from taking one side or the other in the communal conflict. There are also political predators such as regional states which may have geopolitical designs in entering an ethnically-ignited internal fray. Also, and very frequently, there are diaspora communities that spilled over from the ethnic conflict and have been created in enclaves in other countries. In North America, many Guyanese citizens have settled in ethnic ghettoes and engage in support roles in sustaining the ethnic conflict at home. The Guyana case points to the internationalisation aspects of the ethnic conflict in all of its diverse dimensions. The Cold War actors found surrogate partisan support in the ethnically split Guyanese state. This was a main force in exacerbating communal tensions. The regional geopolitical factor was played by Venezuela and Suriname. And even today the diaspora Guyana communities in North America and Britain play an active part providing funds in persistence of ethnic strife in Guyana. In effect, the Guyana anti-model draws attention to the proposition that internal ethnic conflicts tend to invite external actors which may add fuel to the ethnic division in the state. This is not to argue

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that the impact of external actors is always negative. Sometimes, external intervention is required to prevent genocide or even to offer third party assistance in conflict resolution. On balance however, as the Guyana case suggests, the persistence if not exacerbation of the ethnic strife is often caused by the role of external actors in the internationalisation of the conflict. Finally, the Guyana “anti-model” suggests an examination of the related issues of partition and secession. At one time, partition seemed to be a desirable solution and on one occasion an Amerindian group sought secession from Guyana in order to join Venezuela. The Guyana case shows the potential, probably not as well as other cases such as Nigeria and Yugoslavia, of ethnonationalist movements mutating into separatist claims. Often, this is either a consequence of attempted genocide or an invitation to genocide. In either case, partition, secession and genocide all carry ethnic conflict to the brink of noreturn in reaching reconciliation. Once civil war has broken out, secession sought and genocide committed, a new qualitative stage in the ethnic conflict has been reached. Together, and in other ways, the Guyana “anti-model” is pregnant with lessons of what not to do lest disaster in manifold economic, political and psychological dimensions be courted. The Guyana case raises anew the familiar question of what makes a society cohere and makes a society truly a society. Through colonial rule and arbitrary boundary-drawing and population transfers, most of the multi-ethnic Third World states have been created. They face the problem of designing an appropriate political system to accommodate the rival claims of their terminal ethno-nationalist communities. The record in this regard is one replete with the wreckage of Third World states which have instead succumbed to communal violence and instability, ethnic domination and repression and instances of genocide and secession. This can be avoided. First the ethno-nationalist force must be understood in its workings and dynamics, and second the knowledge can be applied at ethnic conflict resolution and inter-communal coexistence. Without this first step, there can be no development. The Guyana case offers insights into the challenge of nationalreconciliation and nation-building and national development in the Third World.

NOTES 1. See R. Gurr, Minorities at Risk: A Global View of Etno-Political Conflicts (Washington: US Institute of Peace Press, 1994); Crawford Young, The Politics of Cultural Pluralism (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1976); Harold Isaacs, Idols of the Tribe (New York: Harper and Row, 1975); Clifford Geertz, ed., Old Societies and New States

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(Glencoe, Illinois: The Free Press, 1963); Ralph Premdas, ed., The Enigma of Ethnicity (Trinidad: University of the West Indies Extra-Mural Centre, 1993). 2. John Darby, What is Wrong with Conflict? (Coleraine, Northern Ireland: Centre for the Study of Conflict, University of Ulster, 1991), Occasional Paper, No. 3, p.1. 3. See J.S. Furnivall, Colonial Policy and Practice (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1948); M.G. Smith and L. Kuper, eds., Pluralism in Africa (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1969); and A. Rabushka and K.A. Shepslie, Politics in Plural Societies 22 (Ohio: Charles Merrill, 1972). 4. R. Rose, Lesson Drawing in Public Policy (New Jersey: Chatham House Publishers, 1993), p.13. 5. Charles Wagley, “The Caribbean Culture Area”. In The Caribbean: A Symposium, edited by V. Rubin (Seattle: Washington University Press, 1980). 6. R.T. Smith, “Race, Class, and Political Conflict in a Post-Colonial Society”. In Small States and Segmented Societies, edited by S.G. Neumann (New York: Praeger, 1976), 205. 7. L. Despres, Cultural Pluralism and Nationalist Politics in British Guiana (Chicago: Rand Mcnally, 1967), 45. 8. R.T. Smith, British Guiana (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1962), 43-44. 9. C. Jayawardena, Conflict and Solidarity on a Guyanese Plantation (London: Athlone Press, 1963), 26. 10. D. Nath, A History of Indians in British Guiana (London: Thomas Nelson and Sons, 1950), 179-180. 11. G.W. Roberts, “Some Observations on the Population of British Guiana”, Population Studies, II, (September, 1948): 186-187. 12. Smith, British Guiana, 112. 13. A. Young, The Approaches to Local Self-Government: Government in British Guiana (London: Longmans, Green, and Co.,1958), 7. 14. R.T. Smith, British Guiana, 45. 15. Ibid. 16. M. Fried, “Some Observations on the Chinese in British Guiana”, Social and Economic Studies (March 1956), 57. 17. Report of the British Guiana Commission of Enquiry on Racial Problems in the Public Servic (Geneva: International Commission of Jurists, 1965) 18. M. Fried, op. cit 19. Ibid. 20. See L. Braithwaite, “Social Stratification in Trinidad”, Social and Economic Studies Nos. 2 and 3, (1953). 21. A. Lijphart, Democracy in Plural Societies (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1977). 22. Premdas, “The Politics of Preference in the Caribbean: The Case of Guyana”. In Ethnic Preference and Public Policy in Developing States, edited by N. Nivette and P. Kennedy (eds). (Boulder, Colorado: Lynne Rienner, 1986).

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C H A P T E R

E I G H T E E N

Multi-ethniC diviSionS and GovernanCe: the ProbleM of inStitutional reforM and adaPtation RALPH PREMDAS

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ost states in the international system are poly-ethnic. The cleavages that divide these states are many, among the most prominent are race, religion, region, language and values. In most of these cases, the cleavages are multiple and coinciding, creating deep divisions which render inter-communal accommodation and reconciliation difficult if not intractable. An ethno-cultural community constructs its collective consciousness and shared identity on putative commonalties in region, religion, race, language and/or values. While such claims may be fictive and imagined, they are the bedrock that confers belonging and serve as the means of mass mobilisation in quest of recognition, resources and influence in the state. There are several variants of ethno-cultural or ethnic communities with some marked by the salience of a particular trait such as language creating, thereby, what can be deemed an ethno-linguistic community as in Quebec and Sri Lanka.1 Similarly, those that are marked mainly by religious cleavage may be called ethno-religious such as in Northern Ireland and Kashmir; by regional divide, called ethno-regional as in Spain and the Canadian West; by racial division called ethno-racial such as Fiji and Guyana.2 To be sure, most multi-ethnic communities are carriers of multiple cleavages but often one may be dominant and defines the cultural character of the group. In most states with ethno-cultural divisions, the crux of the political challenge pertains to the establishment of a generally acceptable, just and democratic government that will accommodate the divergent claims of the respective communities for equality, equity and autonomy. Implicated are vexing issues related to the status and recognition of all communities equally, the removal of discrimination and domination and the institution of policies regarding the equitable distribution of resources. Over the past two decades, a variety of institutional forms and formulae have been advanced to design democratic governance in these deeply divided states.3 All of these proposals tend to be aimed at multi-ethnic states generally.

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Most of the problems thrown up by these divided states, however, tend to be similar in that the diacritica that describe their particularity (be it race, religion, or language) are held to be inherent and immutable. We shall look at the more important of these packaged formulations and prescriptions comparatively and critically suggesting what opportunities they offer and their limits. From extensive research for reforming the state, a number of findings have emerged rendering the state more sensitive to the interests of the ethnic and racial communities in promoting democratic governance.

Instituti onal Adapt ati on and Pr oblems o f Institutio Adapta tio Pro of Dem ocra ti c Governan ce emocra ocrati tic Governance Examination of relevant instances from around the world with regard to the appropriateness and choice of institutions and practices of racially and ethnically divided states in establishing democratic and just governance offer an assortment of insights. It must be emphasised that this is a problem area that is as controversial as it is difficult to reach decisive conclusions. It is locked into basic philosophical and ethical issues related to the problem of cultural relativism, specifically, to the appropriateness of transferring the experiences and institutions of one state to another, especially where this entails the superimposition of the institutions and practices of the developed industrial countries unto governments in the environment of the Third World. It is essential to place the current quest for democratic governance in multiethnic and multi-racial states, most located in the less developed countries, within the larger ongoing process of postcolonial experiments for well-being, security and justice. Over the past 50 years since the end of World War II, worldwide decolonisation in the Third World has witnessed the creation of over a hundred new independent sovereign states. In what has been conceived as “Three Waves” of tectonic change, most of the new states have since progressed from initial constitutional government, to socialist experiments, to authoritarian one-party and military regimes culminating with a new phase of democratic transition.4 The Sub-Saharan African experience illustrates aspects of these transformations as Michael Bratton and Nicholas van de Walle describe: At the turn of the decade (late 1980s), the predominant types of regime in Africa were military oligarchies, civilian one-party systems, or hybrids of the two. The most common institutional formation was a plebiscitary system in which a personalistic leader, who had come to power by a military coup, had constructed a single ruling party that periodically ratified its limited political legitimacy through ritualistic, non-competitive elections. In 1989, 29 African countries were governed under some kind of one-party constitution, and one-party rule seemed entrenched as the modal form of governance in

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Africa; only 11 African countries were ruled directly by the military without the pretence of political party institutions.5 After 1990, according to Bratton and Van de Walle, significant changes transpired: In the five years that followed, the number of African countries holding competitive legislative elections more than quadrupled to 38 out of a total of 47 countries in the sub-Saharan region.6 Only three of Africa’s states, Botswana, Mauritius and Gambia, had survived as democracies since independence. The others were “characterised as neopatrimonial because of the degree to which a single domineering leader personified and in effect owned the political system”.7 Under pressure from the international financial institutions, the strategy of transformation on the inefficient authoritarian states initially stressed a programme of structural adjustment which, over a decade, proved generally ineffective. Then, especially with the publication of the World Bank’s The State in a Changing World (1997), a new focus was identified in governance and political institutions as the key variable for successful change as Yusuf Bangura commented: During the 1980s, there was much resistance in Africa, and indeed elsewhere, to this global trend in market-based policy policy-making, but by the 1990s virtually every African country had accepted, even if reluctantly, the logic of market liberalisation and the policy prescriptions of the multilateral economic institutions. However, the poor record of policy implementation and macroeconomic indicators in most countries convinced the lending agencies and bilateral donors that the reform agenda in Africa should not just focus on price liberalisation and stability. It should also address institutional or governance reforms that can guarantee the rule of law, secure property rights, promote transparency and curb corruption.8 To engineer appropriate institutions of democracy had now become the mantra of change, a promise of deliverance from poverty, inequality and authoritarianism. While democracy may entail, minimally, the challenge of constructing participatory systems of governing, it has tended to derive its institutional forms from the peculiar social structures and histories of Western states. In the debate, it is important to remember that “Western Democracy” has flowered and flourished on the soil of relatively integrated societies where many of the fundamental issues of the social order have been settled and embedded in indigenous cultural habits and practices. In the typical Third World environment, however, multiple fundamental fissures exist along the axes of race, religion, language, region, values etc. so that the state is only a legal artefact

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under which resides a multiplicity of sociological nations each with its own institutions. How to discover and adapt democratic principles and institutions to these environments is the most challenging problem of governance today. Yusuf Bangura poses the enigma thusly: What kinds of institutions are appropriate for stability in multi-ethnic societies? The types of constraints that institutions like property rights, constitutions, parliaments, courts, and party systems may impose on relatively homogenous societies may be different from those they will generate in ethnically heterogeneous states. Governance reforms in multi-ethnic societies must be sensitive to ethnic structures if they are to create predictability and stability in social relations as well as loyalty to the public domain. Different types of ethnic structures may demand different combinations of reform instruments in ethnically plural states.9 Consequently in adopting a democratic system, “the need is to craft institutions that manage plurality within competitive politics rather than adopting or resorting to the much discredited zero or one party frameworks of the 1970s and the 1980s.”10 Examination of several cases by a variety of analysts have produced valuable insights into institutions and practices that tend to promote democratic governance in multi-ethnic states. We shall now summarise some of these ideas and practices that may facilitate democratic growth in divided states.

Recognition Standing at the centre of these findings is “recognition” referring to the need for all communities in their rich cultural and religious diversity to be accorded juridical and social equality in a state that defines itself as multicultural. Clearly, this in part means that the state’s symbols must not neglect or marginalise the presence and practices of other communities in the official ceremonies of the state, in the celebration of festivals and holidays and the observance of religious events. The political philosopher, Charles Taylor, had underscored the role of “recognition” and “misrecognition” in the self-definition of a group. He said: Our identity is partly shaped by recognition or its absence, often by the misrecognition of others, and so a person or group of people can suffer real damage, real distortion, if the people or society around them mirror back them a confining or contemptible picture of themselves.11 In effect, “non-recognition or misrecognition can inflict harm, can be a form of oppression, imprisoning someone in a false, distorted and reduced mode of being”.12

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Recognition of the intrinsic self-definition of a group is as important as, and often a prerequisite for, equality of access to material resources and political participation. The larger point, however, is shared membership which admits to a regime that legitimises the right to exist and exist equally and in dignity and security. Partial and qualified citizenship that abridges rights and obligations will likely undermine the system from the start. This in turn requires sensitivity to group rights in appropriate spheres. Often, ethnically divided states and especially those marked by racial differences have inherited a hierarchical system of status and power from colonial practices privileging a particular group with political, economic, social and cultural advantages that are embodied in institutions and daily practices. These are frequently the source of invidious internal strife and must be dismantled in the reform of the state. The aim of public policy is to redefine relations at all levels so as to institute an order of equal membership in the state. Recognition can be bestowed in several ways. First, by an official policy of multiculturalism which defines the character of the state so that all ethnocultural groups are officially welcomed and accorded equality.13 Often, it is in the preamble of the constitution of a multi-ethnic state or in the section on citizenship that the idea of multiculturalism is embodied. Even so, state policy needs to be explicit about the cultural nature of the state. Controversies lurk over membership in the state mainly stemming from the fact that their multiethnic and multi-racial demographic structures have derived from colonial immigration. The United States, with one of the most ethnically and racially diverse populations in the world, is reluctant to declare that it is a multicultural state given its historic melting pot practices of assimilation which are still official policy.14 Fiji, with its substantial Asian Indian population, in its 1997 constitution declares that all of its peoples shall be called “Fiji Islanders” but, while it acknowledges that its constituent parts include Indians, Chinese, Europeans and Rotumans, it confers symbolic priority to indigenous Fijians. Trinidad and Tobago’s constitution declares in its Preamble that “every race has an equal place”. South Africa’s basic law declares that all its citizens, black and white alike, are equally acknowledged as members of the state without reference to racial origins but it does not have a policy of multiculturalism. Canada and Australia, both of which have minority indigenous peoples under the dominance of European majority populations as well as other significant non-white immigrant groups, have explicit official policies that declare that they are multicultural. Other states shy away from such explicit statements regarding their prescribed cultural composition but contain constitutional provisions that accommodate freedom of religious practices and prohibit barriers such as race and religion from disqualifying individuals and groups from access to employment and resources in the state. In most in the world, formal juridical membership rights that conferred equality without legal and social

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discrimination has been the norm. In part, this offers valuable symbolic acknowledgement and legal protections to racial and ethnic minorities. The challenge of a democratic system is in designing a scheme that extends symbolic recognition as well as justice and equity in representation to minority communities in particular. Minorities arise as an issue in the peculiar condition of cultural pluralism. Specifically, it assumes a problematic form when the ethnic and racial groups that constitute the state are different in sizes, resources and other endowments. Small groups may be marked off by both racial and cultural characteristics which can easily invite the brunt of stigmatic marginalisation and racism. Indigenous peoples especially in North America fall easily into this category. Hence, ethnic and racial pluralism tends to throw up “minority” human rights issues related to exclusion and discrimination. The first step in redressing this situation in a democratic order calls for official recognition of the very presence, cultures and rights of minorities, this often taking the form of entrenched constitutional protections coupled with special benefits from policy initiatives. In the states that we have examined for this paper, we witness the paradox of each of these states extending constitutional protections to ethnic and racial minorities while simultaneously complaints of human rights abuse and marginalisation abound. In part, a credible policy of minority protections requires the presence of such bodies as Equity Commissions, Human Rights Boards and Ombudsman Commissions endowed with muscular implementation powers and assertive vigilance. In Fiji, a Human Rights Commission was created and became a significant actor in the democratic institutional system regarding claims of discrimination and abuse. By and large, however, the recognition of minority rights has been long in rhetoric and short in implementation. This, despite the fact that nearly all of these states are signatories to the large number of international conventions on human rights including the 1992 UN Declaration on the Rights of Persons belonging to National, Religious and Ethnic Minorities.15 It is here, for instance, where civil society organisations can play an important role in monitoring minority complaints giving them public and international ventilation. Hence, financial support for these civil society groups can contribute mightily to minority protections among ethno-racial and ethnocultural communities. Another institutional practice that can accord recognition and equity to racial and ethnic minorities is “affirmative action”. Policies of affirmative action are based on the public recognition of previous historical wrongs, a symbolic concession of great consequence for the injured psyche of minorities many of which are separate racial groups continuing to live marginal lives. In the case of the USA, affirmative action derived mainly from court decisions but the general practice has been through legislative policy. As a public policy in multi-ethnic states, affirmative action may contribute as much as detract from inter-communal harmony especially if the disadvantaged such as the poor are not exclusively

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found in one ethnic community but in all so that an ethnically based policy of affirmative action tends to be too limited in its scope and coverage. In Fiji, Indians have bitterly complained that affirmative action has not only failed to address the needs of the truly poor in the indigenous Fijian community by privileging well off Fijians but by neglecting the destitute in the Indian sector. Like many group rights, affirmative action can be a blunt and indiscriminate policy that succeeds as much as it fails in addressing the targets of its intent. Generally, however, affirmative action may serve as warranted mechanism of recognition in a liberal democratic system, especially where it receives the support of all communities. Where it is imposed, however, and especially where the beneficiaries are not the intended targets and itself becomes an invidious system of ethnic discrimination, affirmative action can easily undermine the democratic claims of multi-ethnic states. Clearly, recognition, whether it is embodied in an official policy of multiculturalism or not, requires that cultural symbols such as ceremonies and historical events and personalities be granted the same salience and visibility for all communities in the form of public holidays and acknowledgement in official textbooks, postage stamps, statues, museums, street names, etc. In the cases we have examined, this often assumes the symbolic form of public holidays for the main ceremonies, historic events or personalities of a group. This came late in the case of African-Americans who were given a federal public holiday in commemoration of Martin Luther King. In Trinidad, Guyana, Mauritius, Fiji, Malaysia and many other countries, similar public holidays are celebrated. In any event, the recognition of the main festivals and remembrance days of minorities is an important measure that promotes equality in multi-ethnic and multi-racial states. The equality factor is intimately tied to participation and access to collective decision-making in all aspects of state behaviour. Participation must not only be ritualised merely as a symbolic manifestation but be endowed with substantive political capability for efficacy and powersharing. Finally, the end product of any design for cross-communal conviviality must confer an intangible tenor of fairness in the manner in which life is conducted between state and solidarity communities. This must pervade the society like blood the body. Perceived fairness legitimises governance and may lead to inter-group comity, the mortar that sustains positive inter-group resolution of ongoing differences. Civil society must be recognised and encouraged and serve as a critical tier of political organisation that promotes both liberty and accountability in governance. The foregoing cluster of ideas can be deemed a charter of commitment for coexistence, serving as a set of mutual guarantees embedded in the very constitution of the state. When this is first agreed upon as founding principle, then the task of designing specific institutions and practices to achieve these ends in the peculiar circumstance of each multiethnic and multi-racial state can be undertaken.

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Powersharing Democratic governance demands a departure from the standard zero-sum, winner takes all, exclusionary parliamentary practices found in many West European states. At all costs, systems that create permanent political minorities often the victims of discrimination and abuse, and with no investment in maintaining order, must be avoided. The most crucial institutional design points to the need for powersharing in a consensus-oriented order. Nearly all the cases of failed efforts in democratic governance point to institutions and practices derived from competitive and adversarial majoritarian parliamentary politics. It has been estimated that of some 50 former British colonies that became independent, 34 adopted the Westminster majoritarian system. Of these, only two, Botswana and Mauritius, have survived into the present suggesting that finding an appropriate formula for inter-communal inclusiveness and accommodation in democratic governance remains a main challenge. It is clear that reform of the institutions of governance in deeply divided states including those marked by ethno-racial features needs to be crafted to produce consensus systems involving all communities in negotiated powersharing and in a stake in upholding the system. The exclusion of an ethno-cultural community, especially those marked and distinguished by visible features such as phenotype, is a major source of alienation and racism in deeply divided states. Reform of the state must aim at eradicating this practice at all costs. Powersharing in consensus systems with its implications for participating in decision-making and policy formation facilitates this objective. Governance, to be legitimate and win widespread citizenship allegiance, must be inclusive in a system of sharing power at all levels of government including cabinet, parliament, the public bureaucracy, local and regional authorities, etc. Power can be shared by formal agreement so that explicit political positions and public offices are configured in specific ways. In South Africa’s interim constitution, an explicit formula was embedded for powersharing at the highest executive offices in the vice presidential and cabinet posts but not in the allocation of key civil service positions. In Fiji, similarly, the 1997 constitution provided for cabinet participation by a party obtaining a certain percentage of votes in the general elections. No such explicit provisions are set forth in the Guyana, Trinidad, Mauritius, Malaysian, or the final South African constitution. But powersharing need not be formally explicit. Informal powersharing through political bargaining can work just as well if not better in some situations. A good case is Malaysia where a number of prominent leaders from the three main communities of Malays, Chinese and Indians struck a pre-election deal in the Alliance Party which formed the governing coalition of two-thirds majority in control of the country since independence. Even with its internal imbalances in the distribution of power between Malays and Chinese, this informal extra-

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constitutional arrangement has served to promote a modicum of democracy and high degree of order in Malaysia. Another fine case is Mauritius where powersharing has always operated since independence but mainly through post-election bargaining. Most recently, in the general elections of 2000, it was however done in a pre-election bargain which would for the first time see, through a split time sharing formula, a leader of the Afro-Mauritien-Creole become the prime minister. Another informal way power is shared is through an ethnically-based victorious party appointing members from other communities to top cabinet and executive positions. This is being done in South Africa, Guyana and Trinidad. While this method of powersharing has its virtues, it is often not satisfactory, especially where the ruling party chooses only those cooperative persons from other communities for membership in its cabinet and leadership posts. It is a tainted method. It seeks to pre-empt the will of the electorally defeated community in selecting its own leaders as participants in any powersharing deal. In Trinidad, Guyana and South Africa, the cross-ethnic participants in the govering regime do not confer the kind of legitimacy in a coalition order that comes from powersharing between parties elected by their own communities. It does not solve the problem of exclusion of a community since its bona fide leaders are left in the Opposition benches carrying out sniping operations, often of a communalistic nature, adding fuel to the ethnic and racial fissures in the society. It is not a substitute for inter-party coalition bargaining which has the capacity to impart legitimacy and stability. Apart from a coalition of communal elites, another way of powersharing can be conceived in terms of balance in the distribution of spheres of influence and control as in Fiji and Malaysia. “Balance” assumes asymmetrical areas of dominance and requires reciprocity. Such exchanges are, however, not agreed upon by sentiments of love for another community but are informed by selfinterest. Each group needs the resources of the other group to survive and maintain its standard of living. Balance, however, can only be a short-term solution for intersectional conflict and its sustenance tends to revolve around amicable relations among intersectional elites. The balancing act is bound to face assault sooner or later by chauvinistic outbidders who, at a moment of opportunity, may want to instigate nationalist adherents not to accept part of the pie but to seize all of it. This occurred in both Fiji and Malaysia. Balance then, in such a situation, would be displaced by hegemony and all the consequences this entails, or it can trigger civil strife that can destroy the society. Another form of powersharing may be referred to as “alternating partisan regimes” under which rival parties alternate control of executive power in an agreed upon time schedule. Alternating partisan regimes may be classified into pure and mixed types. Pure types are cases where a party that accedes to power governs during its tenure without sharing executive cabinet positions but

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conducts itself within the constitutional norms which protect human and minority rights. This occurred in Colombia in the 1950s. The mixed type such as were found in Lebanon and Cyprus describes a situation in which the executive power structure was shared so that the presidency, vice-presidency, Speaker of the Parliament etc. were posts held by representatives of different ethnic communities. To this may be added the sharing of civil services jobs and local council positions. Powersharing and coalition systems underscore the idea that governance is about resolving collective problems peacefully through compromises and exchanges in which divergent interests are articulated and accommodated in the political institutions and practices of the state. This process is all the more critical in those societies that are deeply divided by race, religion and ethnicity. To nurture such a coalition demands unending vigil so as to avert offending ethnic sensitivities. In most cases, powersharing regimes tend to be short-term events. Somehow, they tend to fall apart. There are too many probable ways that may erode their cohesion and provoke rupture, whether it comes from innocent differences of opinion, aggressive outbidders, misunderstanding, a sense of inequity, or intra-coalition factionalism etc. As such, ethno-racial and ethnocultural diversity imposes special demands for tolerance and mutuality in the reconciliation of rival claims and interests. Consensus-making in democratic plural societies calls for perpetual inter-cultural sensitivity and a cadre of moderate leaders tolerant and open to difference and capable of making compromises. Leadership is an aspect of powersharing that is critical. To forge enduring coalitions, it takes pragmatic and moderate leaders who espouse a vision that transcends the interests of their communities to the wider parameters of the national state and who are willing to make compromises and take risks in breaking intransigent and gridlocked inter-communal struggles. This happened in Fiji in the early 1970s, in Malaysia in the 1950s and in South Africa in the 1990s. Many of the extant inter-ethnic and inter-racial conflicts which have turned into protracted humanitarian crises have turned on the issue of uncompromising leadership. Often, third party intervention helps to dissolve a gridlock but it still requires a particular type of leadership from the communities in conflict to initiate and sustain powersharing arrangements.

Electoral Systems Powersharing in coalition governments is also linked to elections, generally, and to the choice of electoral system in particular. The reform of the system of governance towards promoting democracy inevitably led to the critical importance of holding elections. Democratisation is about broad-based participation so that those who govern owe their political existence and

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usefulness to the people via free and fair competitive elections that are held regularly. During the last decade of the 20th century, especially after the collapse of the USSR and the dismantling of the Berlin Wall, and as symbolised with the dramatic release of Nelson Mandela from prison, authoritarian governments throughout the world fell one after the other like collapsing dominoes. The transition to popular accountability and democracy was marked by the holding of general elections. In sub-Saharan Africa, among the 48 states from 1990 to 1997, all but four did not hold competitive multiparty elections.16 Having elections however, even when most were rigged and flawed, was not enough. In fact, most established leaders, while responding to pressures from international financial institutions and bilateral agencies to conduct elections (in what was aptly described as a frenzy of “electoralism” towards democracy) had cynically learnt how to manipulate these elections so that they were no longer a threat to their hold on power.17 That was, nevertheless, only one part of the problem in relation to establishing democratic governance. Equally important in deeply divided states was the choice of an electoral system that would encourage coalition governments. Consequently, a debate ensued on the relative merits of electoral systems and strategies. Because of their capacity to exclude minorities and entrench majorities, there has been a universal rejection of plurality systems which confer victory to the candidates with the highest number of votes in single seat constituencies. Some argue instead for proportional representation which allows for minorities to gain representation, setting the stage for coalition powersharing in a consociational order. Others advocate the alternative vote or vote pooling (also known as the AV preferential system), adopted in Fiji in 1997, aimed at fostering inter-ethnic cooperation and coalition building. It is potentially capable of blunting the sharp edges of racial and ethnic outbidding and innuendo teasing during political campaigns by encouraging pre-election swapping of voter preferences. This worked well in Fiji. Others have used the list proportional representation system. In the case of list proportional representation in South Africa, it managed to give representation to several minorities but the powersharing coalition government that ensued was a pre-election deal that was written into the interim constitution. The South African case subsequently showed that, regardless of electoral systems chosen, it is inter-communal comity and pre-election bargains which really matter in coalition formation. In Fiji, these latter factors conferred a period of peace and democracy for about a decade. In South Africa, comity was destroyed and with it the coalition arrangement. In all of this, it needs to be stressed, that it is inter-elite comity informed by a realistic appraisal that there is no alternative to powersharing that provides the critical constitutive ingredients of consensus systems and not just the bare skeletal framework of institutional engineering as important as they are.

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Two cases among those that we have examined, however, demonstrate that the type of electoral system is irrelevant to powersharing and coalition governance. In the case of Malaysia and Mauritius where the first-past-post plurality system is in use, coalitions have eventuated nevertheless and have been effective in maintaining inter-communal peace and a reasonable amount of democratic governance. The use of the AV proportional representation in Fiji, while it had succeeded in fostering pre-election coalition arrangements, failed in being sufficiently inclusive and representative of significant segments of the electorate. There are cases like Trinidad and Guyana which are very problematic. They utilise both the first-past-the-post-electoral system (Trinidad) and proportional representation (Guyana) that tend to reinforce the ethnic and racial partisan polarisation in the state. Neither has a powersharing arrangement in place but both tend to recruit a small cross-communal contingent of supporters. After a bruising and racially polarising election campaign, they each attempt to heal the inflicted wounds by appointing to prominent cabinet and other posts persons from the opposing party. This is truly a prescription for disaster since it fails to guarantee a proportional form of representation in the stakes of the society. Guyana has exploded and Trinidad awaits a similar date with destiny. They need comity to begin with and an institutional structure for coalition-building and powersharing. They have done well in providing symbolic recognition in public holidays for each ethnic and racial community but this is void of substantive guarantees against exclusion. While each electoral system has the potential to create coalition arrangements, it may not guarantee inter-communal governance and powersharing. Hence, a number of other devices have been advocated to effect this end, namely, requiring ethnic or regional mixes in the holders of such strategic positions as the head of state, prime ministers, Speakers of the Parliament; rotation of the presidency; extra seats for losers (Mauritius); entitlement to cabinet seats from a minimum percentage of votes garnered in the elections (South Africa and Fiji); reserved seats for minorities, etc. Generally, both systems have a mixed record of accomplishing their aims.

Decentralisation and Autonomy One of the common devices recommended as a means of managing claims and conflict in a multi-racial and a multi-ethnic state is autonomy. Often this refers to internal territorial self government either articulated in a federal arrangement or constitutionally entrenched into the organisation of a unitary state. There are other possible forms such as some sort of functional autonomy in which representation of corporate communal interests in national decisionmaking bodies may be envisaged. Or self-government may be extended beyond

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the territory of an ethnic or racial community so that wherever members dwell in the state they may enjoy language, educational and cultural rights. Regardless, the fundamental assumption is that the devolution of autonomous decisionmaking powers to an ethnno-cultural or ethno-racial community creates, in the diffusion of authority, a separate space and confers recognition in self-governing pride. It may successfully serve to foster a culture and protect the identity of a people as well as their resources and environment. Generally, to be credible or meaningful decentralised autonomy tends to be extensive in the devolution of both administrative and political powers. Decentralisation therefore does not refer to the mere shuffling of the pack but, in a more appropriate metaphor, results in the flattening of the pyramid of power. It is a zero-sum game in which the loss of power at the centre is accompanied by gain at the regional level. Decentralisation of this kind is rarely conceded peacefully and for this reason it is not frequently found among states.18 In nearly all cases, decentralisation is undertaken with a view to localising and legitimating national rule. However, balancing the demand by minorities for maximum internal autonomy with the insistence of the central government for unequivocal loyalty is frequently an issue that treads on a razor’s edge. Issues of financial autonomy, like the quantum of devolved powers, are likely sources of ongoing centre-regional tugs of war. The uneven endowment of natural resources and disparities in levels of economic development among regions as well as different industriousness and achievements of the different peoples in the multiethnic state tend to engender frequent inter-governmental disputes and resentments which can erupt into demands for exit. There are numerous other potentially tempestuous torrents that can break the bounds of reason and fatally buffet the devolution design including the right of residence by ethnic others within the territory of devolved community; exclusive ethnic preferences in allocating jobs, contracts, loans, subsidies – in other words, internal discrimination against minorities in the autonomous region; denial of individual rights in favour of group rights suitable for some persons and communities but not others. In effect, there is endemic jurisdictional tension in the two trajectories in decentralisation, one tending towards centrifugal ends and the other towards centripetal interests. The autonomy strategy for managing ethnic and racial difference and communal identity may therefore not be a simple proposition. Besides, it tends to be costly and wasteful in setting up parallel political and administrative structures as well as harbouring and nurturing rival bases of power to the national government. It may conceal and protect inefficiency and corruption and local authoritarian practices under the rubric of a sacred decentralist ideology of selfdetermination. Ultimately, it survives or dies not on the architectural elegance or structural features of the centre-regional organisational form but on trust that the region will not take the next inviting step to independence and the central

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authorities will not see every assertive act of internal autonomy as disloyalty requiring rapid and invasive intervention. Decentralisation has many exposed and vulnerable parts of sensitivity, both of a symbolic and material nature. Territory is a sacred entity often embodied emotively as a “homeland” or “motherland” and which easily combusts into militancy under the slightest of imagined violation.19 For these reasons, some analysts regard devolution as a dangerous device for managing and accommodating ethnic diversity. They often prefer accommodation via a system of guaranteed constitutionally entrenched special rights; corporate representation in the national legislature; or constitutional group rights while preserving the unitary structure of the state. In part, these measures have the virtue at once of conferring recognition of group rights as well as decreasing the likelihood of isolating an ethnic or racial community in an enclave in which separatist politics tend to fester. Territorial decentralisation may militate against the growth of unifying bonds with other communities, it is often argued, but countered by the riposte that by protecting the identity of a community, such decentralisation may enable a minority to evolve confidence and dignity enabling a healthier relationship with other groups. Federalism is frequently offered as a recommended form of decentralisation aimed at managing communal sectionalism. Its main advantage consists of defining a sphere of quasi-sovereign power for a region while sharing some parallel and overlapping functions with the centre, thereby sustaining cooperative and integrative links with the state. However, it has had a chequered career. In relation to countries that are marked by pronounced racial cleavages, it has been applied briefly in the Sudan in 1972 and succumbed to recentralisation in 1983. In South Africa, as the apartheid regime under de Klerk contemplated its options for resolving the intensifying ethno-racial struggle, one proposal sought to create a separate white state in a confederal system. In post-apartheid South Africa, under its new final constitution, a quasi-federal system is provided for, but it has been emasculated of any meaningful powers and does not cater for any racially bound territorial unit. It was feared by the ANC leadership that meaningful decentralisation involving the transfer of substantial political power of states to any ethnic or racial group would have entailed diluting the authority of the centralised apparatus of the state by encouraging potentially contentious regional power points. This could dismantle the state’s unity in promoting secessionist sentiments. The system of decentralisation in Malaysia was originally designed to incorporate Singapore as a state under Chinese control with the rest of Malaysia under Malay dominance. It did not work. The separation of Singapore from the rest of Malaysia in 1965 points to the limits of federalism and decentralisation in accomodating different ethno-racial communities within the same territorial state. The present Malaysian federation, while it confers “special rights” to Malays as the indigenous people, does not confer political

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control even in those states where non-Malays constitute a majority. To be sure, the federal arrangement has resulted in the creation, in particular, of one fairly strong state that has served as the political base of Islamic ethno-religious chauvinists who have persistently challenged the inter-ethnic accommodation among Malays, Chinese and Indians at the federal level. Rodolfo Stavenhagen has noted that “federalism is no guarantee of ethnic harmony and accommodation in the absence of other factors”.20 Among those factors are such items as powersharing, equality, non-discriminatory policies of the state, etc. Even with the most ideal support institutions, a federal system may still fail to contain the politics of intra-regional leadership outbidding that takes centre-periphery relationship to the brink. Similarly, even where a loose confederal arrangement evolves, such as in Quebec, this does not necessarily promote cooperative and constructive inter-governmental relations. The critical point is that territorial autonomy is not an unqualified panacea for accommodating ethnic and racial diversity. Doubtlessly, some sort of territorial and/or corporate devolution can assuage fears of external interference in the internal affairs of a community and may facilitate inter-ethnic harmony. Crawford Young argues that federalism in dispersing power, localises conflict in multiple sites so that it can then be more easily managed.21 Lijphart contends that territorial devolution should be combined with non-territorial devolution but devolution exercises are likely to succeed only if the ethnic communities are clustered into discrete regional areas in what he calls a “federal society”.22 Many Third World societies had evolved traditional ways of regulating and accommodating internal regional diversity well. So have diverse empires such as the millet system used by the Ottomans. It may be useful to re-examine these sources for insights. The decentralisation strategy is not to be taken in isolation from other variables which define inter-ethnic diversity in a state. Clearly, decentralisation needs to be combined with other support structures. It guarantees nothing by itself.

Resource Allocation Resource allocation in ethnically and racially divided states often bedevils inter-group relations and becomes a perennial problem in finding a formula for acceptable accommodation. Generally, it refers to claims over the distribution of material resources such as public jobs, state projects and subsidies, as well as more general issues regarding equality and distributive justice.23 As often occurs in colonially restructured plural societies, such resources and economic sectors tend to be dominated by different ethnic segments. At the public level, especially regarding public employment and contracts, the problem derives in some cases from zero-sum competitive majoritarian politics which confer most benefits and privileges to electoral winners in an invidious game of “winner-takes-all”. Usually, especially in the Third World, the government is the largest employer.

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Government jobs are prized not only because they award stable salaries but also because they bring much prestige to a communal group and personalised access to services. How these jobs are allocated has emerged as persistent problem in inter-ethnic relations in the poly-ethnic states. An examination of many ethnopolitical movements shows that among the compendium of complaints that are ventilated is job allocation in the public service. In some instances, the politics of separatism turns heavily on charges of discrimination in the assignment of these jobs. Often the personnel in a government bureaucracy is skewed in favour of a particular group because of historical reasons such as location, christianisation, etc. of an ethnic community vis-a-vis the colonial state. In the Caribbean, in Guyana and Trinidad, persons of African descent availed themselves of an anglicised missionary education (unlike Indians who feared religious conversion) which resulted in their early dominance of the public bureaucracy.24 Whatever the reasons, they are deemed adequate to justify claims of a “historic right” to over-representation in maintaining the ethnic imbalances in the public service by the advantaged group. In turn, this provides the artillery for fuelling inter-ethnic and inter-racial struggles over counter-claims for “equity” and compensatory affirmative action. The arguments go back and forth and feed into other unrelated issues drawing on cultural symbols for justification and compounding the original issues, rendering them more intractable and combustible. To solve this issue, some observers have argued for a predictable process of allocating resources through fixed quotas, proportions and shares.25 The idea behind such proposals is to depoliticise resource allocation by removing it from the sphere of electoral contestation. The emphasis is on maintaining order and stability by neutralising the turbulence of ethnic claims and counter-claims and charges of discrimination and favouritism over jobs, deployment of development projects and other state benefits. The issue of resource allocation as a problematic political force is most likely to occur in plural societies where a substantial order of inequality exists among ethnic populations in respect to rights, entitlements, opportunities, or access to material resources and where the state has become the principal arbiter of economic well-being.26 Clearly, resource allocation often stands at the tip of most inter-ethnic and inter-racial struggles so that any reform in governance towards democracy and justice must find a formula for disposing of this issue. In the cases that we have examined, resource allocation was indeed at the heart of managing inter-ethnic conflict. Powersharing schemes served as a way to address this issue since it provides access to the decision-making system of the polity. There are no cases that we have looked at where an explicit formula in the form of “quotas” and precise proportions of the budget were assigned to groups before an election. This meant that resource sharing was pre-eminently the creature of backroom political deals. In the case of Fiji, the 1997 constitution provided for special affirmative allocations, in principle, for indigenous Fijians but left it up to the

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government in power to decide on specific financial allocations and privileges. In Malaysia, it was understood as part of the deal in the ruling Alliance that indigenous Malays would received special affirmative action preferences in exchange for respect of Chinese private property and their freedom to conduct business. While in Guyana, Trinidad and Mauritius, where winner-take-all politics is constitutionally permissible, while no explicit formula existed for sharing resources, it was expected that government policy would be ethnically and racially equitable. What this means is that, while democratic reforms entail multi-party competitive elections and the enthronement of one party in power, stable governance imposes an ethic of fairness in the allocation of resources. The crux of the solution lies in the assumption that inter-ethnic strife is ultimately grounded on differences over material interests which are self aggrandising but are nevertheless amenable to rational pragmatic negotiated solutions. This position reduces the cultural symbols of ethnic affirmation to “masks of confrontation” and a calculated strategy aimed almost entirely at maximising material gains.27 It assumes that, through rational discourse, a formula for equity can be found. Crafting such a magical formula, however, tends to run counter to an array of social and cultural symbols as well as historical narratives which define the identity of a group rendering compromises difficult if not impossible. Taken together, the economic issue areas turn on the proposition that communal strife is reducible to economic claims which, if rationally settled, will once and for all bring the conflict to an end.28 The point of this digression into the dynamics of cultural symbolism and identity theory is to show that resource allocation, in designing an equitable system of government, is not merely about material goods which can be easily and rationally resolved. The elegant mathematical formulae in proportionately distributing shares are implicated in a wider set of psychological and symbolic issues apart from the fact that equity is really an incommensurable claim wrapped in peculiar cultural and political calculations. Mathematical formulae are a sort of surface solution with capability to resolve some contentious items over the short-term. Sooner or later, it succumbs to the rise of outbidders who seek “more equitable” solutions. What is also important to bear in mind is that the resource allocation issue is not confined to government posts and contracts but engages a wider array of psycho-social items such as perceived inequality, sectoral dominance, alleged exploitation, uneven regional development. Some of these may be dealt with successfully by government policies to which we turn next.

Public Policy Public policy can contribute significantly either to aggravating or ameliorating conditions for inter-ethnic and inter-racial peace and harmony. Ted Gurr concludes from his study of Minorities at Risk project that it is

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government policy which contributes most to disparities and discrimination against alienated communal sections in most multi-ethnic and multi-racial states.29 Policies, however, are deeply enmeshed in politics. The state is not a neutral arbiter of public interests but itself has its own positions to advance in the formulation of public policies. This requires that fair and generally acceptable procedures and negotiation protocols for the processing of demands, accommodation of conflicting positions be established. Crawford Young underscored the point that public policies should engage participation by citizens and communal elites: Accommodation policies will thus require reasonable public support. Policy outcomes will be the product of political bargaining within civil society and its communal segments and not simply the calculus of the state managers.30 States that are divided into ethno-racial communities can promulgate particular policies to accommodate ethnic and racial diversity so as to foster harmony. Among these are human rights provisions in constitutions, a fair minded judiciary and police force, a human rights commission, equitable representation in decision-making fora at all levels of government, etc. Policies which seek equality may need to be reinforced by affirmative action programmes as well. Generally, policies that are just and engage the participation of all communities need to be embodied in the institutions and practices of the state.

Conclusion Governance addresses the relationship between citizens and the decisionmaking body of the state. Democratic governance links the choices of authoritative political leaders to the will of the people: There is perhaps nothing more fundamentally political than the ability to have a say in how one is governed. Healthy political systems reflect a shared contract between people and their government that, at its most basic, ensures the ability to survive free from fear or want.31 Besides equal participation, “sustainable democratic systems also need a functioning and fair judicial system, a military that is under civilian service that is competent, honest, and accountable”.32 While these are some of the features of a democratic government, there are special problems of adapting them in states that are deeply divided by race, religion and ethnicity and lacking in shared societal values. Racial divisions pose special needs since they are frequently manifested by visible physical features which invite easy acts of prejudice and discrimination. In part, it suggests the need for consensus political

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systems of powersharing requiring special kinds of institutional arrangements, which deviate from standard Western zero-sum adversarial parliamentary models. But regardless of the type of differentiator that divides a society into ethno-cultural compartments, as the Carnegie Commission on Deadly Conflict recommends, its governance needs to be marked by security; justice; power sharing in governance; sufficient resources for broad-based access to economic opportunities; strong civil society; cultural self-determination; and religious tolerance. In turn, this entails instituting a just system that ensures that “citizens are treated fairly and offered equal access to opportunities under the law” which “in turn creates the political space necessary for people to fulfil their aspirations without the need to deprive others of the same opportunity”.33 Necessary to this scheme is an overarching system of governance that not only, at an individual level, provides for equal citizen participation and entrenched civil liberties but, at a collective level, establishes a government of national unity at least temporarily in powersharing which serves as a mechanism of consensusbuilding and accommodation of divergent interests. Culturally and racially, it is vital that equal recognition be accorded to all communities to uphold their dignity. In the economic sphere, basic needs and well-being must be guaranteed so as to eliminate the condition of degradation which “leads to growing risks of civil war, terrorism and humanitarian catastrophe”.34 However, this is clearly more than the provision of basic material needs to the vulnerable and powerless but, in a larger perspective, points to the demand that “governments create conditions that allow people to improve their living standards and that lessen disparities between rich and poor”.35

Notes 1

See Walker Connor, Ethnonationalism (New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1992).

2

The term “race” is used here to refer to socially constructed categories assigned to putative physical and biological human differences. “Race” is a controversial analytic concept and its use here in no way suggests the objective or scientific validity of claims of fixed racial boundaries, innate endowments and aptitudes, or a natural hierarchy of cultures and civilisations. See UNESCO, Race and Science: The Race Question in Modern Science (New York: Columbia University Press, 1951); Ashley Montagu, ed., The Concept of Race (Westport: Greenwood Press, 1964); M.G. Smith, “Race and Ethnicity”. In The Anatomy of Ethnicity: An Analysis of Race and Ethnicity in the Caribbean and the World, edited by Ralph Premdas (Trinidad: School of Continuing Studies, University of the West Indies, 1993), 23-58.

3

Arend Lijphart, Democracy in Plural Societies (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1977); Donald Horowitz, A Democratic South Africa? Constitutional Engineering in a Divided Society (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1991); Donald Horowitz,

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Ethnic Groups in Conflict (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1985); Arthur Lewis, Politics in West Africa (London: George Allen, 1965); J. Montville, ed., Conflict and Peacemaking in Multi-Ethnic Societies (New York: Lexington Books, 1990); Crawford Young, ed., The Accommodation of Ethnic Diversity: Case Studies (New York: UNRISD and Macmillan, 1998); Claude Ake, A Theory of Political Integration (Homewood, Illinois: Dorsey Press, 1967); Rodolfo Stavenhagen, Ethnic Conflicts and the NationState (New York: UNRISD and Macmillan, 1996). 4

See Samuel P. Huntington, The Third Wave: Democratisation in the Late Twentieth Century (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1991); and Crawford Young, “Africa: An Interim Balance Sheet”. In Democratisation in Africa, edited by Larry Diamond (Baltimore, Maryland: Johns Hopkins Press, 1999), 64-79.

5

Michael Bratton and Nicholas van de Walle, Democratic Experiments in Africa (London: Cambridge University Press, 1997), 8

6

Ibid., 7

7

Diamond and Plattner, “Introduction”. In Democratisation in Africa, x.

8

Yusuf Bangura, Ethnic Structure and Governance: Reforming Africa in the 21st Century (Geneva: UNRISD, 2001). An Issue paper, p.1

9

Ibid., p.5

10 Ibid., p.6 11 Charles Taylor, Multiculturalism (New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1994). 12 Ibid. 13 A Valuable document on this subject was issued by UNESCO titled Towards a Constructive Pluralism (Paris: UNESCO, January 1999). 14 See Nathan Glaser, We Are Multiculturalists Now (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1998). 15 Hurst Hannum, Autonomy, Sovereignty and Self-Determination: The Accommodation of Conflicting Rights (Philadelphia: The University of Pennsylvania Press, 1992). 16 See Michael Bratton, “Second Elections in Africa”. In Democratisation in Africa, 3447; see also, Richard Joseph, “Democratisation in Africa After 1989”. In Transitions to Democracy, edited by Lisa Anderson (New York: Columbia University Press, 1999), 237-260. 17 See Terry Lynn Karl, “Imposing Consent: Electoralism and Consent in El Salvador”. In Elections and Democratisation in Latin America: 1980-85, edited by Paul W. Drake and Eduardo Silva (LaJolla, California: University of California, San Diego Center of International Studies 1986), 9-36; and Fareed Zakaria, “The Rise of Liberal Democracy”, Foreign Affairs, (Nov.-Dec. 1997): 22-43. 18. See Ralph Premdas, “The Solomon Islands: The Experiment in Decentralization,” Public Administration and Development (Summer 1982); also H. Maddick, Democracy, Decentralization, and Development (New Delhi: Asia Publishing House, 1996); and L. White, “Decentralization”, Encyclopaedia of Social Sciences, Vol. V (1931): 33-34. 19. See Steven Grosby, “Territoriality: The Transcendal, Primordial Feature of these Societies”, Nations and Nationalism, (July 1995): 145-6; also, Ralph Premdas, Ethnic Identity in the Caribbean: Decentering a Myth (Notre Dame: University of Notre

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Dame, 1996). Kellogg Institute of International Affairs, Monograph, no.234, pp.1220. 20. Rodolfo Stavenhagen, Ethnic Conflicts and the Nation-State (New York: St Martin’s Press, 1996), 202. 21. Crawford Young, “Ethnic Diversity and Public Policy: An Overview”, UNRISD paper, 1995(mimeo), 10 22. Arend Lijphart, Democracy in Plural Societies (New Haven, Conn: Yale University Press, 1977), 42. 23. See L. Despres, “Ethnicity and Resource Competition in Guyanese Society”. In Ethnicity and Resource Competition in Plural Societies (Mouton, 1975); also, Abner Cohen, Two Dimensional Man (Tavistock, 1974) and Ralph Premdas, “The Political Economy of Ethnic Strife”, Ethnic Studies Report, (Fall 1989). 24. Ralph Premdas, Ethnicity and Development: The Case of Guyana (London: Avebury Press, 1995). 25. Lijphart, Democracy. 26. Leo Despres and Ralph Premdas, “Ethnicity, the State and Economic Development”. In Identity, Ethnicity, and Culture in the Caribbean, edited by Ralph Premdas (Trinidad: School of Continuing Studies, 2000). 27. Joan Vincent, “The Structuring of Ethnicity”, Human Organization, Volume 33 (1974): 375-9. 28. See Ralph Premdas, “The Political Economy of Ethnic Strife”, Ethnic Studies Report, Summer, 1990. 31 Carnegie Foundation, Report of the Carnegie Commission on Deadly Conflict (1997), 3. 32 Ibid: p.1. 33 Ibid., p.12 34 Ibid., p.8 35 Ibid.

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N I N E T E E N

GovernanCe under threat: the iMPaCt of CorruPtion and the fiGht aGainSt CorruPtion TREVOR MUNROE

CO RR UPTI ON: THE PEO PLE’ S PER CEPTI ONS CORR RRUPTI UPTIO PEOPLE’ PLE’S PERCEPTI CEPTIO

t

he theme of our 2002 Mona Academic Conference is “The Governance Challenge: National, Regional and Global Dimensions”. In addressing this theme, it is of some considerable importance to do so in the context of the people’s views as to what constitutes this challenge, and more specifically, what are their opinions on the issue of corruption and governance, the particular subject of my paper. Ten years ago, writing with the benefit of extensive meetings up and down the region and in the Caribbean diaspora, the authors of the West Indian Commission Report spoke of popular “disaffection with governance”. The armed assault and hostage-taking in the Trinidad Parliament in July 1990, in their opinion, carried “confirmation of the dangers that could lie ahead” and reflected one extreme manifestation of “much complaint to the Commission of decline in standards of governance”. The Commissioners, in their 1992 report, recommended, among other things, that a Caricom Charter of Civil Society be drawn up enshrining standards and principles of governance to which the social partners in the region could hold one another and be held to account. According to the 1992 Report of the West Indian Commission (p.508) this Charter should deal with such specific matters as a free press, a fair and open democratic process, the effective functioning of the parliamentary system . . . respect for the rights of women and children, the right of association and freedom from political victimisation . . . greater accountability and transparency in governance and greater public access to information. Amongst “the specific matters” with which the Charter should deal was “the absence of corruption in public life”. The charter eventually adopted by the heads of government five years later in 1997 included all the matters recommended but, regrettably, excluded any

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specific reference to corruption and the need to combat it (CARICOM Charter of Civil Society, 1997). This exclusion is neither easy to understand nor acceptable. The more so in the context of significant and growing concern among Caribbean people throughout the 1990s about corruption in public life. Let it be said that this concern pre-dated the anti-corruption priorities later elaborated by the World Bank, the IMF and the other international governmental organisations. A National Public Opinion Poll carried out in 1995 found that 64 per cent of the Jamaican people felt that all or most politicians were corrupt (Rodriguez, 1996). Four years later, another national survey found that 77 per cent of the people felt that public corruption had grown over the previous ten years and almost 49 per cent believed that corruption was the greatest threat to democracy in Jamaica (The Gleaner May 3, 1999). In 2001, amongst the areas identified by the people in which corruption existed were government (80 per cent), police (68 per cent) and the private sector (31 per cent). The church (18.4 per cent) and the minority (13.8 per cent) NDM received the lowest percentages from the survey in terms of organisations within which corruption existed. Significantly 84 per cent of Jamaicans, according to the survey, felt that the government was not doing enough to fight corruption. (The Gleaner, September 17, 2001). These opinions of the Jamaican people on the question of corruption and governance would, in my view, be fairly typical of the Caribbean Community. They are certainly very much in keeping with widespread perceptions of the people in relation to their own countries across Latin America, Africa, Asia, parts of Europe and even North America. In relation to Latin America, for example, 96 per cent of the people across the continent in 2000 regarded corruption as a serious or very serious problem (Global Corruption Report 2001: 314) and 75 per cent felt that the problem had increased a lot “in the last 12 months” (p. 313). In relation to 12 post-communist states, in each the popular perception of the majority was that the level of corruption and taking of bribes had increased by comparison with the former communist regime. In Russia, the most important of these states, this was the view of almost 75 per cent of the population. Across Southern Africa, opinions on corruption were somewhat varied: In Zimbabwe, more than two thirds (69%) said that all or most government officials are involved in corruption. One half of Zimbians and South Africans also shared this view (while) only 28% in Lesotho and 20% in Namibia had a negative perception (Global Corruption Report, 2001 p. 307). Clearly, in the Caribbean as well as in a large number of countries across the globe, popular perception is that corruption constitutes a major challenge to governance. Interestingly, this perception of the people (drawn from individual country surveys plus the Global Barometer Survey Network) is in large measure shared by surveys of elite opinions. The Corruption Perception Index (CPI) put

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out by Transparency International (TI) reflects the results of polls done around the world primarily of country experts, academic, senior business executives and investment analysts. The CPI 2002 ranks 102 countries and found that seven out of ten countries ranked less than five out of a clean score of 10. Corruption was perceived “to be rampant in Indonesia, Kenya, Angola, Madagascar, Paraguay, Nigeria and Bangladesh countries with score of less than two”. (TI Press Release August 28, 2002). In general, the chairman of Transparency International remarked that the findings of CPI 2002 indicated that “Political elites and their cronies continue to take kickbacks at every opportunity”. This corruption was being carried out “hand in glove with corrupt business people”. Amongst Caribbean states the CPI scored Trinidad and Tobago 4.9 (a deterioration from 5.3 in 2001), Jamaica 4.0 (a marginal increase on 3.8 in 1998) and Haiti 2.2. Clearly, in the eyes of both the interested and the mass public, corruption is a major problem of governance. To understand both the dimensions and the consequences of the problem and, on this basis, more effective approaches to combating corruption, we must define more precisely what we mean by governance and what we mean by corruption.

GOVERNAN CE IN THE PR OCESS O F GL OBALIsA TI ON GOVERNANCE PROCESS OF GLO ALIsATI TIO There is of course quite a substantial literature on governance and much debate about the meaning of the concept. For our purposes, I propose to use as my point of departure the approach of Kaufman et al (2001) whereby “governance is . . . defined as the traditions and institutions by which authority in a country is exercised”. (Global Corruption Report 2001 p. 244). I say “point of departure” because, while useful, this definition does not go far enough. It fails to incorporate at least three dimensions critical to the exercise of authority in the prevailing processes of globalisation, viz, cultural values, informal networks and transnational influences. Omission of any of these elements lends to our understanding of governance a somewhat formal character and heightens the risk of ignoring dimensions critical to understanding the dynamics of power in contemporary circumstances. Hence I take governance to mean the traditions and institutions, values and networks – national, sub-national and transnational – by which authority in a country is exercised. Moreover, since in the two decades of neo-liberal hegemony many traditional functions of state authorities have either been divested or become subordinated to private and non-governmental entities, it follows that the reality of corporate power must be embraced within the concept of 21st century governance. Hence I take governance to embrace institutions, traditions, values and networks at seven different levels, viz: 1. National-state e.g. executive, legislative, judiciary, public service, security forces etc.

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2. Sub-national e.g. local government, “gangs” 3. Transnational Public Sector e.g. (a) intergovernmental organisation such as the World Trade Organisation, World Bank, the IMF, the International Criminal Court; (b) Regional – such as the European Union, the Caribbean Community. 4. Transnational Private Sector e.g. multinational corporations, their affiliates and subsidiaries. There are now over 60,000 of these with almost 700,000 affiliates. In Jamaica, for example, the American-Jamaican Chamber of Commerce has over eight US corporations with Jamaican affiliates registered with that body. 5. National Private Sector 6. Transnational non-governmental, such as the International Confederation of Trade Unions, the International Olympic Committee, Amnesty International, Transparency International, the Catholic Church. There are now well over 40,000 of these bodies (including Networks such as JUBILEE 2000). 7. National non-governmental i.e. civil society and community organisations. These include traditional non-governmental organisations such as the trade unions and non-traditional groups organised around environmental, human rights, and health education-related issues. Any map of modern governance – whether at the global, regional or national dimension – can no longer include only, nor even give primacy to, the 200 states and their representatives. Such a map must now include the 300+ intergovernmental organisations, the nearly 30 major regional governmental bodies, the 60 odd thousand transnational corporations, the 40 odd thousand international non-governmental organisations, major transnational criminal networks, critical national civil society bodies and private corporations. Ignore any level at the peril of over-simplifying governance. Each level is a site of real authority, exercising varying degrees of legitimate power. Moreso at each level there are widely divergent quantums of accountability – from relatively high, in formal terms in relation to the democratic state, to almost non-existent, in relation to transnational corporations and international governmental bodies deploying huge increments of power. At each level, there are many players – each with the capacity to corrupt and to be corrupted. Governance in each dimension can be and is being threatened by corruption.

CORRUPTION – NOT JUST A PUBLIC SECTOR PHENOMENON For our purpose, corruption is not just a public sector phenomenon. We cannot therefore accept the definition of corruption as “the use of public office for private gain”. Such would be to exclude the use, or more accurately, the abuse of office for personal advantage in spheres outside the public sector, such

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as in corporations and businesses impacting negatively not only on workers and shareholders but on pensioners, depositors in banks, insurance policy holders, whole communities, on the environment; in international nongovernmental organisations like the IOC, the FIFA or the ICC; in churches and religious organisations; in media houses; in community based organisations, to name but a few. In many instances too the corrupt do not hold any formal office but have status or hold positions that are open to abuse. Hence I understand corruption to mean the use of position (whether formal office or otherwise, whether public sector or otherwise) for illicit benefit or to secure advantage whether personally or for one’s connections (political, family, business etc). By definition, therefore, corruption means departure from rule-governed behaviour – whether in receiving or in giving irregular payments for passports, motorvehicle licences, contracts awards, the disposal of public assets (like land, airports, telecommunications facilities) or the granting of investment concessions. To the extent that corruption in any of its forms – nepotism, bribery, cronyism, party tribalism – is credibly and widely perceived to exist and yet goes unpunished – even rewarded – to that extent it undermines the legitimacy of authority and the rule of law, thereby fuelling tendencies to distrust, disorder and ultimately anarchy. Corruption disproportionately advantages the strong and disadvantages the weak – those in a better and worse condition respectively to both pay for and receive the benefits of abuse of position. In economic terms, corruption increases transaction costs for investment, for the production and distribution of goods and services and offloads these costs disproportionately on the backs of the poor and the powerless. It is the mass of the people who pay the most for any additional irregular cost: “kick-back” expenses for investment are invariably passed on to the people. The people are the ones who suffer in lost employment and income-earning opportunity when the potential investor is alienated by the level of the bribery tax. Equally, it is the people who pay the price and suffer from inadequate infrastructure or poor services when contracts for roads, water supplies, sewerage systems, land reclamation, housing construction, building of schools, hospitals, clinics etc. are awarded not to merit but to incompetents in return for illicit gain. Clearly the mass of the people, even those who may practice or even appear to benefit in the short-term from “petty corruption”, have a definite interest in the fight against “grand corruption”. The question arises – to what extent is this fight now being won or lost?

CORRUPTION INCREASES AND IS MORE DANGEROUS Not only is it the perception amongst the people that corruption is increasing but available evidence (on what is admittedly a difficult crime on which to garner hard evidence) suggests that “grand corruption” is definitely on the rise.

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In the Caribbean, during the decade of the 1980s and early 1990s, ministers of government or leaders of security forces were either dismissed, forced to resign or convicted on corruption related charges in Trinidad and Tobago (1983, Commissioner of Police Randolph Burrows), the Bahamas (five Cabinet ministries in the Pindling administration), Antigua (1990, Vere Bird Jr., Minister of Public Works), St Lucia (1988, Commissioner of Police Cuthbert Phillips), St Kitts Nevis (1994, resignation of deputy prime minister), in the Turks & Caicos (1985, Chief Minister Norman Saunders), in Jamaica (1990, Minister of Labour JAG Smith). Moreover, in a number of CARICOM states within recent years, credible allegations have been made and some charges laid relating to the corrupt use of corporate power in the banking and financial sectors and to the corrupt use of political office in influencing the award of contracts, the disposal of public assets, the acceptance of bribes in the police and customs services and, most recently, in relation to party campaign financing. Outside the Caribbean, systems of corporate governance have been corrupted and corporate executives charged for crimes that have produced trillion dollar losses to the North American economy, have wiped out pensions for tens of thousands and resulted in job losses for thousands of workers. It is important to note that corporate corruption in the United States has implications beyond American borders not only because of the size of the US economy but also because of its negative implications, in general, for Caribbean people of harmful developments there. More specifically, even before the ENRON and WORLDCOM events confirmed corporate corruption at the very top of the American private sector, US corporations, despite operating under relatively stringent laws against corruption, have been regarded as among the more prone to bribe-paying in foreign transactions. The 2002 Bribe Payers Index (constructed by Transparency International and based on cross-national surveys conducted amongst senior executives, international accounting firms, binational chambers etc) in 15 emerging market economies by Gallup International found that American multinational firms were more likely to pay or to offer bribes than those from France, Germany, the UK or Canada. This propensity showed an increase over the results of the 1999 BPI and moved the chairman of Transparency International in May 2002 to conclude that large numbers of multi-national corporations from the richest nations are pursing a criminal course to win contracts in the leading emerging market economies of the world . . . Politicians and public officials from the world’s leading industrial countries are ignoring the rot in their own backyards and the criminal bribe-paying activities of the multi-national corporations headquartered in their own countries, while increasingly focusing on the high level of corruption in developing countries. (Statement By Peter Eigen, Chairman TI, on the launch of the TI BPI 2002).

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The predisposition to accept bribes among some Caribbean public officials is therefore complemented by a definite willingness to offer and to give amongst many potential foreign investors. This disposition to give and to receive bribes is confirmed in the 2001 World Business Environment Survey of 11,000 enterprises across all regions conducted between 1998 and 2000 (by Gallup, A.C. Nielson and the Harvard Center for International Development in Africa among others). Over one-third of all firms surveyed experienced the need to make “irregular additional payments to government officials” and well over half indicated that in those circumstances there was no effective recourse to a superior to get correct treatment without resort to unofficial payments. Where data exists for actual reports, prosecutions and convictions for corruption in the private sector, it suggests that such corruption is increasing or at best remains constant. In the United States, almost one-third of the convictions under the 1977 Foreign Corrupt Practises Act (FCPA) have taken place in the late 1990s. (Response of the United States – questions concerning phase 2, appendix A & B) In Hong Kong, half of the more than 2000 corruption reports to the Independent Commission Against Corruption between January and June 2002 related to the private sector and the ratio of persons convicted to completed prosecutions increased during the same period (Independent Commission Against Corruption – Hong Kong Reports). The incidence and consequences of the corruption threat to corporate governance is not only, nor primarily, a matter of academic interest to us in the Caribbean. At least two of the American multinational corporations with affiliates in Jamaica have been prosecuted and found guilty by the US Justice Department and the Securities and Exchange Commission for bribery (Good Year International, 1989) and for violating the books and records provisions of the FCPA (IBM, 2000). Moreover the corrupt use of corporate power contributing to the meltdown of Jamaica’s financial sector in the mid-1990s and along with this, the associated multi-billion dollar increase in the national debt now on the backs of the Jamaican people. There can therefore be no doubt that enhanced measures to combat corruption and to reduce the threat to governance must place the private sector at the centre of attention. But of course it is corruption in the public sector, with some justification, that has attracted most attention at the national, regional and global levels. In only a small minority of states have national institutions of governance escaped threat. Throughout the Caribbean and Latin America, North America, Europe, Asia and Africa corruption scandals have surfaced involving presidents, prime ministers, cabinet ministers, other high state officials and private sector leaders. These have led to resignations, prosecutions and/or convictions in industrialised states (such as the USA, the UK, Germany and France), in consolidating democracies (like, Mexico, Brazil, Peru, Venezuela) and in established Third World democracies like India, Trinidad and Jamaica. A major arena of assault by corruption on state governance lies in the area of party finance and election

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campaign funding. A number of factors contribute to this situation. The cost of election campaigns is skyrocketing not least of all because of the expense of television advertising and the increased necessity to market marginal differences amongst competing candidate/parties as ideological/programmatic divergences have narrowed. Moreover, the “critical citizens” of the Information Age, in the Caribbean and elsewhere, are increasingly less willing to continue the voluntary political work of earlier generations, evident in an earlier age. A major contributory factor to this unwillingness to work voluntarily for political parties is the authoritarianism and leader centrism which continues to predominate in these organisations. Hence there is an insufficient appreciation, even an intolerance, of disagreement, diversity and pluralism, characteristics in followership which are not only unavoidable but valuable if political parties are to remain relevant to the 21st century. Hence previously voluntary services now have to be paid for. Moreover, with the national, regional and global alienation from traditional politics, greater effort and therefore more funds have to be expended to mobilise party support and win votes, especially amongst the unattached segments of the electorate – growing in industrialised and developing countries alike – described as “uncommitted” or independent”. Alongside the increased demand for party finance and campaign funding has grown a potentially increased supply. This comes from legal corporate entities or from criminal drug related sources – the flourishing of each having been facilitated by neo-liberal globalisation. The consequences for governance at the state level – and for democratic governance in particular – are devastating and potentially even fatal. To put it briefly, the receipt of large sums of money and the dependence on private donors (whether corporate or criminal):

• • • • •

undermines the relative independence of the state and of the state officials; corrodes the rule of law and its fundamental component equality before the law; erodes the legitimacy of the state and of public officials; subverts the will of the people expressed through free and fair elections by the power of the few with access to corporate or criminal money; ultimately, destroys confidence and trust in public authority, thereby fuelling tendencies to establish parallel authorities, to anarchy and even authoritarian alternatives (e.g. Pakistan 1999).

There can be little doubt that corruption in party financing and the public scandals it has engendered constitutes a major contributing factor to the declining confidence and trust in the institutions of governance and in the holders of public office (observed nationally, regionally and globally). However, corruption has grown so has the fight against corruption.

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“WARRING” AGAINST CORRUPTION As we have all heard and read, war has been declared on corruption, at least in words, at all levels of governance – corporate (national and transnational), national, regional and global. In this war many weapons have been deployed – mainly in relation to corruption in the public sector. New laws have been passed providing for greater transparency in Access to Information Acts or Campaign Finance Legislation. New institutions set up – sometimes termed Independent Commissions Against Corruption on the Singaporean and Hong Kong models. (cf eg. in Jamaica, Botswana and Sierra Leone). International conventions have been drafted, amended, ratified and come into force. Pathbreaking amongst these was the OAS Inter-American Convention Against Corruption which came into force in 1997 and in relation to which all CARICOM states have signed off with the exception of Antigua/Barbuda, St Lucia and St Kitts/Nevis. More recently, the OECD Convention on Combating Bribery of Foreign Public Officials came into force in 1999. Two global forums (1999 in Washington, 2001 in the Hague) of governmental representatives and no less than ten international anti-corruption conferences bringing together governments, private sectors and non-governmental organisations have been held – the last being in October 2001. Unfortunately, but perhaps predictably, in this flurry of activity, less attention has been paid to the private sector. Nevertheless, international business associations have made proposals of some note. The International Chamber of Commerce, for example, has made recommendations for firms to follow in the fight against extortion and bribery. These are: (1) To develop a manual with a comprehensive code of conduct for corporate practices; (2) To clearly assign responsibility for implementation of that code; (3) To implement an effective internal compliance programme, including training and disciplinary measures for violations; (3) To continuously monitor and modify the manual and code if conditions change or original provisions are inadequate; (5) To apply sanctions against code violators consistently and without bias. (International Chamber of Commerce, 1999) Some national and transnational corporations as well as national business associations (e.g. the Jamaica Chamber of Commerce) do have codes against corruption. It is clear, however, that the existence, application and monitoring of these codes receive far less attention than the equivalents in the public sector, inadequate as those undoubtedly are.

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Soon, if not already, the problem in the fight against corruption is not an absence of laws, formal regulations, anti-corruption institutions nor anticorruption conferences. Indeed in many instances within our own CARICOM, existing anti-corruption law is flouted with impunity by the law-makers themselves with scant attention from the media and inadequate outrage from civil society. It remains an unacceptable reality, for example, that in its report to Parliament for the year January 1, 2000 to December 31, 2000, the Jamaican Parliamentary Integrity Commission identified 15 (of 81) parliamentarians as being delinquent under the law. Amongst these were parliamentary leaders themselves, viz, the leader of the Opposition and the Speaker of the house. Yet in not one single case was any penalty, as provided for in the Act, applied for a breach of the law (Munroe, 2002). More significantly, neither the media nor the public have made much of this disgraceful situation. This episode points to a fairly general condition in the fight against corruption in the CARICOM and elsewhere – the formal pillars of what Transparency International has called “National Integrity Systems” are in place to one degree or another. What is missing is the effective enforcement, management and application of these systems. How might this deficiency be remedied?

STRENGTHENING THE FIGHT AGAINST CORRUPTION A number of elements are missing or under-developed and need to be strengthened in the fight against corruption. The first of these is inadequate or non-existent enforcement of existing law. Very often, law-enforcement officials are themselves tainted, compromised or inadequately trained. Where action does occur, in our region as elsewhere, this invariably results from public exposure and, more importantly, sustained activism on the part of civil society combined with unrelenting investigation and prosecution of wrong by honest elements within the criminal justice system. The second is the under-resourcing of the anti-corruption functions/agencies of the state. The Independent Commission Against Corruption of Hong Kong has a staff of over 1300; Botswana has over 100 well-trained professionals. By way of contrast, the Corruption Prevention Act was passed by the Jamaican Parliament in 2000, came into effect 2001, the Regulations under the Act are still being debated (August/September 2002) and the Corruption Prevention Commission has yet to be adequately staffed or funded. Passing new anticorruption legislation and establishing new anti-corruption institutions without adequate implementation capability does not carry the fight against corruption forward; it actually carries it backwards as public cynicism and frustration are fed by what smacks of governmental hypocrisy. Third, in at least one area, new legislation is required especially in the CARICOM relating to party finance and election campaign funding. Such legislation must acknowledge that nowhere on the planet has this issue been

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satisfactorily resolved but almost everywhere efforts are being made. We must nevertheless draw on “best practise” from elsewhere and adapt global experience to suit Caribbean circumstances. Such a regulatory framework would no doubt benefit from practical applications of four principles: transparency in relation to party accounts in general and to sources of party funding in particular; limits on private funding and prohibition of anonymous contributions; equitable access to commercial media; public/state support e.g. manifesto publication subsidies, training of party electoral workers, pro-rated financial grants. Fourth, effective civil society involvement in the anti-corruption fight is perhaps the single most important factor in advancing the war against corruption at the national, regional and global levels. The Global Corruption Report 2001 records that almost all 12 region reports . . . pay tribute to the courage of civil society, including the news media, in the fight against corruption . . . civil society groups around the world have unleashed an ‘anti-corruption eruption’. (Global Corruption Report 2001, p. 6) In Jamaica, civil society activism played a major role in the debates around new anti-corruption legislation and in pressing for amendments to make anticorruption legislation less hollow and more substantial. In states such as Singapore, Hong Kong, New South Wales and Botswana where anti-corruption systems are relatively effective, institutionalised public education, public support, public mobilisation, even organisation into anti-corruption clubs has been critical to success. (Munroe, 2001) Fifth, the anti-corruption fight in the private sector must no longer be on the back burner. The struggle against corporate corruption in national and transnational corporations must be raised to the same level as the fight against corruption in the public sphere. Under the influence of neo-liberalisation, entire segments of traditional state functions and of services vital to the entire societies such as the supply of electricity and power generation, telecommunications, air transport, even the maintenance of law and order, have been or are being divested – partially or totally – to private entities. Both the process of divestment and the subsequent exercise of private corporate power over public functions are peculiarly prone to corruption. Hence the same principles applied to the public sector – access to information, transparency and public monitoring must be applied to this private sector to increase integrity in corporate governance. A first step must be to require that all national and transnational corporations exercising what is in effect public power must have and police in a transparent manner internal codes and must comply with strengthened state law dealing with standards of corporate governance. Moreover, international non-governmental organisations like Transparency International must be lobbied to develop on existing work in

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the area of corporate governance. The Bribe Payers Index, for example, has received too little promotion and attention. It should ultimately score corporations on a Bribery Payers Perception Index in much the same way that the anti-corruption struggle is assisted by the ranking of states on the Annual Corruption Perception Index. Lastly, the effectiveness of these measures in combating corruption will be limited unless they are accompanied by two other critical factors – the no less critical because they may be regarded as somewhat intangible, even “soft”, compared, for example, to “hardcore” anti-corruption law enforcement. These are: 1) The need to strengthen the counter assault, already evident, on the values, hitherto hegemonic (over the last 20 years), of “market fundamentalism”. All fundamentalisms wreak havoc on human development. Christian fundamentalism, for example, particularly in the middle ages in Europe and, later between the 17th and 19th centuries, provided ideological justification for the barbarism of plantation slavery and colonial expansionism. In the 20th century, Marxist fundamentalism in distorted and deformed critical, dialectical thinking and was misused to justify Stalinist totalitarianism. In the 21st century, Islamic fundamentalism distorted the teachings of the Koran to justify terrorism against innocent people, including Caribbeans. But most of all, the market fundamentalism which took state power with Reagan and Thatcher at the beginning of the 1980s and which has enjoyed global hegemony for two decades threatens to be as dangerous to the advance of humanity as any other. In its rawest form, market fundamentalism, as against social market and communitarian philosophies, preaches the attainment of competitiveness and wealth creation at any cost – at the cost of human beings, of workers’ jobs, at the cost of the destruction of the environment, at the cost of human rights violations, at the cost of bending and breaking the very rules regulating corporate governance and market competition which allows the market to contribute to mankind’s advance. “Infectious greed”, in the words of Federal Reserve Board Chairman Allan Greenspan, is not an aberration but ultimately a necessary logical and psychological outgrowth of the values of “market fundamentalism”. A major task in combating corruption is, therefore, to recognise two things. The backlash against the system, its relations and values has already begun – perhaps in contradictory and incoherent ways – in scholarly works, in university classrooms, in major policy think-tanks but, most of all, in the protest and demonstrations not so much against globalisation but against corporation or neo-liberal globalisation in the streets and squares of the developed and developing world. We must strengthen this counter-hegemony not by a return to the past statism but by creative synthesis of all that is best in past and present theory and practice – a task for which Caribbean people are peculiarly fitted. The counter-ethic which assaults the imperative of individual enrichment at

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any price must be strengthened. This issue of ethics must be moved from the wings to centrestage. The fact is that less than 5 per cent of recent works on corruption and anti-corruption deal with business ethics. (Global Corruption Report 2001, 229-30). This neglect must be urgently rectified if we understand that, as Nobel Laureate Tum put it, “the absence of ethics is at the core of corruption phenomenon”. In so doing we must recognise a second truth, viz, the core values of all the major world religions are hostile to personal greed and rampant materialism. So too is our own Rastafarian religious philosophy. The best in Christianity, Islam, Buddhism and Hinduism must therefore be revisited and partnered with secular ideologies of humanism to roll back the tide of corruption accompanying market fundamentalism. In this way the gathering momentum of the anti-corruption struggle can and should be made to carry over into the renewal and transformation of traditional basic human values in a manner appropriate to the 21st century and beyond. 2) The war against corruption and the broader struggle to advance human development will be retarded if we do not transcend modes of authoritarian leadership and passive followership more rapidly. Such a mode of operation was perhaps appropriate to a bygone age but is no longer relevant to the Information Age. The struggle against corruption will therefore be the more effective if it produces and is marshalled by those who lead more by personal example of integrity than by precept, by those who listen more than they preach, by those who inspire but do not dominate and, most of all, by those who constantly seek and value the counsel of the people, without romanticising their “inferior passions”, however diverse, contrary or disagreeable as that counsel may be.

REFERENCES Caricom Charter of Civil Society. 1997. http://www.caricom.org/infoserv.htm “Corruption Worse Now”. May 3, 1997. Gleaner. Global Corruption Report. 2001. http://www.globalcorruptionreport.org/ Independent Commission Against Corruption - Hong Kong Reports http://www.icac.org.hk/ International Chamber of Commerce. 1999. In Report of Global Forum on Fighting Corruption p.30 Kaufman et al. 2001. “Approaches to Measuring Governance”. Global Corruption Report 2001, p 246-248. Munroe. 2002. “Transforming Jamaican Democracy Through Transparency: A framework for action”. In Fostering Transparency and Preventing Corruption in Jamaica, edited by Laura Neumann. The Carter Center.

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Munroe. 2000. “The Proposed Jamaican Corruption Prevention Act and How our Anticorruption Commission Compares”. In Combating Corruption in Jamaica: A Citizens Guide. The Carter Center in Collaboration with Sangster’s Bookstores. Pole, Andersen. September 17, 2001. “Rampant Corruption in Government Police Force”. Gleaner. Report of The West Indian Commission. 1992. Time For Action. Black Rock, Barbados. Response of the United States - Questions Concerning phase 2, appendix A+B http:// www.usdoj.gov/criminal/fraud/tcpa/intagmt.htm Rodriguez. 1996. The Jamaican Political Culture: A theoretical and empirical exploration. M. Phil (unpublished) University of the West Indies, Mona. Transparency International Corruption Perceptions Index. 2002. http://www.transparency.org World Business Environment Survey. 2001. http://www.worldbank.org/beext/resources/ assess-wbessurvey-alt.htm.

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T W E N T Y

Caribbean SeCurity in the aGe of terror: ChallenGe of intruSion and GovernanCe IVELAW GRIFFITH

Today, we live in the shadow of September 11. That horrific tragedy has cast a pall across the whole hemisphere. Prime Minister Owen Arthur1 Small states are by their nature weak and vulnerable . . . . Sometimes it seems as if small states were like small boats pushed out into a turbulent sea, free in one sense to traverse it; but, without oars or provisions, without compass or sails, free also to perish. Or, perhaps, to be rescued and taken aboard a larger vessel. Sir Shridath Ramphal2 Hurricanes are not the only intruders James N. Rosenau3

t

aken together the three epigraphs make it tenable to suggest that the Caribbean finds itself in an age of terror, during a period of turbulence, and in the season of the hurricanes. Ever since September 11, 2001 (referred to hereafter as 9-11), terrorism, the policy and operational response discourse, and the implications of those responses for foreign affairs, security, economics and trade, transportation, immigration and other areas have defined key elements of the matrix of international politics and international security. One element is that terrorism has become the fulcrum around which considerable global institutional behaviour revolves. The kind of foreign policy and security conduct by the United States that may have precipitated the 9-11 terrorist incidents is beside the point; so too is the wisdom of their counter-terrorism pursuits since then.4 Important, though, in shaping this reality is the preponderance of United States power in the international system and its use of that power, the transnational character of terrorism and the fact that other states – both large and small – are subject to attack by terrorists or are vulnerable to terrorism. So, that “we live in the shadow of September 11”, as Prime Minister Owen Arthur posited, seems hardly in dispute. However, it is also true that,

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notwithstanding 9-11, terrorism did not give rise to turbulence in the global community; turbulence predated 9-11, although terrorism in some parts of the world contributed to it. Moreover, particularly for small states, such as those in the Caribbean, turbulence of one form or another has been an undesired but undeniable reality of national life. The Ramphal remark of almost two decades finds renewed relevance now, as the issue of terrorism provides added complexity to the turbulent sovereignty and security seas Caribbean states have already had to navigate. Thus, their vulnerability stands to become more acute. In navigating the turbulent security seas, Caribbean statesmen and citizens have had to contend with a variety of threats. Jim Rosenau’s use of “hurricanes” as a metaphor for threats is quite apposite. While hurricanes have wreaked destruction on the Caribbean, often posing a clear and present danger to state and society, they have not been the only dangers to the region; they are indicative of something else: the multidimensionality of the threat landscape. Further, hurricanes represent an aspect of the security dialogue for Caribbean and other small states that generally is absent from the traditional security discourse; they do not constitute security threats in the traditional sense, but are certainly relevant to the region’s survival. Noteworthy, too, is that while the term “intruders” connotes externality, sometimes the “enemy” is within; threats often are internal, although there can be externalities affecting their scope and dynamics. What, then, other than hurricanes, are some of the “intruders” facing the contemporary Caribbean? What are some of their implications for governance? Understandably, these are not the only questions that may be posed in probing the nexus between security and governance. They are, nevertheless, key ones. In attempting a modest response to these questions, this chapter examines some of the more pressing security threats, taking the non-traditional approach to security studies. Attention is then paid to some of the governance challenges to which scholars and policy elites should pay attention as we cope with intrusion in the shadow of terror and the climate of turbulence.

Identifying The Intruders Examination of the security landscape of the Caribbean would profit from a preliminary, albeit brief, comment about two matters: the larger sub-set of states in which Caribbean states finds themselves – small states; and the broader literature on security studies. The scholarship on small state security has changed significantly over recent decades. First, the preoccupation with external security has given way to recognition that internal security issues are not only important in their own right, but they complicate, and sometimes aggravate, external challenges. Added to this, the distinction between internal issues and external ones often is blurred. Second, the tendency to cast security analysis in military-political terms has been replaced by acceptance that security concerns go beyond these to the

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economic area and often to the environmental one as well. In addition, there has been growing recognition of an emphasis on the link between security and development. As Robert Rothstein noted correctly, the traditional concern with territorial integrity and political independence has had to be broadened to include a concern with domestic stability — and thus also a concern with prospects for, and means of, domestic development.5 Focusing on the small states within the Commonwealth, the Commonwealth Advisory Group noted: “The major threats faced by small states are to their territorial integrity and security political independence and security; economic security; environmental sustainability; and social cohesion. Some of them are acutely vulnerable, others moderately so.”6 Security has long been a highly contested concept, with a multiplicity of definitions and usages.7 Most of them are constructed around a few core concepts: international anarchy, survival, territorial integrity, and military power. Moreover, the definitions mostly share a common theoretical foundation in traditional realism, which focuses on the state as the unit of analysis, stresses the competitive character of relations among states, and emphasises the military and, to a letter extent, the political aspects of security. It is also oriented to the international arena sees states as national actors rationally pursuing their interests in that arena and considers military power capabilities as the most critical ones. The traditional realist views security as “high politics”. For most of the post-World War II period, there was wide consensus among political scientists and military theorists that traditional realist theory provided the appropriate conceptual architecture to examine questions of security. As might be expected, this paradigm was challenged, but not concertedly. However, the vicissitudes of international politics since the end of the Cold War have led many scholars to go beyond the realist paradigm in conceptualising and probing security issues. A decade ago one scholar, himself an erstwhile proponent of Realism, averred: Realism, rooted in the experiences of World War II and the Cold War, is undergoing a crisis of confidence largely because the lessons adduced do not convincingly apply directly to the new realities. The broadened global agenda goes beyond what realism can realistically be expected to address.8 As might be expected, the “horrific tragedy”, to use Owen Arthur’s term, has served to further undermine confidence in the utility of the realist approach to security. As one scholar quite presciently observed recently, the globalization of informal violence has rendered problematic our conventional assumptions about security threats. It should also lead us to question the classical realist distinction between important parts of the

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world, in which great powers have interests, and insignificant places, which were thought to present no security threats although they may raise moral dilemmas.9 But it should be said that this rethinking about traditional realism does not represent its total debunking. Quite appropriately, it has been noted: To challenge the centrality of realism does not imply its total repudiation. States do remain important actors, war does remain profoundly relevant to international relations, and many international settings can be better understood as collisions of interests and antagonistic political forces.”10 For the Caribbean, the departure from sole reliance on the explanatory power of realism pre-dated the end of the Cold War and the “age of terror”.11 Security in the Caribbean has never really been viewed merely as protection from military threats. It has not been just military hardware, although it has involved this; not just military force, although it has been concerned with it; and not simply conventional military activity, although it certainly has encompassed it. Thus, in the context of the Caribbean, security may be defined as protection and preservation of a people’s freedom from external military attack and coercion, from internal subversion and from the erosion of cherished political, economic and social values. These values include democratic choice and political stability in the political area, sustainable development and free enterprise in the economic domain, and social equality and respect for human rights in the social arena.12 Thus, security in the Caribbean is multidimensional, with military, political, economic and other dimensions. As one statesman asserted, and quite rightly: It would be a fundamental error on our part to limit security concerns to any one area while the scourge of HIV/AIDS, illegal arms and drug trafficking, transnational crime, ecological disasters, and poverty continue to stare us in the face.13 Moreover, security in the region is concerned with both internal and external threats. Further, the state is not the only unit of analysis; non-state actors are equally important. Indeed, as is evident from the actions of some individuals and groups engaged in drug trafficking and other criminal enterprises in the region, many non-state actors own or can mobilise more economic and military assets than some states. This approach enables us to appreciate that there are both traditional and non-traditional “intruders” in the Caribbean. Territorial disputes and hemispheric geopolitics are the core traditional concerns. The most serious disputes involve Venezuela and Guyana, Suriname and Guyana, Venezuela and Colombia, and France (French Guiana) and Suriname. As this list indicates, a

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few countries are involved in several disputes. For example, Guyana is facing a claim by Venezuela for the western five-eighths of its 214,970 km2 territory, and one by Suriname for 15,000 km2 to the east, as Figure 1 shows.14 Figure 1 Territorial Claims against Guyana

Drugs, crime, political instability, HIV/AIDS, economic deprivation and environmental degradation are the chief non-traditional security concerns. There is no uniformity in the importance statesmen and scholars ascribe to these concerns, but a comparison of the two categories – traditional and nontraditional – would reveal that more policy elites and scholars place a higher premium on the non-traditional area than on the traditional one; they are more salient and more intractable. Of course, some states, such as those in the Eastern Caribbean, have no traditional security concerns; some also have no overt external threat from other states.15 Public security issues are particularly prominent. Although consideration cannot be given to all the salient issues, a few deserve some attention. The issue of drugs heads the list.

Drugs The Caribbean lies at what Cuban scholar and nationalist Jóse Martí once called “the Vortex of the Americas”; it is a bridge or front between North and South America. European actors recognised the strategic importance of this

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vortex soon after the 1492 encounter between Europe and the Americas. This strategic importance has persisted over the centuries, and it was dramatised in geopolitical terms during the Cold War. However, the region’s strategic value lies not only in its geopolitical significance as viewed by state actors engaged in conflict and cooperation. Over recent decades the region also has been viewed as strategic by non-state drug actors, also with conflict and cooperation in mind, not in terms of geopolitics, but geonarcotics. Figure 2 Geonarcotics Framework

The concept of geonarcotics, captured graphically in Figure 2, suggests the dynamics of three factors besides drugs: geography, power and politics. It posits, first, that the narcotics phenomenon is multidimensional, with four main problem areas (drug production, consumption-abuse, trafficking, and moneylaundering); second, that these give rise to actual and potential threats to the security of states around the world; and third, that the drug operations and the activities they spawn precipitate both conflict and cooperation among various state and non-actors in the international system. Geography is a factor because of the global dispersion of drug operations, and because certain physical, social and political geography features of many countries facilitate drug operations. Power involves the ability of individuals and groups to secure compliant action. In the drug world, this power is both state and non-state in origin and, in some cases, non-state sources command relatively more power than states. Politics revolves around resource allocation in terms of the ability of power brokers to determine who gets what, how and when. Since power in this milieu is not only state power, resource allocation is correspondingly not exclusively a function of state power-holders. Moreover, politics becomes perverted, and more perverted where it already was so.

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The geonarcotics milieu involves a variety of state and non-state actors, which differ in how they affect and are affected by the various problems and in their countermeasures. Drug operations generate two basic kinds of interactions: cooperation and conflict. These are bilateral and multilateral and do not all involve force. Some involve non-military pressures, such as economic and political sanctions by the United States against countries that it considers not proactive enough in fighting drugs. Some actors engage simultaneously in both cooperation and conflict. The relationships between the United States and Colombia and Mexico over the last decade and between the United States and Jamaica and Barbados during the late 1990s reveal this. The geonarcotics approach does not view the “war on drugs” purely as a military matter. Hence, the application of military countermeasures alone is considered impractical. Moreover, international countermeasures are necessary, especially since all states – even rich and powerful ones – face resource constraints. However, collaboration among states may result in conflict over sovereignty and perception of the nature and severity of threats and, therefore, appropriate responses.16 The geonarcotics relationship between the Caribbean and the rest of the world, especially North America, perhaps, is best known in relation to trafficking. However, the relationship entails more than the movement of drugs from and through the region; involved also are: drug production, drug consumption and abuse, money laundering, organised crime, corruption, arms trafficking and sovereignty conflicts, among other things. Thus, what generally is called “the drug problem” in the Caribbean really is a multidimensional phenomenon. However, the phenomenon does not constitute a security matter simply because of its multidimensionality. It does so essentially for four reasons. First, the operations have multiple consequences and implications – such as marked increases in crime, systemic and institutionalised corruption and arms trafficking, among other things. Second, the operations and their consequences have increased in scope and gravity over the last two decades. Third, they have dramatic impact on agents and agencies of national security and good governance in military, political and economic ways. Finally, the sovereignty of many countries is subject to infringement, both by state and non-state actors, because of drugs. Two decades ago, most Caribbean leaders found it impolitic to accept that their countries were facing a drug threat. But over the years the scope and severity of the threat increased and became patently obvious to observers within and outside the region. Tables 1 and 2 and Figures 3 and 4 provide only a small portrait of some elements of the problem to which Figure 1 points. Caribbean leaders were no longer able to deny the existence of the issue. Helping to catapult the issue on to the policy radar screen was the sobering assertion made by the West Indian Commission in 1992: “Nothing poses greater threats to civil society in CARICOM countries than the drug problem; and nothing exemplifies the powerlessness of regional Governments more.”17 Thus, it was not unexpected that at the special CARICOM drug summit of December 1996, leaders would

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issue a statement acknowledging that: “Narco-trafficking and its associated evils of money laundering, gun smuggling, corruption of public officials, criminality and drug abuse constitute the major security threat to the Caribbean today”.18 More recently, in June 2000, at a multinational high level meeting on criminal justice in Trinidad and Tobago, that country’s attorney general made the following declaration in speaking on behalf of the Caribbean: There is a direct nexus between illegal drugs and crimes of violence, sex crimes, domestic violence, maltreatment of children by parents and other evils . . . . Our citizens suffer from drug addiction, drug-related violence, and drug-related corruption of law enforcement and public officials. The drug lords have become a law unto themselves . . . . Aside from the very visible decimation of our societies caused by drug addiction and drug-related violence, there is another insidious evil: money laundering . . . . It changes democratic institutions, erodes the rule of law, and destroys civic order with impunity.19 Figure 3 Portrait of Maritime and Air Trafficking

Source: U.S. Southern Command, 2002. Notes EPAC

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— Eastern Pacific (50 GFST, 26 F/V, 4 AIR)

WCARIB

— Western Caribbean (49 GSFT, 6F/V, 8 AIR)

CCARIB

— Central Caribbean (36 GFST, 4 F/V, 8 AIR)

ECARIB

— Eastern Caribbean (40 GSFT, 4 F/V, 4 AIR)

GSFT

— Go Fast Boats

F/V

— Fishing Vessels

AIR

— Aircraft

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Table 1 Cocaine Seizures (in kilos) in the Caribbean Region, 1996-2000 JURISDICTIONS

1996

1997

1998

1999

2000

NORTH SECTOR Bahamas

115

2,565

3,347

1,860

2,779

Turks and Caicos Islands (UK)

393

1

2,075

1

303

470

2,691

1,221

38

13

WEST SECTOR Belize CENTRAL-WEST SECTOR Cayman Islands (UK)

2,219

1,054

1,213

1,401

1,812

Cuba

7,905

1,444

956

2,444

3,144

Jamaica

254

414

1,143

2,455

1,655

CENTRAL-LEFT SECTOR Haiti

956

2,100

1,272

380

n/a

Dominican Republic

1341

1,225

2,337

1,071

1,306

Puerto Rico (US)

11072

15,153

10,344

9,977

n/a

U.S. Virgin Islands (US)

n/a

n/a

n/a

n/a

.0.1

Aruba (NL)

203

408

794

464

346

Netherlands Antilles (NL)

710

1,302

639

18

n/a

CENTRAL-RIGHT SECTOR

CENTRAL-RIGHT SECTOR

EAST SECTOR British Virgin Islands (UK)

1765

838

75

10

534

Anguilla (UK)

289

0

0

0

n/a

St. Kitts and Nevis

0

150

1

1

0.052

Antigua and Barbuda

6

126

1

25

24

Montserrat (UK)

0

1

0

0

n/a

Guadeloupe (FR)

1224

21

44

593

292

Dominica

3

101

29

83

10

Martinique (FR)

17

37

46

36

14

St. Lucia

20

8

58

121

110

Barbados

36

88

35

141

179

St. Vincent and the Grenadines

2

1

13

15

50

Grenada

9

213

3

42

101

Trinidad and Tobago

180

31

79

137

303

163

SOUTH-EAST SECTOR

Guyana

91

66

3,222

38

Suriname

1,413

117

283

180

213

Guyane (FR)

45

167

175

446

25

23

4

11

392

13

NORTH-EAST SECTOR Bermuda (UK)

Source: UNDCP Caribbean Coordination Mechanism, Drug Trends 2000-2001 Report, April 2002.

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Table 2 Marijuana Seizures in the Caribbean Region, 1996-2000 JURISDICTIONS

1996

1997

1998

1999

2000

NORTH SECTOR Bahamas

2,606

Turks and Caicos Islands (UK) 17

3,763

2,598

3,500

4,134

22

8

10

2

263

1,557

392

249

WEST SECTOR Belize

202

CENTRAL-WEST SECTOR Cayman Islands (UK)

3,188

3,423

4,063

5,100

6,621

Cuba

5,369

6,023

4,610

5,559

8,801

Jamaica

31,587

24,729

35,911

22,740

55,869

Haiti

n/a

9,000

9,255

31

Dominican Republic

246

788

650

184

CENTRAL-LEFT SECTOR

2,934

CENTRAL-RIGHT SECTOR Puerto Rico (US)

8635

1,337

1,285

12,605

n/a

U.S. Virgin Islands (US)

n/a

n/a

n/a

n/a

27

Aruba (NL)

77

13

n/a

141

12

Netherlands Antilles (NL)

650

n/a

541

112

n/a

CENTRAL-RIGHT SECTOR

EAST SECTOR British Virgin Islands(UK)

119

85

84

26

103

Anguilla (UK)

1

1

0

8

n/a

St. Kitts and Nevis

5

67

31

16

120

Antigua and Barbuda

1,485

628

105

94

66

Montserrat (UK)

1

3

0

2,677

n/a

Guadeloupe (FR)

667

1,057

688

515

1,016

Dominica

136

405

361

192

467

Martinique (FR)

166

355

136

199

749

St. Lucia

326

622

352

352

1,803

Barbados

3,083

1,092

96

745

6,500

St. Vincent and the Grenadines

1,227

527

1,321

7,188

1,708

Grenada

191

123

127

218

194

Trinidad and Tobago

1,1,408 3,120

1,850

1,558

1,546

Guyana

52,377

20,179

8,860

3,954

123

Suriname

17

65

105

177

107

Guyane (FR)

99

40

51

134

59

107

92

83

n/a

n/a

SOUTH-EAST SECTOR

NORTH-EAST SECTOR Bermuda (UK)

Source: UNDCP Caribbean Coordination Mechanism, Drug Trends 2000-2001 Report, April 2002

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Figure 4 f D rug Erad on Effo rts Por of Dr Eradiicati tio Effor Po rtrait o

Source: US Southern Command, 2002.

Crime The statement above by Attorney General Maharaj points clearly to the nexus between drugs and crime. Indeed, crime is a component of the drug phenomenon. Crime could be viewed in several ways typologically. One study sees two basic categories of drug crimes: “enforcement” crimes and “business” crimes. The former involves crimes among traffickers and between traffickers and civilians and police, triggered by traffickers’ efforts to avoid arrest and prosecution. The latter category encompasses crimes committed as part of business disputes and acquisitive crimes, such as robbery and extortion. Another typology posits three types of crime: “consensual” ones, such as drug possession, use or trafficking; “expressive” ones, such as violence or assault; and “instrumental” or property crimes, examples being theft, forgery, burglary and robbery.20 Irrespective of the typology used, there is a wide range of drug-related criminal activity in the Caribbean. Several connections are noteworthy. First, murder, fraud, theft and assault and bodily harm, the crimes that present the greatest challenge to most countries in the region, are precisely the crimes associated with drugs. Second, in a few countries, notably Jamaica, Puerto Rico, Haiti, the Dominican Republic and Trinidad and Tobago, there is clear evidence of a linkage. For instance, in Jamaica where there were 561 reported cases of

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murder in 1991, “there was a 75 per cent increase [over 1990] in the incidents of murder linked directly or indirectly to drug trafficking”.21 A decade later the murder rate had doubled: 1,130 murders in 2001, 28 per cent more than the year 2000 and a significant proportion of them drug related.22 Also noteworthy is the fact that the countries with the high or progressive crime reports in the theft, homicide and serious assault categories are the same ones featuring prominently over the last decade as centres of drug activity. These countries include the Bahamas, the Dominican Republic, Puerto Rico, Jamaica, Trinidad and Tobago, Haiti, the US Virgin Islands, Guyana, and St KittsNevis. Thus, what the Jamaican National Security Minister reported to Parliament in June 2002 has a relevance that extends far beyond Jamaica: Madame Speaker, when you look at a breakdown of the murder figures, it becomes clear that reprisals and drug/gang related killings constitute the highest percentage of murders in the country . . . . Current analysis based on available intelligence suggests that the illegal drug has become the taproot for crime and violence in our country today. It has become the principal factor underpinning the organised criminal networks, which are at the heart of the problem.23 Dudley Allen, a former Jamaican Commissioner of Corrections, once remarked: It is no longer possible to think of crime as a simple or minor social problem . . . Mounting crime and violence have been declared leading national problems, and the issue of law and order has assumed high priority in national planning and policymaking. Fear of crime is destroying . . . freedom of movement, freedom from harm, and freedom from fear itself.24 Allen first made this statement in 1976, but it is still relevant over a quarter-ofa-century later and now, even more dramatically so. He was also speaking mainly of the Jamaican context, but the observation now has region-wide validity. For a variety of reasons that cannot be explored here, crime has skyrocketed in many parts of the region. It was the widespread regional scope and the severity of crime that prompted CARICOM leaders to create the Regional Task Force on Crime and Security at their July 2001 summit in Nassau. And, the first report of the Task Force, which was presented to the leaders at the summit in July 2002 in Georgetown, testifies to the widespread scope and the severity of crime. (The report also examines some of the complex reasons for crime and provides both policy and operational recommendations for coping with it.) There is a local-global nexus in the region’s drug-related crime, reflected in the fact that the crime is not all ad hoc local crime; some of it is transnational and organised, extending beyond the region to North America, Europe and

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elsewhere.25 Groups called “posses” in Canada, the Caribbean and the United States and “yardies” in Britain perpetrate the most notorious organised crime. They are organised criminal gangs composed primarily of Jamaicans or people of Jamaican descent, but increasingly involving African-Americans, Guyanese, Panamanians, Trinidadians, Nigerian and Dominicans. Although the posses are known most for the trafficking of drugs and weapons, they have also been implicated in money laundering, fraud, kidnapping, robbery, burglary, prostitution, documents forgery and murder.26 Another aspect of the local-global nexus pertains to deportees. Criminal activity within some Caribbean countries is complicated and aggravated by the activities of nationals who are convicted, sentenced and later deported from elsewhere. In a July 1993 speech to the Jamaican Parliament, National Security Minister, K.D. Knight, stated: Nearly a thousand Jamaicans were deported from other countries last year, with over 700 coming from the United States. Most of them, nearly 600, were deported for drug-related offenses.27 That was just the tip of the iceberg. Between 1993 and 2000, over 8,000 Jamaican deportees were returned to the island, mainly from the United States. Although most of the deportees come from the United States, the United States is not the only country that sends criminals back to their homelands. Of course, Jamaica is not the only Caribbean nation to be forced to accept nationals in the diaspora who have walked on the wrong side of the law. As a matter of fact, Jamaica is not the Caribbean country to which most deportees are returned, as Figure 5 shows. That dubious distinction falls to the Dominican Republic. Moreover, criminal deportation is also an intra-regional reality; Caribbean countries send each other’s nationals back to their countries of origin. Barbados, for example, reportedly deports an average of 20 Caribbean nationals weekly, mostly to Guyana, St Lucia, St Vincent and the Grenadines, and Trinidad and Tobago.28 Yet, it is not merely the fact of deportation and the numbers that are troubling to many Caribbean jurisdictions. Part of the challenge lies in what is suggested in Figure 6, which reflects the deportation portrait of other countries: deportees generally have a troubling criminal profile, with the capabilities and disposition to perpetrate crime in the new jurisdiction. Moreover, there are ample opportunities for the committal of crime. When these factors are combined with the manpower, equipment and training deficiencies of Caribbean law enforcement agencies, the outcomes seem to negatively affect state and society in the region.29 Calling the deportee matter a “contested issue”, the report of the Regional Task Force on Crime and Security quite rightly calls for more empirical study of the relationships between criminal deportation and domestic criminal behavior. Overall, it offers measured commentary, noting that

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… a basic descriptive study of the Barbadian deportee problem and preliminary studies in Jamaica would seem to support the idea that the deportee danger may have been overestimated. Nevertheless, it makes the following point: “Although imperfect, the existing information suggests that there is nothing particularly dramatic about the quantitative impact of deportee crimes. The qualitative impact of deportee crimes is, however, of great concern”.30 Figure 5 1998 Criminal D epo rtati ons fr om the U.S. Depo epor tio fro

Source:

Privat Precil, “Criminal Deportees and Returned Teens: A Migration Phenomenon, A Social Problem,” mediaNET Bulletin, No. 2, May 1999.

Figure 6 1998 Criminal D epo rtati on t o Haiti with Criminal C atego ries Depo epor tio to Ca tegories

Source: Privat Precil, “Criminal Deportees and Returned Teens: A Migration Phenomenon, A Social Problem,” mediaNET Bulletin, No. 2, May 1999.

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Understandably, while crime is widespread in scope it is not uniform in pattern. Over recent years, the jurisdictions that stand out in relation to violent crime have been Jamaica, Haiti, Puerto Rico, the Dominican Republic, Trinidad and Tobago and Guyana. Yet, in some places where crime has come to define the national image if not the sociopolitical landscape, crime actually has declined. For instance, in May 2002, Trinidad’s National Security Minister, Howard Chin Lee, reported that the murder rate for February to April 2002 had dropped 14 per cent compared to the same period in 2001; and in August 2002 Jamaica’s National Security Minister indicated that murders had declined 11 per cent over the last year; rape had been reduced by 11 per cent also; carnal abuse by 17 per cent, and break-ins by 14 per cent.31 However, there have been virtual crime sprees elsewhere, particularly in Guyana and Trinidad and Tobago, with dramatic episodes of criminal temerity and new (or heightened) criminal forays. These include attacks on police stations (already happening in Jamaica, Haiti and elsewhere), kidnappings and assassination of crime officials. One recent assessment of the Guyana situation describes it thus: Even to those untrained in the detection of patterns of criminal behavior, it now appears obvious that Guyana has transcended the bounds of ordinary banditry and is engulfed in a crime wave that suggests methodological planning, sinister motives, and the lethal means to stun the nation into a sate of fear-induced vulnerability.32 A few vignettes from Guyana and Trinidad and Tobago from the six-month period, May through October 2002, will suffice to indicate the seriousness of the challenges they face. •

•

•

•

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On May 9, Kenneth Medford, president of the Petroleum Dealers Association was kidnapped and held for a ransom of TT$325,000 (US$49,000). He was released five days later after his family paid the ransom. On July 14, Anthony Sabga III, grandson of business magnate Anthony Sabga, was kidnapped and held for TT$5 million (US$760,000), which was paid a day later, leading to his release. On August 24, Ishwar Maharaj, son of wealthy businessman Balliram Maharaj was snatched from a club in Malabar and held for a ransom of TT$3 million (US$455,000). He was later rescue by police. The following day another Trinidad businessman, Michael Beepat, was abducted outside his brother’s business establishment in Chaguanas. Worthy of note is the fact that up to August 29 of this year there had been 12 kidnappings in Trinidad and Tobago. On August 24, Vibert Inniss, the second in command of Guyana’s Customs Anti-Narcotics Unit, was gunned down when he made his

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•

•

•

routine newspaper stop a few miles from home and three days later 20year-old Criminal Investigation Department officer Feroze Bahsir was murdered, becoming the ninth police officer to be murdered within three-and-a-half months.33 Trinidadian businesswoman Kaloutie Jenny Singh Godeck was snatched from outside her home in Chaguanas on October 21 and a ransom of TT$3 million was demanded from her family. She was released six days later following the payment of TT$150,000 to her abductors.34 Shortly before midnight on October 27, abductors stormed the Villa Maria hotel in Maraval, Trinidad, kidnapped the 75-year-old manager, Winston Seepersad and sought a ransom of TT$300,000. That abduction became the 24th reported for 2002.35 (The abductors called the Seepersad family on October 30 with a reduced demand: TT$100,000.) On October 30, 65-year-old cane farmer Motilall was abducted from his farm in Buxton, a village along Guyana’s eastern coast, and held for G$20 million. The ransom was not paid and a few days later his bulletridden body was found dumped along a canal in the village. An earlier kidnapping in the same village had the same result after the family of Camaldeo Ganesh could not meet the ransom demand.36

Needless to say, the political discontent in Guyana, Haiti and the Dominican Republic, and the factor of race in Guyana, has served to complicate the situation in those countries. Nevertheless, crime is not the only “intruder” with which Caribbean states have to contend; important too are the issues of terrorism and HIV/AIDS.

Terrorism and the Terror of HIV/AIDS Brian Jenkins was correct in calling terrorism “violence for effect”. It is “not only, and sometimes not at all, for the effect on the actual victims of the terrorists. In fact, the victims may be totally unrelated to the terrorists’ cause”.37 Terrorism – and the consequences of state action to cope with it – has become an unwelcome, but undeniable, reality for citizens of the United States and elsewhere, including the Caribbean. It has given a new meaning to the definition of power and of powerlessness, most significantly so for the United States, the primary (but not the only) victim state and world’s sole super power. The assessment of one respected international politics scholar in this regard warrants full replication: Our failure to anticipate the impact of terrorist attacks does not derive from a fundamental conceptual failure in thinking about power. On the contrary, the power of terrorists, like that of states, derives from asymmetrical patterns of interdependence. Our fault has rather been our failure to understand that

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the most powerful state ever to exist on this planet could be vulnerable to small bands of terrorists because of patterns of asymmetrical interdependence. We have overemphasized states and we have overexaggerated power.38 What, then, does 9-11 mean for weak, vulnerable states in the Caribbean? The 9-11 attack has affected the Caribbean in several ways, both as a direct consequence of the economic and military fallout from the impact on the United States and as a result of region’s security vulnerability. It is notable, for instance, that according to the US Department of State, some 160 Caribbean nationals were victims of the actions against the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. Moreover, the domino effect of 9-11 has had a deleterious effect on the region’s tourism industry, which is key to the economic security of several countries. A few examples should suffice. In Jamaica, where tourism earns some US$1.2 billion a year and employs over 30,000 people the impact has already been very dramatic, with Air Jamaica losing US$11 million within the week following the attack. In Barbados, where tourism contributes about US$1 billion to the economy, the authorities anticipated a US$30.3 million decline in receipts, a 30-35 per cent reduction in the cruise enterprise, US$857,000 less in the head tax and a drop in tourist spending of US$9.2 million.39 Indeed, the tourism impact is expected to be so far reaching that the Second Caribbean Tourism Summit, held in The Bahamas on December 8-9, 2001, decided on a package of special measures to salvage the industry which, in 2000, provided gross foreign exchange earnings of US$20.2 billion and employed an estimated 1 in 4 persons in the Caribbean.40 Undoubtedly, though, the impact goes beyond tourism. As CARICOM leaders noted at the October 2001 special summit: We are concerned that the attacks and subsequent developments have been especially devastating to our tourism, aviation, financial services, and agricultural sectors, which are the major contributors to our GDP, foreign exchange earnings and to employment in our Region. We are particularly conscious that our ongoing efforts to combat money laundering must now take specific account of the potential for abuse of financial services industries by terrorists, their agents, and supporters in all jurisdictions.41 Needless to say, some of the very realities of the region’s geo-politics and geonarcotics can create opportunities for terrorist engagements, either as ends in themselves or allied to drug (or illegal migrant smuggling) operations.42 A full assessment of the economic, political, military impacts and implications for the Caribbean is yet to be undertaken.43 However, several effects in addition to those mentioned above have begun to be felt in the immigration, banking, transportation and other areas.44 Moreover, the Regional Task Force on Crime and Security raised the prospects of several likely threat possibilities; that

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• • •

The region’s maritime and air networks could be used for conveyance of terrorist operatives and operational assets. Terrorists could use the region’s banking and other financial systems to finance their pursuits. Regional port or air facilities could be used to stage terrorist operations, either targeted to places in the region or elsewhere.45

It certainly is crucial to discuss scenarios and possibilities of external terrorist actions or the collateral impact of such. Still, it should be remembered that, although the Caribbean was not the target of the dramatic 9-11 terrorist operations, the region has not been immunised against terrorism. For example, on October 6, 1976 a Cubana Air flight from Guyana to Cuba was detonated shortly after departing Barbados where it had made a transit stop. All 73 people on the flight – 57 Cubans, 11 Guyanese, and five North Koreans — were killed. Anti-Castro exiles based in Venezuela later claimed responsibility for the action. (On August 1, 1998, while on a visit to Barbados, President Fidel Castro dedicated a monument to the victims of the incident).46 Moreover, Cuba suffered a dozen bombings of tourist locations during 1997, allegedly perpetrated by anti-Castro Cuban exiles in Miami and Central America.47 In many respects, HIV/AIDS constitutes a terror for the Caribbean. The epidemic has been traced to the 1970s, with the first case reported in Jamaica in 1982, just a year after the first reported case in the United States. The following year, 8 cases involving gay or bisexual men were reported in Trinidad and Tobago. Yet, two years later female and pediatric AIDS cases were about 28 per cent of total cases reported to the Caribbean Epidemiology Centre (CAREC) by its member countries.48 Among other things, this indicated that the disease was becoming a matter for the general population and not merely one restricted to gay or bisexual men.49 The epidemic has spread rapidly since 1982, as Figures 7 and 8 show. One March 2002 report notes: The alarming acceleration of the epidemic is highlighted by the fact that more AIDS cases have been reported between 1995 and 1998 than since the beginning of the epidemic in the early 1980s. In 1998, among the CAREC countries, the Bahamas, Turks and Caicos, Barbados, Trinidad and Tobago, St. Vincent and the Grenadines, Bermuda, Guyana, Jamaica and Suriname reported the highest number of new AIDS cases. Overall, Haiti and the Dominican Republic together account for 85 percent of the total number of cases in the Caribbean. However, because of their size and tourism dependent economies, the small island nations remain vulnerable to the epidemic.50 Indeed, the epidemic has spread so rapidly that the Caribbean is the second hardest-hit region, the first being sub-Saharan Africa, with an overall prevalence of 2.11 per cent among adults and 501,500 people living with the virus, up to the

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end of 2000.51 Understandably, there is variability both in the prevalence among countries, as suggested above, and in the impact on differing segments of the populations of countries. For example, data for 2000 indicates the following incidence among infants: Jamaica, 225 children or 5 per 1000 live births; Trinidad and Tobago: 108 children or 6 per 1000 live births; Belize; 105 children or 15 per 1000 live births; and Guyana: 420 children or 21 per 1000 live births.52 However, it is not merely the number of people involved that makes the HIV/ AIDS epidemic a security matter for the region; what makes it so are the demographic, economic and social implications and the impact on the long term socioeconomic stability and governability of Caribbean nations. Figure 7 ases: Annu al In cid en ce per 100,000 Po pul ati on Repor Ca Annual Incid ciden ence Popul pula tio Repo rted AIDS C and Region 40

35

30

25

20

15

10

5

0 1990

1991

1992

1993

North America

1994

1995 Ye a rs

Latin America

1996

1997

1998

1999

2000

C ARE C Member Countries

Source: Bilali Camara, “20 Years of the HIV/AIDS Epidemic in the Caribbean,” 2002.

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Figure 8 Reported AIDS Cases in CAREC Member Countries 1982-2000 3000

Num ber of Cases

2500

2000

1500

1000

500

2000

1999

1998

1997

1996

1995

1994

1993

1992

1991

1990

1989

1988

1987

1986

1985

1984

1983

1982

0

Years

Source: Bilali Camara, “20 Years of the HIV/AIDS Epidemic in the Caribbean,” 2002.

Age AgeGrou Group p Dis Distributio tribution of Repo Reported rtedAIDSCase Cases sin CMCs CMCs:: Figure 9 19821982 2000 Age Group Distribution of Reported AIDS Cases in CMCs: 1982-2000 40% 35.3 %

35% 30%

28. 1%

25% 20% 15%

12.9 % 9. 6%

10%

7.6% 5. 8%

5% 0 . 7%

0% 0-4

5-14

15- 24

25-34

35-44

45-54

55+

Note: CMC=CAREC Member Country Source: Bilali Camara, “20 Years of the HIV/AIDS Epidemic in the Caribbean,” 2002.

Figure 9 shows, for instance, that 73 per cent of the cases reported between 1982 and 2000 are in the 15-44 age range, which is critical for the region’s economic and social productivity. One study put the total direct and indirect cost for the (CAREC) region in 1995 at US$20 million and predicted a rise to

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US$80 million in 2020. Moreover, it estimated that in Jamaica and Trinidad and Tobago the GNP would be lowered by 4.2 per cent and 6.4 per cent, respectively; and that savings will decline by 10.3 per cent in Trinidad and 23.5 per cent in Jamaica.53 One expert notes that indirect costs include: losses on societal investment in persons dying prematurely; costs for the care of orphans; the additional health care costs due to the increased incidence of other diseases, ensuring the safety of blood supplies, laboratory and hospital precautions and health education and other prevention measures. Moreover, it is estimated that by 2010, the population of the region would be 95 per cent of what it would have been without AIDS, and a mere 92 per cent by 2020.54 Yet, as a series of articles in the Fort Lauderdale Sun Sentinel published during 2000 powerfully demonstrates,55 the financial and economic burdens are not the only national aspects involved. Further, the Partnership for AIDS reported that the terrible burden of illness, stigma and discrimination are real at the individual level. For households, valuable resources are frequently diverted to care for sick family members, and to replace their foregone income. It is also argued that at the social level, the forces driving the epidemic – poverty, violence, and marginalisation – are often compounded by rising rates of prevalence. Beyond this are the long-term effects on the demographics of Caribbean countries. One example will suffice. As the disease disproportionately affects younger age groups, one could expect life expectancy to decline over time. And, suggests the Partnership for AIDS report: As more people are generally expected to live for shorter periods of time, their expected contributions to national economic and social development becomes smaller and less reliable. This is of particular concern in small countries that lose large numbers of skilled individuals that are not easily replaced.56

Intrusion and Governance Having looked at the nature and scope of some of the region’s “intruders” we are now able to examine some of the governance challenges they present. In this respect, attention will be paid to challenges relating to capabilities, resource allocation, cooperation and political restraint. A few caveats are important before proceeding, though. First, these four governance challenges are not the only ones related to the security threats and apprehensions in the region. Corruption, for instance, is a significant challenge, but it is not examined here, as it is the subject of an entire chapter in this volume. In addition, the order in which the four challenges are discussed is not intended to suggest a rank order of their importance. Finally, these challenges do not exist independent of one another; rather, there are symbiotically and synergistically related. There is a multiplicity of definitions of the term “governance”, which obliges us to clarify the usage of the term in this assessment. James Rosenau provides a good starting point, in noting that governance “encompasses the activities of

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government, but it also includes any actors who resort to command mechanisms to make demands, frame goals, issue directives, and pursue policies.”57 One World Bank analysis adds: “The word ‘governance’ is used to capture a number of related, but nonetheless distinct aspects of the relationship between the mass of people in a country and the government.”58 But, while these statements offer necessary conceptual parameters, they do not provide sufficient definitional clarity. Definitional clarity – and an operational statement for this assessment –is found in the following proposition: Governance can be seen as the exercise of economic, political, and administrative authority to manage a country’s affairs at all levels. It comprises the mechanisms, processes, and institutions through which citizens and groups articulate their interests, exercise their legal rights, meet their obligations, and mediate their differences.59 Following this conception, governance is considered to have three dimensions: political, administrative and economic. The political dimension involves the process of decision-making to formulate policy; the administrative one relates to the systems for policy implementation; and the economic one pertains to the decision-making about a country’s economic engagements and its relations to other nations. Thus, as Rosenau, other scholars and the World Bank and other institutions contend, governance encompasses the state, but is not limited to it. Further, governance pertains not only to policy design, but also to policy execution. The private sector and civil society are part of the governance arena. Civil society encompasses the collective body of individuals and groups – both organised and unorganised – interacting within the political, administrative and economic domains and dealing with the associated command mechanisms, to use Rosenau’s nomenclature. In addition, the governance-society interface has differing dynamics depending on the sector of civil society that is the focus of attention or the macro-institutional variables being examined. For instance, in a survey of the Caribbean, Selwyn Ryan discusses some of the differing dynamics in relation to geographic size, structural adjustment, youth and media, among other factors.60

Capabilities and Resource Allocation In terms of economic capabilities, the Caribbean has some valuable natural resources, including oil, bauxite, gold and diamonds. But they are in few countries. For instance, only Trinidad and Tobago, Barbados, Cuba and Suriname, to a much lesser extent, have oil industries, although there is exploration elsewhere and refining and transhipment operations exist in many countries. Bauxite is produced only in the Dominican Republic, Guyana, Jamaica and Suriname.

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Diamond is mined only in Guyana, while only Cuba, the Dominican Republic, Guyana and Suriname produce gold. This limited mineral resource availability partly explains why the regional economies revolve around a narrow economic base of (a) agriculture (mainly sugar and bananas); (b) mining and manufacturing (notably bauxite, oil and natural gas, gold and apparel); and (c) services. Offshore financing and tourism are the two most critical industries in the service sector. The former has long been important to Aruba, the Bahamas, Curaçao and to most of the British dependencies in the region, and it is becoming increasingly so to Antigua-Barbuda, Barbados and Belize. But more important than this industry, both to these countries and the region as a whole, is tourism. Indeed, Cuba, where tourism had been second to other economic sectors, notably agriculture, reported in 1997 that tourism had surpassed sugar as the single largest foreign exchange earner. Caribbean countries also are saddled with a foreign debt albatross, part of which is the huge debt itself and the other part is the debt servicing obligations. This is so although various forms of debt relief have been granted to Haiti, Jamaica, Guyana and other countries over the past decade. The Caribbean did make economic and social progress during the 1990s. Yet the contemporary reality is that the region faces economic crisis and poverty. Further, it suffers from an economic vulnerability that is not only functional, but also structural: economies suffer from heavy reliance on foreign trade, limited production and export diversification, low savings, heavy foreign capital dependence and limited economic and management technicians, among other things. Moreover, much of this vulnerability has been highlighted recently as some countries suffered setbacks in the garment and tourism industries and as others faced a threat to their banana market guarantees.61 The Caribbean Development Bank reports that: 9/11 reemphasized the structural weaknesses of economies in the region and their vulnerability to external shocks. Growth was already slowing in many Caribbean economies when the closure of U.S. airspace to flights for some days and, following the resumption of air operations, the sharp decline in air travel as a result of air safety concerns, caused a massive and unprecedented reduction in tourist arrivals in Caribbean destinations.62 Moreover, the Bank indicates that the global economic slowdown during 2001, particularly the slow growth of the aggregate United States and European demand together with new concerns over terrorism and security, substantially affected both the performance and the development prospects of Caribbean countries. Further, said the Bank, there was a worsening pattern in 2001, with six countries reporting negative growth, compared with 4 in 2000, and with 13 of the 17 Bank member countries recording lower levels of performance in 2001 than in 2000.

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This brief economic profile highlights the capabilities challenge that the region faces. Individual Caribbean countries and the region as a whole lack the economic assets to cope with the region’s “intruders”. (Not that all the security “intruders” are amenable to regional resolution even if all the capabilities were available.) In most cases the capability limitations constrain more than the ability to respond to threats; more elementarily they affect the ability to detect and monitor some threats, especially military ones. However, this affects not just economic governance, but political and administrative governance as well, as economic resource limitations influence (and constrain) the kinds of policies that could be designed and implemented to protect the society against some of the “intruders” from within and without. This capabilities challenge has implications for both state security and state sovereignty. What I explained elsewhere about the security implications of drugs has a relevance that extends beyond drugs to the other issues addressed in this chapter: sovereignty implications exist in relation to formal-legal as well as positive sovereignty. The former pertains to freedom from outside interference — where no authority is legally above the state except that which the state voluntarily confers on international agencies it joins. The latter involves having the economic, technical, military, psychological and political capabilities to declare, implement and enforce public policy.63 The following observation denotes an impact on both formal-legal and positive sovereignty: The drug problem increases dependence on external support for counternarcotics efforts. In cases where governments do not have adequate resources, Caribbean countries often permit the United States or the United Kingdom to patrol national waters and make arrests within those waters. While such efforts may reduce the financial strains, they divert much of the control of interdiction to US and British agencies.64 The capabilities challenge is partly responsible for another challenge: the resource allocation challenge. The “intruders” we examined above present some clear and present dangers to countries in the region. Moreover, the threat landscape has multiple threats and apprehensions, with multidimensional effects and implications. Consequently, the political elites in the region are obliged to direct economic and administrative (and political) resources to meeting those threats. Not that countries in the region have an abundance of resources; they do not, as the earlier discussion showed. Not that the resources allocated to deal with drugs, territorial disputes, crime and AIDS are adequate; they are not, as we also saw above. Yet, the elites in charge of the command mechanisms in the region have to be mindful that, notwithstanding the nature, scope, and gravity of the security “intruders”, security is not the only item on the national policy agenda. Important too are education, health, housing, roads and other matters that are critical for

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economic and political development and have consequential if not causal connections to the security challenges. Resources, therefore, also have to be allocated to these areas, making trade-offs vital to the outcome of political and administrative governance decisions. However, it is not merely the resource allocation decisions – the specific trade-off outcomes – that are important. Important too is the process of making those decisions. This is crucial especially in times of extreme resource scarcity or crisis, or when the resources used for security engagement are comparatively “significant” or appears to be so. The acceptability of the decision by the sectors of society negatively affected by the security trade-offs and the willingness of those sectors to endure the consequential sacrifices could hinge on the extent to which they were included in the decision-making process. Thus, a premium is placed on inclusiveness, transparency and participation. Of all the items on the security agenda the counter-narcotics arena presents the most dramatic evidence of the resource allocation challenge. One leader captured an aspect of the matter thus: Over the past few years we have spent significant sums on interdiction . . . . But our donors need to understand that when a government decides to devote a significant percentage of its resources to fight drugs so that a government like that of St. Lucia has to devote 40-60 percent of its resources to fight drugs then it means the community policing that we are talking about cannot be a reality.65

Cooperation and Political Restraint As we noted in the first section of this chapter, many of the security challenges facing the Caribbean are transnational; they are “interdependence issues” to use James Rosenau’s conceptual construct: issues that are distinguished from conventional issues by the fact that they span national boundaries and thus cannot be addressed much less resolved through actions undertaken at the national or local level.66 Hence, actions to cope with them must be commensurately transnational. This requires cooperation, which needs to be both bilateral and multilateral. These two approaches are not mutually exclusive; it is not a case of either bilateral cooperation or multilateral cooperation, but how much of each is desirable or helpful. Indeed, bilateral measures often are preferred, as generally they can be designed and implemented more quickly. The cooperation challenge lies partly in the fact that, whether viewed in bilateral or multilateral terms, the need for cooperation raises the prospect that conflict may ensue, in relation to the allocation of security assets and sovereignty, among other things. Disputes between or among cooperating states over assets

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do not arise merely because of the actual money, equipment and other constraints on the part of partners. More often they spring from the fact another factor. Inherent in the power disparities of cooperating partners, especially in a multilateral context, is the expectation that those with fewer limitations will give relatively more to the joint effort. This is not always achievable and for several reasons, including political leadership changes, public opinion and the fact that policy makers in the relatively better-off states are sometimes unsure that there will be commensurate national interest returns on their cooperative investments. But the cooperation challenge, which affects the political and economic domains most significantly, has an additional dimension which pertains to cooperation between and among agencies within Caribbean countries. Problems spawned by bureaucratic politics give rise to jurisdictional and turf battles and coordination difficulties between armies and police forces, port security agencies and customs departments, foreign affairs ministries and national security ministries and such. Thus, the importance of coordination within countries deserves the same emphasis as cooperation between and among countries. They are merely two dimensions of the same cooperation challenge. While the cooperation challenge is a matter mostly affecting the political and economic governance domains, the final challenge to be discussed pertains mainly to the political and administrative domains. This final challenge is the challenge of political restraint. This challenge has several aspects, mostly revolving around the possession and exercise of political power. Samuel Huntington once wrote: “’In framing a government which is to be administered by men over men,’ [James] Madison warned in The Federalist, No. 51, ‘the great difficulty lies in this: you must first enable the government to control the governed; and in the next place oblige it to control itself’”.67 The challenge to which James Madison referred becomes accentuated when national security is prominent on the national radar screen. This is because security threats tend to result in a shift in the balance of power between people and power elites in the favour of the latter, either through assertion by the elites or with the explicit or tacit approval of the members of society to do this. This increases the probability that political power could be exercised in ways that result in inordinate if not excessive intrusion of the state into the affairs of citizens. Worse, perhaps, is the use of power that undermines the core political values mentioned in the first part of the chapter and the rights and freedoms of citizens — freedoms of speech, press, movement and privacy among others. There is an additional consideration. Especially when the threats are acute or are perceived to be so, an essential question becomes: Whose security really is threatened — that of the nation, or that of the ruling regime? The contemporary history of the Caribbean provides several examples where the ruling elites conflated national security and regime security and exercised political power in a way that subverted the rights and freedoms of citizens as they “protected the

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national security of the state”. Haiti, Guyana, Cuba, Suriname, the Dominican Republic, Grenada and Dominica are among places with clear evidence of this in the past four decades.68 Thus, it is incumbent on those who control the command mechanisms to ensure that the agents and agencies of security – both traditional and non-traditional – exercise restraint and temper the exuberance to “kill the enemy”, “eliminate the threats” and “protect the national security”. It is therefore not unreasonable that human rights and governance antennas would be raised in Jamaica over the following announcement in Parliament in June 2002: We will be introducing monitoring devices in crucial public spaces to assist the general surveillance capability of the [Jamaica Constabulary] Force over these public spaces. We have already invited and have received proposals for system design of closed-circuit TV systems. As a start, Madame Speaker, we will be installing closed circuit TVs in major centres throughout the country, beginning with: Half-Way Tree, New Kingston, Downtown Kingston, Montego Bay and Mandeville.69 This is not to suggest that such action is neither useful nor necessary. Antennas are raised for several reasons. One is the potential for that surveillance to be used for alternative ends and, perhaps, for partisan, political ones even. A second concern pertains to the track record of malfeasance, corruption and power abuse attributable to the Jamaica Constabulary Force. Moreover, there is a high degree of distrust of authority within Jamaican society. Of course, Jamaica is not unique in regard to malfeasance, corruption and power abuse. Haiti, the Dominican Republic, Puerto Rico, Grenada, Guyana, Trinidad and Tobago, Suriname are all places where such has existed or persists. As with the resource allocation challenge, the political restraint challenge involves trade-offs. It also highlights the factors mentioned earlier: inclusiveness, transparency, and participation. However, additional factors become important. Notable here are accountability, and checks and balances. All these factors bring into focus the importance of leadership about which Rex Nettleford made a noteworthy observation: At the political level, we need wise and visionary leadership and a vigilant populace to lay the groundwork that will guarantee democratic governance and respect for the rights of individuals in our societies . . . . It is political leadership built on mutual trust and informed by tolerance that will enable us to overcome the social and ethnic cleavages which have periodically manifested themselves in our societies and which must be dealt with by a process of political inclusion rather than exclusion.70

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Conclusion This assessment is intended to offer an appreciation of the main threats facing the Caribbean in a time of turbulence and an age of terror where the “intruders” are not all conventional and not all from “the outside”. It suggests that the stakes on good governance are high and that the region is facing choices that give the saying “being between a rock and a hard place” new meaning. Meeting the extant challenges requires making tough choices which is never easy. As Barry Buzan has noted correctly, The making of national security policy requires choices about both the objectives of policy (ends), and the techniques, resources, instruments, and actions, which will be used to implement its (means). Even if one assumes that neither political nor perceptual problems interfere with the process, these choices are not straightforward.71 These challenges suggest the criticality of the requisite choices and of attention to possible negative unintended consequences of the choices and the consequential actions. In this respect it would be useful to recall some remarks by a respected former controller of command mechanisms in the region: In our effort to rid our societies of the scourge of drugs and with some international pressures we are being invited to reverse burdens of proof and adopt a retroactive confiscatory regime. All this is understandable. The perceived danger is real, and the consequences of the mischief which we would excise disastrous. As we contemplate effective measures, the nagging question though for all us remains: Are they just? I remember too that in Jamaica the mongoose was imported from India to kill out the snakes. It did a very good job. The snakes were eliminated. The mongoose then turned its attention to the chickens. There is a lesson in this. Effective measures against vermin may be turned to effective us by the illintentioned against decent and law-abiding citizens.72

Notes 1 2

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“Address” at the Inaugural Session of the 32nd General Assembly of the Organisation of American States, Bridgetown, Barbados, June 2, 2002. p. 2. Opening Address at the first meeting of the Commonwealth experts on small state security, July 1984. For the full text of the speech see, Commonwealth Study Group, Vulnerability: Small States in the Global Society (London: Commonwealth Secretariat, 1985). From the title of James Rosenau’s chapter in Michel C. Desch, Jorge I. Domínguez, and Andrés Serbin, eds., From Pirates to Drug Lords (New York: State University of New York Press, 1998). The full title of the chapter is “Hurricanes are not the only intruders: The Caribbean in an Era of Global Turbulence.”

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5 6

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I happen to agree with Yale University historian John Lewis Gaddis that “No acts of commission or omission by the United States can have justified what happened in September 11,” The Chronicle Review, January 11, 2002, available at http://chronicle.com/ weekly/v48/i18/18b00701.htm. Robert L. Rothstein, “The Security Dilemma and the ‘Poverty Trap’ in the Third World,” The Jerusalem Journal of International Relations Vol. 8 No. 4 (1986): 8-9. Commonwealth Advisory Group, A Future for Small States: Overcoming Vulnerability (London: Commonwealth Secretariat, 1997), xi. The Advisory Group was led by the Caribbean’s own Dame Eugenia Charles, former prime minister of Dominica. For a discussion of various definitions and usages of the term, see Joseph S. Nye, Jr. and Sean Lynn-Jones, “International Security Studies: A Report of a Conference on the State of the Field,” International Studies Quarterly Vol. 12 (Spring 1988): 5-27; Barry Buzan, People, States and Fear (Boulder: Lynne Rienner, 1991): 16-24; and Joseph J. Rohm, Defining National Security: The Non-Military Aspects (New York: Council on Foreign Relations Press, 1993). Charles W. Kegley, Jr., “The Neoidealist Moment in International Studies? Realist Myths and the New International Realities,” International Studies Quarterly Vol. 37 (June 1993): 141. Robert O. Keohane, “The Globalization of Informal Violence, Theories of World Politics, and the ‘Liberalism of Fear’,” International Organization (Spring 2002): 41. Richard Falk, “Theory, Realism, and World Security”. In World Security: Trends and Challenges at Century’s End, edited by Michael T. Klare and Daniel C. Thomas (New York: St Martin’s Press, 1991), 10. For some of the evidence of this, see Alma H. Young and Dion E. Phillips, eds., Militarization in the Non-Hispanic Caribbean (Boulder: Lynne Rienner, 1986); Anthony T. Bryan, J. Edward Greene and Timothy M. Shaw, eds., Peace, Development and Security in the Caribbean (London: Macmillan, 1990); Ivelaw L. Griffith, ed., Strategy and Security in the Caribbean (Westport, CT: Praeger, 1991); Ivelaw L. Griffith, “Caribbean Security: Retrospect and Prospect,” Latin American Research Review, Vol. 30, No. 2 (1995): 3-32. This definition is developed in chapter 1 of Ivelaw L. Griffith, The Quest for Security in the Caribbean (Armonk, NY: M.E. Sharpe Press, 1993). Prime Minister Owen Arthur, “Address,” Ibid, p. 3. The long-standing dispute between Guatemala and Belize finally was settled in August 2002. The settlement grew out of mediation and negotiations that were facilitated by Paul S. Reichtler for Guatemala and Sir Shridath Ramphal for Belize, under the auspices of the Organisation of American States. For the full agreement, see Belize-Guatemala Differendum, Proposals from the Facilitators Presented to the Secretary General of the OAS, 30 August 2002, available at http://www.caricom.org. The lone exception is the territorial dispute between Venezuela and Dominica over Bird Island. For a discussion of that dispute, see David Granger, “Caribbean Geopolitics: The Bird Island Controversy,” originally published in Sunday Stabroek, December 16, 2001 and available at www.guyanareview.com/ppig/dag08.html. For an elaboration of the geonarcotics concept, see Ivelaw L. Griffith, “From Cold War geopolitics to Post-Cold War Geonarcotics,” International Journal Vol. 48 (Winter 1993-94): 1-36, and for an empirical based on it, see Ivelaw L. Griffith, Drugs and

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Security in the Caribbean: Sovereignty Under Siege (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Park, 1997). West Indian Commission, Time For Action (Bridgetown, Barbados, 1992), 343. Of course, the statement had a relevance that extended beyond the Caricom countries. Communiqué, Fifth Special Meeting of the Conference of Heads of Government of the Caribbean Community, Bridgetown, Barbados, December 16, 1996, p. 2 Remarks by the Hon. Ramesh Lawrence Maharaj, Attorney General and Minister of Legal Affairs of the Republic of Trinidad and Tobago at the Opening of the Caribbean-UnitedStates-European-Canadian Ministerial (Criminal Justice and Law Enforcement) Conference, Port of Spain, Trinidad, June 12-13, 2000. Available at http://usinfo.state.gov/regional/ ar/islands/maharaj.htm. See Mark A.R. Kleiman, Marijuana: Costs of Abuse, Costs of Control (Westport, CT: Greenwood, 1989), 109-17; and M. Douglas Anglin and George Speckart, “Narcotics Use and Crime: A Multisample, Multimethod Analysis,” Criminology Vol. 26 No. 2, (1988): 197-231. Planning Institute of Jamaica, Economic and Social Survey 1991 (Kingston, Jamaica, 1992), 21.3-21.4. See “1,131 Violent Deaths,” Jamaica Gleaner, December 31, 2001, available at www.jamaica-gleaner.com/gleaner/20011231/news/news3.html. “Restoring Law and Order in Society,” Presentation by Dr the Hon. Peter Phillips, Minister of National Security, 2002-2003 Budget Sectoral Debate, June 18, 2002, pp. 7, 10. Dudley Allen, “Urban Crime and Violence in Jamaica”. In Crime and Punishment in the Caribbean edited by Rosemary Brana-Shute and Gary Brana-Shute (Gainesville, FL: University of Florida, 1980), 29. For a discussion of organised crime in the Caribbean, see Douglas Farah, “Russian Mob Sets Sights on Caribbean,” Miami Herald September 29, 1997, p 8A; Anthony P. Maingot, “The Decentralization Imperative and Caribbean Criminal Enterprise”. In Transnational Crime in the Americas, edited by Tom Farer. New York: Routledge, 1999, pp. 143-170; and Anthony T. Bryan, Transnational Organized Crime: The Caribbean Context (The Dante B. Fascell North-South Center, University of Miami, October 2000). For more on posse and yardie operations, see Laurie Gunst, Born Fi’ Dead: A Journey Through the Jamaican Posse Underworld (New York: Henry Holt, 1995); Geoff Small, Ruthless: The Global Rise of the Yardies (London: Little, Brown, and Company, 1995); and Serge Kovaleski and Douglas Farah, “Organized Crime Carries Clout in Islands,” Washington Post February 17, 1998, p. A1. Parliament of Jamaica, “Presentation of the Hon. K.D. Knight, Minister of National Security and Justice”. Budget Sectoral Debate, July 15, 1993, p. 11. See Maria Bradshaw, “Illegal Haven,” The Nation, June 5, 2002, p. 1. For more on the issue of deportees, see Margaret H. Taylor and T. Alexander Aleinikoff, “Deportation of Criminal Aliens: A Geopolitical Perspective,” Inter-American Dialogue Working Paper, June 1998; Ivelaw L. Griffith, “The Drama of Deportation,” Caribbean Perspectives Issue 5 (January1999), 10-14; and Privat Precil, “ Criminal Deportees and Returned Teens: A Migration Phenomenon, A Social Problem,” available at www.panosinst.org/Haiti/h5-99e.shtml#Caribbean.

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30 Report of the Regional Task Force on Crime and Security to the Heads of Governments and States of the Caribbean Community and Common Market, July 2002, Section 6, p. 4. 31 See “Trinidad Businessmen Seek Better Security after Kidnapping,” Jamaica Gleaner, May 14, 2002, available at www.jamaica-gleaner.com/gleaner/20020514/business/ business1.html; and “Project Launched to Reduce Crime Among the Youth,” Jamaica Gleaner, August 27, 2002, available at http://www.jamaica-gleaner/gleaner/20020827/ lead/lead1.html . 32 Crime: From Bad to Worse,” Guyana Review Vol. 10, No. 116 (August 2002), 16. 33 “Trinidad Businessmen Seek Better Security after Kidnapping,” Ibid.; Joel Nanton and Gyasi Gonzales, “Kidnappers Demand $5M,” Internet Express, July 15, 2002, available at http://www.trinidadexpress.com/top.asp?/mylink=2002-07-15%2Ft..; Ucill Cambridge, “Sabga Freed,” Internet Express, July 16, 2002, available at http:// trinidadexpress.com/top.sap?mylink-2002-07-16%Ft; Richard Charan, “Another Businessman Kidnapped,” Internet Express , August 27, 2002, available at http:// www.trinidadexpress.com/top.asp?mylink=2002-08-27%5Ctop%5Canother%20business; Kim Lucas, “CANU Head Inniss Executed,” Stabroek News, August 25, 2002, available at http://wwwstabroeknews.com/Sunday/topstory.htm; Kim Boodram, “$3m Ransom for Businessman’s Son,” Internet Express, August 26, 2002, available at http:// trinidadexpress.com/top.asp?mylink-2002-08-26%5Ctop%5C3m%20ransom%2; “Cop Shot Dead at Buxton Outside Paramour’s Home,” Stabroek News, August 28, 2002, available at http://www.stabroeknews.com/topstory.htm; Oscar Clarke, “Gunmen Fire at East La Penitence Police Station,” Stabroek News, August 25, 2002, available at http://www.stabroeknews.com/Sunday/localnews.htm; Gyasi Gonzales, “Another Businessman Kidnapped,” Internet Express, August 29, 2002, available at http:// www.trinidadexpress.com/top.asp?mylink=2002-08-29%5C. 34 See Asha Javeed, “Godeck freed after $150,000 Ransom Paid,” Trinidad Express, October 29, 2002, p. 1. 35 See “$.3 M Ransom Demand for Hotel Manager,” Internet Express, October 31, 2002, available at www.trinidadexpresss/com/News.asp?mylink=2002-10-31%2Fnews. Jamaica also had its 24th reported kidnapping for 2002 with the abduction of a 37-year-old woman in Richmond Park, Kingston, on October 30 and a demand for J$100,000 was issued for her release. The woman, whose name was not released by police, was released unharmed two days later. See “Kidnapped Woman Released,” Jamaica Observer, November 1, 2002, available at http://www.jamaicaobserver.com/news/html/ 20021031t230000-0500_34504_obs_kidnapped_woman_released.asp 36 See “Kidnapped Farmer Killed: Shot in Jaw, Dumped in Ananndale/Buxton Trench,” Stabroek News, November 1, 2002, available at www.stabroeknews.com/Friday/ topstory.htm. 37 Brian Jenkins, International Terrorism: A New Mode of Conflict (Los Angeles: Crescent Publications, 1975), 1. 38 Keohane, “The Globalization of Informal Violence,” Ibid., 35. Emphasis in the original. 39 Anthony T. Bryan and Stephen E. Flynn, “Terrorism, Porous Borders, and Homeland Security,” North-South Center Update (October 22, 2001) 5. 40 See Meeting the Challenge of Change: Address Delivered by the Secretary General of the Caribbean Tourism Organization, Mr. Jean Holder, at the Second Caribbean

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Tourism Summit, Nassau, December 8-9, 2001, p. 1. Holder provides a comprehensive analysis of the travails of tourism. Nassau Declaration on International Terrorism: The Caricom Response Issued at the Conclusion of the Special (Emergency) Meeting of Heads of Government of the Caribbean Community, 11-12 October 2001, The Bahamas, p. 1. Narco-terrorist possibilities promoted a US Congressional visit to the region to hold talks with security, corporate and other officials during August 2002. Led by Rep. Mark E. Souder, Chairman of the Subcommittee on Criminal Justice, Drug Policy and Human Resources, of the Committee on Government Reform, the delegation included six members of Congress and the Chief of Operations of the US Drug Enforcement Agency, Rogelio Guevara. See David Paulin, “Congressional Team Warns of Powerful Narco-terrorist Alliance in the Caribbean,” The Jamaica Observer Internet Edition, August 21, 2002, available at http://www.jamaicaobserver.com/news/ html/20020821T210000-05. This writer currently is spearheading one such study, involving Caribbean, European and North American scholars and policy officials. See, for instance, “Caribbean Drug Traffic up 25%: U.S. Law Enforcement Focusing on Terrorism,” The Baltimore Sun, October 18, 2001; Greg Fields, “Caymans to Share Information on Bank Customers with U.S.,” Miami Herald, November 28, 2001. Report of the Regional Task Force on Crime and Security, Section 5, 1 For an examination of the incident, see Dion E. Phillips, “Terrorism and Security in the Caribbean: The 1976 Cubana Disaster off Barbados,” Terrorism Vol. 14/4 (1991): 209-19. On the 1998 dedication, see “Castro to Dedicate Monument to Cubana Crash Victims,” Barbados Nation August 1, 1998, p. 1. See Larry Rohter, “Cuba Arrests Salvadorean in Hotel Blasts,” New York Times, September 12, 1997; and Ann Louise Bardach and Larry Rohter, “Bombers Tale: A Cuban Exile Details a ‘Horrendous Matter’ of a Bombing Campaign,” New York Times, July 12, 1998. The member countries of CAREC are: Anguilla, Antigua and Barbuda, Aruba, Bahamas, Barbados, Belize, Bermuda, British Virgin Islands, Cayman Islands, Dominica, Grenada, Guyana, Jamaica, Montserrat, Netherlands Antilles, St Kitts and Nevis, St Lucia, St Vincent and the Grenadines, Suriname, Trinidad and Tobago, and Turks and Caicos. Bilali Camara, “An Overview of the AIDS/HIV/STD Situation in the Caribbean”. In The Caribbean AIDS Epidemic edited by Glenford Howe and Alan Cobley, (Kingston, Jamaica: University of the West Indies Press, 2000), 2. Pan-Caribbean Partnership on HIV/AIDS, The Caribbean Regional Strategic Framework for HIV/AIDS 2002-2006 (March 2002), 3. Pan-Caribbean Partnership on HIV/AIDS, Ibid., p. 1, and Bilali Camara, “20 Years of the HIV/AIDS Epidemic in the Caribbean,” 2002, Slide No. 3. Camara, “20 Years of the HIV/AIDS Epidemic in the Caribbean,” Slide No. 20. Pan-Caribbean Partnership, Ibid., p. 5. Camara, “An Overview,” Ibid., p. 16. See the June 2001 Ft. Lauderdale Sun Sentinel special series by Tim Collie, Michele Salcedo, and Vanessa Bauza; Michael Norton, “Vodou Doctor Pits Traditional Medicine Against AIDS Epidemic”, (Washington, DC, 2001); Doreen Hemlock,

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61

62 63 64

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“Caribbean Leaders Focus on HIV/AIDS,” Ft. Lauderdale Sun Sentinel July 4, 2001; “Coffin and Human Skull Elixir Part of Treatment,” Ft. Lauderdale Sun Sentinel November 30, 2001. Partnership for AIDS, Ibid., p. 5. James N. Rosenau, Along the Domestic-Foreign Frontier: Exploring Governance in a Turbulent World (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997), 145. World Bank Development Research Group, Governance and Social Justice in Caribbean States, Report No. 20449-LAC, June 2000, p. 7. United Nations Development Programme, “Governance for Sustainable Human Development,” p. 2, available at www.undp.org/policy/chaptr1.htm. See Selwyn Ryan, “Democratic Governance in the Anglophone Caribbean: Threats to Sustainability” In New Caribbean Thought: A Reader, edited by Brian Meeks and Folke Lindahl (Kingston, Jamaica: University of the West Indies Press, 2001), 73-103. See also World Bank Development Research Group, Governance and Social Justice in Caribbean States, Ibid. For an assessment of recent economic performance of the region and current conditions, see Trevor Harker, “Caribbean Economic Performance in the 1990s”. In The Caribbean in the Global Political Economy, edited by Hilbourne A. Watson (Boulder: Lynne Rienner, 1994); Thomas Klak, ed., Globalization and Neoliberalism: The Caribbean Context (New York: Rowman and Littlefield, 1998); Ramesh Ramsaran, ed., Caribbean Survival and the Global Challenge (Kingston, Jamaica: Ian Randle Publishers, 2002); and Caribbean Development Bank (CDB), Annual Report 2001, Bridgetown, Barbados, March 2002. CDB, Ibid., p.22-23 See, Griffith, Drugs and Security in the Caribbean, esp. pp 20-22. Richard L. Bernal, Winsome J. Leslie and Stephan E. Lamar, “Drugs, Debt, and Structural Adjustment in the Caribbean”. In The Political Economy of Drugs in the Caribbean, edited by Ivelaw L Griffith (London: Macmillan, 2000), 73. “Address” by Hon. Dr Kenny Davis Anthony, Prime Minister of St Lucia, to the 2001 Conference of the Association of the Caribbean Commissioners of Police, Castries, St. Lucia, May 21, 2001, p. 9. James N. Rosenau, Turbulence in World Politics (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1990), 106. Samuel P. Huntington, Political Order in Changing Societies (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1968), 7. See, for example, Young and Phillips, Militarization in the Non-Hispanic Caribbean, Ibid.; Humberto Garcia Muniz, Boots, Boots, Boots: Intervention, Regional Security, and Militarization in the Eastern Caribbean (Rio Piedras, Puerto Rico: Caribbean Project on Justice and Peace, 1986); and Griffith, The Quest for Security in the Caribbean, Ibid. “Restoring Law and Order in Society,” Ibid., 28. Rex Nettleford, “The Way Forward”. In Contending with Destiny: The Caribbean in the Twenty First Century, edited by Kenneth O. Hall and Denis Benn (Kingston: Ian Randle Publishers, 2000), 591-92. Buzan, People, States, and Fear, Ibid., p. 330. R. Carl Rattray, “Crime and Justice in the Caribbean.” May 10, 1991, p. 16. (Ratttray was then Minister of Justice and attorney-general of Jamaica).

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GovernanCe, PubliC SeCtor reforM and new PubliC SeCtor ManaGeMent: thouGhtS on the CoMMonwealth Caribbean exPerienCe PAUL SUTTON

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he public sector in the region has become charged with contributing to good governance, improving international competitiveness and reducing poverty. It has acquired these objectives as a consequence of both local and regional priorities and of international and global concerns that have highlighted the impact of globalisation and the need for new development paradigms if the region is to survive in the 21st century. This presents a challenging task for the public services. It has provided the rationale for substantive public sector reform and a fundamental reconsideration of the role of the state in development. This paper is concerned with the former. It begins with a brief review of the mounting concern with governance in the Commonwealth Caribbean in the last decade. It then describes some of the programmes of public sector reform that have been undertaken in the same period. Many of these reforms have been influenced by the growth of new approaches to public sector management. The third section introduces the main ideas behind the current dominant paradigm of “new public management” (NPM) and sets out some reasons for their adoption in the Commonwealth Caribbean. Next, I examine the link between NPM and governance identifying some of the problems an NPM approach to public sector reform reveals. The final section sets out some thoughts on public sector reform and governance in the Commonwealth Caribbean.

Governan ce in the Co mm onweal th C arib bean Governance Comm mmo nwealth Carib aribbean Patrick Emmanuel was among the first to raise concerns about the standards of governance in the Commonwealth Caribbean. In a revised study originally presented to the West Indian Commission in 1991 he argued there was evidence of “a profound malaise in the region, expressed in the feebleness of will towards genuine change”. He also pointed to “growing evidence, especially among the large generation of youth, of alienation from both formal and informal institutions” and concluded sombrely “the legitimacy and authority of

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governance itself let alone any specific system of governance may be under threat of erosion in the present season of neglect” (Emmanuel, 1993: 111). These conclusions, in turn, were alluded to in the final report of the West Indian Commission in a section on “Disaffection with Governance” (West Indian Commission, 1992: 493-497). They were also supported by observations from the Commission’s own extensive consultations with governments and civil society throughout the region between 1990-1992. The Commissioners noted: there has been so much complaint to the Commission of decline in the standards of governance and the erosion of the quality of civil society – again, not everywhere, but in too many parts of the region for us not to detect an unhealthy trend . . . [so raising concerns about] . . . whether we are going into the twenty-first century on the best possible basis of governance (ibid: 494, 495). Many of the elements contributing to the weakening of governance were examined in a symposium on good governance held in Jamaica under the auspices of the UNDP in July 1994. This concluded that: Notwithstanding the commitment to liberal democracy (which prevails) a crisis of governance is evident and the dimensions of that crisis appeared to be growing. Its symptoms include apathy towards, and alienation from, existing political institutions and processes (and) increasing disregard for the norms of civil society by a growing number of persons, especially the young (Hill cited in Ryan, 1996). The participants also agreed that political failure and its attendant crisis of governance are closely related to the poor performance of most Caribbean economies and the persistence of poverty; increased criminal activity, especially as it relates to drug trafficking; the inability of Caribbean states to sustain the levels of welfare that were put in place in the post-independence era; and the redefined position of the state from its previous function as a development agency to that of a facilitator of market driven policies (Ryan, 1996: 40). Others contributing to the debate on the decline of governance in the region in the mid-1990s included Trevor Monroe (1996), Selwyn Ryan (1996) and Neville Duncan (1997). The issue has continued to be aired at the turn of the millennium. Several contributions are of particular significance. The first is the monograph on “The Westminster Experience in the Caribbean” by Selwyn Ryan (1999). This broadly considers the experience of government in most countries of the Commonwealth Caribbean (the Bahamas and Belize are excluded) and reflects on the need to

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reform the Westminster system as the model of governance. Ryan points to failing political parties, bureaucracies under stress, judicial systems in crisis and the erosion of the “culture of civil discourse” which has undermined the political system and led to increasing apathy, anomie and violence. These have been compounded by region-wide political practices among the political elite, chief among which are authoritarian leadership styles, adversarial politics (political and ethnic tribalism), the cultivation of political patronage and the encouragement of zero-sum attitudes in government in which “the winner takes all”. A second is the conference on Governance in the Contemporary Caribbean held in Trinidad in March 2001. Some of the proceedings of the conference have been published in the journal, Caribbean Dialogue. Collectively they point to a widening and deepening of concerns about governance. Among the facets of governance that are examined are social policy, specifically crime and youth (St Bernard and McCree: 2000); good governance and, in particular, institutional aspects (Ryan: 2000); and economic governance. This broad approach to governance parallels a trend in the understanding of governance among the academic and development communities in which governance has widened from the relatively focused view of the World Bank in the early 1990s, which saw governance primarily in terms of public institutions, to the contemporary view which sees the need for the greater engagement of civil society (especially NGOs), for corporate governance of the private sector and for better or renewed global governance. Lastly, the political leadership and leading academics and technocrats in the Caribbean continue to consider the issue at various international conferences in and outside the region. Of particular note was the biennial meeting of the World Bank convened Caribbean Group for Cooperation in Economic Development (CGCED) which discussed the issue at its meeting in June 2000. This considered several papers on governance including a general paper on governance in the Caribbean (Dollar, 2000). It examined governance under five headings: voice and participation (civil liberties, political rights, elections); rule of law; political instability and political violence; government effectiveness (the quality of public service provision); and graft (corruption). It found that while the five components were positively correlated the association among them was not high so countries could be strong in some areas of governance but weak in others. For example, Jamaica scored well in terms of voice and accountability but was weak on the rule of law and government effectiveness. Guyana was below average on political instability and violence but close to average on government effectiveness and graft. The study concluded that there was wide variation among Caribbean states in respect to governance and the rule of law and that “it was important to be clear about what aspect of governance one is talking about in making assessment’s of countries’ strengths and weaknesses” (ibid: 2).

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It also claimed that there was a strong link between good governance, strong economies and positive social outcomes. This association has recently been seized upon by the Caribbean Development Bank in a draft strategy paper on governance and institutional development written by Deryck Brown (Caribbean Development Bank, 2002). The paper ranges widely but essentially seeks to demonstrate the need for the CDB to “mainstream governance and governance issues” within its operations. It argues, in particular, that promoting good governance meets priorities the CDB has identified in poverty reduction, private sector development and strategic global repositioning and sets out a six-part framework for the achievement of good governance. Of note is the prominence given to the public sector in delivering the objectives that are set. These include, inter alia, supporting the creation of a modern, effective and accountable public sector that is capable of delivering valued public services; . . . building capacity for strategic policy management and coordination through improved macroeconomic management, revenue/expenditure management and policy coordination; …and updating and strengthening the legal and regulatory frameworks for environmental and social protection, orderly private sector development and improved justice systems (ibid). The view behind the detailed recommendations is that of the “enabling, catalytic and facilitating state” in which the public sector in the Caribbean is expected not necessarily to do less; it is expected, perhaps, to do even more, but to do different things and to do them differently. In particular, it must be more innovative, more effective and more efficient (ibid: 3-4).

Publi c Sec t o r Refo rm in the Co mm o nweal th Public Sect Reform Comm mmo nwealth Caribbean Parallel to these mounting concerns with governance, there has been a growing programme of public sector reform. In many parts of the region this may be traced back to the 1980s and is associated with the stabilisation and structural adjustment programmes then being imposed or reluctantly implemented in many parts of the region (LaGuerre, 1994). In the 1990s, the concerns were somewhat different. Once again the West Indian Commission set a precedent for policy change. In this case it was not its analysis of the public sector that was important (which was brief at best) but its proposal to reverse the development strategy from one of import substitution to export-propelled growth which required

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that Governments should become less and less involved in the direct production of goods and services, and should increasingly concentrate on catalytic, facilitating, supportive and regulatory functions. This means different government. It does not mean no government (West Indian Commission, 1992: 100). These arguments closely echoed arguments then being made by Rex Nettleford (a member of the West Indian Commission) in his report on the Jamaican government – “the establishment of market economies and the globalization of production do not imply necessarily less government, but different and better government “(Government of Jamaica, 1992: 6) – and in the CARICOM Ministerial Round Table on Public Management in the Caribbean held in Jamaica in February 1992. In the Kingston Declaration on Public Management, issued at the end of the conference, Caribbean governments were urged inter alia to become more proactive in their approach to macroeconomic policy and financial management, implement a new managerial orientation and strengthen public sector management and encourage responsiveness, efficiency and creativity in the delivery of public services. In order to do so governments were urged to “confront structural inefficiencies and determine the proper dimensions of their administrative machinery” (Kingston Declaration, 1992) implying fundamental and far-reaching reform focused in large part on improving institutional capacity. The decade since has largely been concerned with translating these aspirations into reality. The broad guidelines on how to proceed were mapped out by a Working Group on Public Sector Reform and Administrative Restructuring established by the CARICOM heads of government in 1993 and reporting to them in 1995. This identified principles and practices under four heads: redefining the role of the state, under which those in authority [should] be prepared to examine all our institutions, procedures and systems of decision-making in the light of new paradigms and understanding of human behaviour and the need for personal satisfaction and creativity in the discharge of professional obligations; the primacy of human resource development, which would entail introducing in the public service the principles of promotion by merit not seniority, training at all levels, remuneration according to skills and responsibilities and delegation of authority; greater dedication to service provision under which public employees would be customer focused and “more responsive, timely and business-like in dealing with the public”; and lastly, a strong commitment by the political directorate and senior public servants to public sector reform in a clearly articulated public sector reform programme, institutionalised in

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government and involving, as “stakeholders”, public employees at all levels and their staff associations and trade unions (CARICAD, 1995). The report was approved by the CARICOM heads signalling a major shift in the direction and priorities of public sector reform. In the mid to late 1990s various Commonwealth Caribbean states embarked on public sector reforms. The most ambitious attempt has been by Jamaica. In 2000, the government published a Ministry Paper explicitly linking public sector reform, development and governance. Its opening paragraphs state: The country’s growth and development, is, to a large extent, predicated on the concept of good governance, which requires it to be effective, honest, equitable, transparent and accountable. The various reforms that have been or are being put in place represent the unequivocal commitment of the Government to establishing good governance as the most critical and fundamental enabling environment for achieving its overall development goals . . . The achievement of these objectives necessitates that reforms be carried out across a wide range of areas in the Public Sector (Jamaica, 2000). The centrepiece of reform is the Public Sector Modernisation Project (PSMP) which is jointly funded by the government, the World Bank and the UKs Department for International Development (DFID). The PSMP is directed by the Cabinet Office and located in the Office of the Prime Minister. It is therefore driven directly by senior members of the government and constitutes, in the view of Carlton Davis, the cabinet secretary charged with implementing the programme, the most sweeping change introduced in the public sector since independence (Jamaica: 2001). The various elements of the programme are difficult to summarise but most importantly include: the establishment of executive agencies on the UK model; emphasis on improved customer service by selected public agencies, including the introduction of citizen’s charters; a financial management and improvement programme involving extensive computerisation of records and service delivery; improved efficiency, value-for-money and transparency in government procurement and contracting; the implementation of a performance management system for permanent secretaries; the close monitoring of public expenditure to reduce costs; and the general reform of the public service through human resource development programmes, the introduction of strategic planning and decentralisation of decision-making and service delivery (Government of Jamaica, 1999/2000; Government of Jamaica 2000/2001). A White Paper on public sector reform was produced in 1997 by the newly elected UNC government in Trinidad and Tobago aimed at improving the core public service. It set out policy objectives in a number of areas such as the use of operational efficiency audits, strategic planning, quality management, human

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resource management and development, service excellence, financial management/accounting and procurement/supply management, property management and information technology. The process of reform was to be overseen by a Minister of Public Administration who would initiate the restructuring, rationalisation and decentralisation of the public service to meet the challenges of the 21st century (Trinidad and Tobago, 1997). The Barbados government also produced a White Paper on public sector reform in 1997/98. This identified six elements of reform including creating customer-focused government with service delivery a high priority; reorganising ministries and departments to focus on results and performance; decentralising decision-making; enhancing financial management and human resource management; and refocusing the public sector in response to the changing role of government to provide opportunities for the private sector, unions and citizens to collaborate and participate in the system of government (Barbados, 1998). The Office of Public Sector Reform was established in 1997 charged with overseeing the programme. The idea of comprehensive reform has also been advanced by the Kenny Anthony government in St Lucia. A Green Paper on public sector reform in 1999 identified many of the problems facing the public sector and set out the vision of “a more effective and efficient Public Service capable of delivering quality service at optimal cost”. In doing so, the Green Paper argued that the reform effort should aim at the design and establishment of appropriate structures and the introduction of innovative management approaches; a heightened sense of responsibility with a focus on accountability and productivity; enhanced self-esteem, job satisfaction and customer services; a focus on management, leadership and technology; and improved efficiency in the collection and spending of financial resources (St Lucia, 1999). As can be seen, much of this concentrated on changing work practices and culture in the public service, a problem that was identified in the other examples mentioned above. In common with them an Office of Public Sector Reform had previously been established in 1998 to give direction to the reform programme. Elsewhere in the Commonwealth Caribbean, attempts at reform have been more piecemeal. A diagnostic review of public services by the Caribbean Centre for Development Administration (CARICAD) in 2000 examined a number of attempts. While pressure for public sector reform from external agencies (World Bank and IMF) began as early as 1994 in Antigua and Barbuda it is only in the last few years that a real attempt has been made to tackle the issue with the commissioning of a report by PriceWaterhouseCoopers. The CARICAD report therefore defined the process as at “an embryonic stage” (ibid). The Bahamas appointed a minister to oversee a programme of reform in 1999 and the main areas for change have been identified. In Dominica, the UK Department for International Development (DFID) has played a major role in piloting and

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funding reform. In 1998, a special unit was established to coordinate the activities of the reform unit and to generally spearhead change management in the public services. This was to correlate with other initiatives taken earlier but as the CARICAD report says, there is “a lack of clear vision and mission” (ibid) leading to poor coordination and results. In St Kitts-Nevis an action plan for public service reform was formulated as early as 1992 but progress has been very slow for a variety of reasons, including political difficulties in the mid-1990s. The current situation was therefore one where “there is an urgent need for coherence and structure to be introduced into the process of reform” (ibid). The record in St Vincent and the Grenadines is much the same with the early establishment of an Administrative Reform Unit (1991) but with little progress to report to date, particularly in terms of a comprehensive and sustained effort. Lastly, instances of public sector reform can be identified in Belize, Grenada and Guyana. Again these have encountered delay and political difficulties, particularly in Guyana where a DFID funded programme for a substantial programme of reform had to be shelved. In this case questions of ethnicity have arisen, pointing to the importance of embedding reform within a wider strategy to improve governance. Other problems have been the piecemeal nature of most reforms, which has meant the programme has lacked direction, the low levels of pay and lack of skills in the labour market, which have constrained performance and delivery, and resistance by the trade unions, including a public service workers strike in 1999. Despite such difficulties, public sector reform nevertheless remains a live issue, linked in to both HIPC Initiative conditionalities and the public reform strategy proposed by the government in 1999 which envisages a much smaller core public service along with reforms in the various public corporations and regional administrations. In all, the experiences cited above point to a mix of internal and external pressures for reform. The former is often linked to cost saving and the latter to attempts by international financial institutions (IMF, World Bank and InterAmerican Development Bank) and major bilateral and multilateral donors (including the British and Canadians) to simultaneously cut down the size of the core public service and improve its efficiency as part of a region-wide policy of support to the private sector as the main engine of development (World Bank, 1996). The drive to national and regional international competitiveness, which is an essential part of this policy, remains an important element of the reform programmes, particularly insofar as it can support the regionwide attempt at strategic global repositioning (Sutton, 2002). So, also, is a concern with poverty and equity, leading to the promotion of human resource development programmes within the public sector and a greater awareness of targeting poverty in service delivery (Caribbean Development Bank et. al, 1998; 2000).

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The ‘New Publi cM anagement arad Public Management anagement’’ P Parad aradiigm Many of these reforms have been strongly influenced by the NPM paradigm that came to dominate thinking on public service reform in a number of OECD countries (particularly Australia, Canada, New Zealand and the UK), the principles and practices of which have been transmitted to developing countries via the Commonwealth Association for Public Administration and Management (CAPAM). The “defining characteristics” of the NPM model have been summarised as “its entrepreneurial dynamic, its reinstatement of the market as a potentially more proficient provider of public services than the state, and its proclaimed intention to transform managerial behaviour” (Minogue 2001(a): 6). Its implementation would necessitate the following: • • •

•

restructuring and reducing the public sector, particularly through privatisation; reorganising and slimming down central civil services; introducing competition into remaining public services, especially through internal markets and the contracting of public services provision to the private sector; improving efficiency and obtaining “value for money” through performance management and auditing (Minogue 2001(b): 21).

The effect of this would be “to transform the traditional public administration into a new species of public management” characterised by: • • • • •

a separation of strategic policy from operational management; a concern with results rather than process and procedure; an orientation to the needs of citizens rather than the interests of the organisation or bureaucrats; a withdrawal from direct service provision in favour of a steering or enabling role; a changed, entrepreneurial management culture (ibid).

NPM has been enthusiastically promoted by major donors such as the UK and the US, international management consultants such as KPMG and PriceWaterhouseCoopers and, in the later 1990s, international financial institutions such as the World Bank. In the Caribbean, one of its earliest proponents was Gordon Draper, a former Minister of Public Administration in Trinidad and Tobago, chairman of the CARICOM Working Group on Public Service Reform and the first president of CAPAM. The experience of NPM in the developing world has been very mixed. A number of studies collected in McCourt and Minogue (2001) demonstrate this

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very well. They show that fewer countries have adopted NPM-style reforms than might be thought and where they have done so they have been highly selective. They also report both successes and failures leading one of the contributors to argue that it is still too early to make a judgement on NPM, particularly compared to other types of public sector reform that have fared no better (Polidano, 2001). These findings support an earlier report on NPM in small island developing states which also show a very mixed and highly selective record on the up-take of such reforms (Collins and Warrington, 1997). There are also suggestions that its impact has been much overstated. Nick Manning, who was very much an advocate of NPM when at the Commonwealth Secretariat in the 1990s, has recently claimed that “NPM has in practice not been applied extensively outside of its native OECD/Commonwealth habitat” and has concluded that it has been a “relative failure” (Manning, 2001: 298, 308). He also notes: Reviews of reform experiences in the Africa region in the World Bank . . . and a battery of empirical evidence marshalled by the Europe and Central Asian region . . . expose the heroism of the NPM claim that it could offer something to everyone. In fact, it was no more able than old public administration to provide governments with incentives and the capacity to address poverty and provide better services (ibid: 303). In the light of such judgements, it is therefore interesting to note that several countries of the Commonwealth Caribbean have been among the foremost adherents of NPM in the developing world. The picture is not clear-cut since most countries have only taken up some items from the NPM menu, but it does raise questions concerning those such as Jamaica who have been among the most consistent in applying its recommendations. Several reasons suggest themselves as to its attractiveness. One is the characteristics of the Westminster system which make it particularly susceptible to NPM-type reforms. As Manning notes: NPM was conceived as a device for improving efficiency and responsiveness to political principals. Its origins were in parliamentary democracies with curiously strong executive powers, centralized governments, and little administrative law (ibid: 299). The description aptly fits the situation of many Commonwealth Caribbean countries. Another is the link via the Commonwealth, CAPAM and prominent international donors such as the UKs DFID. The latter has been very active in promoting public sector NPM-type reform and has supported the work of international consultants in public management operating through international

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consulting agencies such as KPMG, PriceWaterhouseCoopers and Ernst and Young. These consultants and agencies identify the Commonwealth experience, as filtered through CAPAM, as providing important lessons in designing and implementing programmes of reform, providing both legitimacy to the reforms that are discussed and opportunity to proselytise their benefits in the symposia, seminars and publications that CAPAM produce for senior public officials and ministers (CAPAM, 1999). In turn, these are buttressed by major international donors such as the World Bank which remains committed to the efficacy of NPM. For example, its recent draft report on public sector reform in the OECS countries favours the adoption of NPM-type reforms (World Bank, 2001). However, the most important element in their adoption appears to be the “definition of the situation” by the various political directorates. The more dynamic and technocratic among them have been much seized by the need for new paradigms. The classic case is the adoption of strategic global repositioning (SGR) as the regionwide approach to minimise the costs and maximise the benefits of globalisation (Bernal, 2000). Public sector reform and the new paradigm of NPM are not far behind. Jamaica again provides a particularly good example. The recent Public Sector Modernisation and Vision Strategy 2010 released for the National Consultation on Public Service Reform on May 31, 2002, explicitly mentions “the new paradigm for the public sector” the government is seeking to implement and provides many examples of NPMstyle reforms undertaken and proposed (Jamaica, 2002). But of even greater moment is the endorsement of new paradigms in the mission statement that the People’s National Party has adopted to see it into the 21st century. Tellingly subtitled “The New Paradigm”, it embraces both SGR and public sector reform and accords governance a central place. As P.J. Patterson puts it: The changes that are occurring in our world and in our country are powerful and fundamental. They are here to stay. This means, therefore, that our institutions, political systems, and bureaucracy must either change quickly, or disintegrate and be swept away (People’s National Party, 2000). The perception of crisis as the context in which NPM has been introduced into many developing countries, particularly those in Sub-Saharan Africa (Larbi, 1999) would here appear to have a Caribbean echo, even if the causes are quite different. So also, as a point of contrast, is the apparent willingness of the political directorate to push ahead with NPM-style reforms when so many African governments are reluctant converts.

NPM and Governance The presumption in much of the literature and among the major donors is that good governance and new public management reforms are “mutually

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supportive”, with “greater political and social accountability contributing to the realization of more efficient government” (Minogue, 2001(a): 6). The problem is that there is very little evidence to sustain such a view since there are so few empirical studies of the effect of NPM-type reforms in developing countries. The major donors and organisations such as CAPAM do not generally offer a critical perspective of NPM and there is very little evaluation of the programmes currently in place. The Commonwealth Caribbean is no exception to this since there is no tradition of systematic evaluation of programmes or projects and, where it is done on a piecemeal basis, there is little evidence of it informing policy (Brown: 2000). It is therefore difficult to arrive at any specific grounded understanding of how NPM links in with governance in the region. The experience of NPM-style reforms on the core public service, where much of its focus has been concentrated, does raise, however, a number of specific issues which have resonance with some of the concerns with governance discussed within the Caribbean. They also impact on the development agenda the region has set. The list is not exhaustive, indeed should be seen as preliminary, but includes the following: Capacity: The reduction in the scale and scope of the public service and the hiving off of some of its activities to autonomous government agencies, the private sector and civil society could have the effect of weakening the overall capacity of the public service. The contracting out of services does not allow governments to develop skills in these and related areas (indeed it encourages skilled persons not to apply to or leave the public service) and reduces the chances of governments providing such services effectively and efficiently in the future should the contractors prove unsatisfactory. There is also the question of whether contractors are strong enough to provide the services required. The private sector in many Caribbean states is weak and needs to build capacity in its dealings with the public sector (Brown, 1999), as do many NGOs. It is therefore by no means established that contracting out will improve capacity – indeed it may do the opposite in the core public service when evidence from elsewhere suggests that a strong and unified core public service is essential to monitor and regulate devolved public services. Fragmentation: one of the effects of creating autonomous agencies and devolved services is to make it harder for various sections within and contracted to government to work on matters of common concern. The lines of responsibility and accountability can be blurred even when, in typical NPM-type reforms, they conform to a pattern of contracts cascading down from one single authoritative ministerial source. In simple service provision, this problem can be controlled but in complex service provision within a single issue area, such as health or the environment, it will not be easy and could lead to contradictory and ineffective policy. In such a situation the efficiency gains that result from any autonomous service delivery may be cancelled out by the failure to effect “joined-up” government with the costs that this may entail.

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Managerialism: the private sector bias of NPM has encouraged the development of managerialism within the public sector. McCourt defines this as “the belief that every political problem has a management solution, so that the means of management substitute for the ends of policy” (McCourt, 2001(a): 222, his italicisation). He also argues that it allows for “the privileging of managers’ interests over those of other public stakeholders, including policy-makers and other employees” (ibid). The experience of OECD countries bears this out across the public sector where the number of managers (as opposed to the number of front line service deliverers) has risen dramatically. It has led, in turn, to an erosion of the fundamental values associated with the public service. These include the demoralisation of managers working with ever more limited resources and the demoralisation of providers subject to higher degrees of devolved and discretionary management in a performance oriented working environment (Minogue, 2001(a): 38). It is clear from interviews that I have carried out in Barbados and Jamaica that the Caribbean has not escaped these problems (Sutton: 2001/2002) and that, as NPM gathers force, they may well get worse. Corruption: the erosion of ethical standards and the introduction of “private for profit” public services provide continuing opportunities for corruption. This is ironic since one of the theoretical underpinnings of NPM was the attempt to deal with the rent-seeking politician or bureaucrat who attended to their own economic self-interest over and above the public interest. The devolution of services under NPM, however, allows for the discretionary development of personal empires and personal contacts for personal benefit, pecuniary or otherwise. It also invests managers with a substantial interest in the continuation of NPM-type reforms – after all, with their new-found autonomy and increased salaries they are among the major beneficiaries of the new approach. Dependence: the idea of policy transfer is a key component of NPM. The major international donors have been the principal agents in such processes and their record in “re-engineering the public services” in the Commonwealth Caribbean has already been the subject of study (Bissessar: 1998). Their continued involvement is likely. The question thus arises as to whether their engagement increases or lessens the dependence of the region on external factors. In the case of NPM, it would appear to be the former. The transaction costs for initiating NPM reforms are high and not infrequently requires the use of international consultants, so deepening the dependence on foreign aid and on foreign models. This would not matter if policy transfer was sympathetic to local conditions. The evidence is that it is not in either design or application. This has led to most of the contributors to McCourt and Minogue (2001) to caution against its wholesale transfer and to argue for a contingent approach which recognises the importance of adaptation to local conditions of selected elements of the NPM experience.

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Accountability: finally there is a concern about reduced accountability. The main thrust of NPM reforms has been to improve economy and efficiency. The issue of accountability has not been centrally addressed. Yet nearly every element of NPM listed immediately above relates to it. The problem is that NPM tends to define accountability in a very narrow sense as accountability to the consumer as distinct from accountability to the citizen (Minogue, 1998: 4-5). It is therefore concerned with performance and better value for money through the promotion of mechanisms such as citizen’s charters and information processing systems. While these may bring improved benefits for the public, they do not touch directly on rights and values, including the right to hold the government to be accountable for their actions. This is the classic concern of good governance and while there is no suggestion that NPM removes the responsibility of ministers or senior managers for their actions its engagement with arms length solutions to problems can provide space in which to distance themselves from failed outputs and outcomes. The issues identified above outline some of the all too rarely acknowledged consequences of introducing NPM-type reforms. The focus is narrowly technocratic and managerial. This is one of the attractions of such reforms – particularly to technocratically minded political directorates. But it is also a major limitation insofar as it all too often insufficiently engages with the allimportant organisational environment in which the reforms have to be set. There is no automatic translation of such reforms into good governance and the examples above give some indication that in some circumstances it can be contrary to its achievement.

Governance and Public Sector Reform in the Co mm onweal th C arib bean Comm mmo nwealth Carib aribbean In the final pages of his book on the Westminster experience in the Caribbean, Selwyn Ryan sets out 12 recommendations for improving the system of governance in the region (Ryan, 1999: 347-349). Only three of them deal with public administration and they are quite specific in their focus. They envisage the continuing system of administration in the region, what is often referred to in the literature as old public administration to draw a distinction between it and NPM. The idea of widespread radical reform of the public sector is not canvassed, although within the body of the book Ryan does give examples of public administration under stress. This raises the question of whether the agenda of public sector reform in the region is driven by a concern with governance at all. There are rhetorical commitments to good governance and to public sector reform by the political leadership in their forewords to various public sector reform programmes but there is little evidence of systematic attempts to link good governance to the

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NPM-type reforms that are being adopted. The recent paper on governance by the CDB and some of the papers issued to develop the public sector reform programme in Jamaica are partial exceptions to this omission, but even in them there is little or no discussion of the limitations of NPM-type reforms in developing states. My final point is, thus, to plea for a re-opening of a discussion on the relationship between public sector reform, governance and development in the Caribbean. I choose the word re-opening with care as, in hindsight, it is clear that many of the parameters now shaping public sector reform and development were formulated in the early and mid-1990s in the context of a search for competitiveness for small Caribbean states (Sutton, 2002). The experience of the years since then needs careful consideration. While this was done in part in the recent Commonwealth Secretariat/World Bank study on small states (Commonwealth Secretariat/World Bank, 2000), it was not done in sufficient depth regarding the type of state restructuring that would be optimal for small states. It could well be that NPM fits the bill – but on the other hand it might not. Only further study and widespread consultation will tell. Similarly, there is now an urgent need to factor in concerns with governance. These have mounted in recent years and have led to some re-thinking of the role of civil society, including the call from NGOs in the Caribbean to be involved in more productive partnerships with national governments over a broad range of issues relating to governance and participation (Caribbean Policy Development Centre, 2001). Such inclusion may go some way to redressing the inequities and feelings of powerlessness that globalisation has left in its wake. But there is little sign of equivalent thinking in respect of public sector reform. The managerial approach of NPM is not especially open to seeking the opinions of its employees, yet this is needed if the many employees in the public sector in the Caribbean are to fully contribute to development and good governance. In the meantime, it is not clear how the adoption of NPM-type reforms in Commonwealth Caribbean countries have led to better governance (or have stemmed the erosion of governance which has been the source of so much comment). In this sense, it is wise to bear in mind the observation by Martin Minogue that good governance is much more than mere efficient management of economic and financial resources, or particular public services; it is also a broad reform strategy to strengthen the institutions of civil society, and make government more open, responsive, accountable and democratic (Minogue et.al, 1998: 6). In conclusion, in identifying the strategic options which could inform future policy directions in governance there is an important need to revisit the public sector reform programme in the broader context of the governance

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challenge facing the region. All parts must relate to the whole and it is now timely to review the good and the bad of existing programmes of reform, in a comparative as well as an individual country sense, to chart the way forward.

Note *

This paper reports work currently being undertaken under the title of “Globalisation and the Governance Agenda in Small States: The Case of the Commonwealth Caribbean” as part of the ESRC funded programme on Future Governance. The support of the ESRC is acknowledged in the preparation of this paper.

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Minogue et.al., Martin. 1998. “Introduction: The Analysis of Public Management and Governance”. In Beyond the New Public Management: Changing Ideas and Practices in Governance, edited by Martin Minogue, Charles Polidano and David Hulme Cheltenham: Edward Elgar. Minogue, Martin. 2001(a). “The Internationalisation of New Public Management”. In The Internationalization of Public Management, edited by Willy McCourt and Martin Minogue. Minogue, Martin. 2001(b). ”Should Flawed Models of Public Management be Exported? Issues and Practices”. In The Internationalization of Public Management, edited by Willy McCourt and Martin Minogue. Monroe, Trevor. 1996. “Decay or Renewal: The Choice Facing Caribbean Democracy”. In Constructing Democratic Governance, edited by A Lowenthal and J Dominguez. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press. People’s National Party. “21st Century Mission: The New Paradigm: 2000 and Beyond” (Jamaica). Polidano, Charles. 2001. “Administrative Reform in Core Civil Services: Application and Applicability of the New Public Management”. In The Internationalization of Public Management, edited by Willy McCourt and Martin Minogue. Ryan, Selwyn. 1996. “Democratic Governance and the Social Condition in the Anglophone Caribbean”. In Governance and Democratic Development in Latin America and the Caribbean. New York: United Nations Development Programme. Ryan, Selwyn. 1999. Winner Takes All: the Westminster Experience in the Caribbean. Trinidad: ISER, University of the West Indies. Ryan, Selwyn, ed. 2002. “Good Governance in the Caribbean: The Way Forward” Caribbean Dialogue Vol. 6, Nos. 3 & 4. St Bernard, Godfrey and Roy McCree eds. 2000. “Youth and Crime in the Caribbean”. Caribbean Dialogue, Vol.6, Nos. 1 & 2. Government of St Lucia. 1999. “Green Paper on Public Sector Reform” Office of Public Sector Reform. Sutton, Paul. 2001/2002. Interviews in Barbados (November 2001) and Jamaica (March 2002). Sutton. Paul, 2002. “Backwaters, Currents and the ‘Competitive State’ in the Caribbean: The Imperative of Public Sector Reform”. Paper for the Conference on Towards a New Political Economy of Development, University of Sheffield, July 2002. Government of Trinidad and Tobago. 1997. Towards a New Public Administration: A Policy Agenda for the Public Service of the Republic of Trinidad and Tobago, Ministry of Public Administration and Information, 1997. West Indian Commission. 1992. “Time for Action”. Report of the West Indian Commission, Barbados. World Bank. 1996. “Public Sector Modernization in the Caribbean” Report No. 1518CRG, Caribbean Division, World Bank April 1996. World Bank, 2001, “Organization of Eastern Caribbean States: Institutional and Organizational Capacity Review of the Core Public Sector”, Report No. 21844 LAC, Latin America and the Caribbean Region. (draft).

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GovernanCe and the Media: ProMotinG tranSParenCy and aCCountability OLIVER CLARKE

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his presentation is in two parts and contains some ideas on how to improve regional cooperation and governance and allow the regional media to play a more effective role in enlarging transparency and accountability and countering corruption. I should mention that the views expressed are personal and do not necessarily represent those of the Private Sector Organisation of Jamaica (PSOJ) or the Gleaner or anyone else. In terms of the first point, namely, regional cooperation and governance, regional cooperation appears to be faltering. The time to have achieved the free movement of people, especially UWI graduates, entertainers and journalists is long past. There is no planned and widespread public education programme in place to improve public knowledge and support for regional economic integration. I would like to advance some ideas that might serve to rebuild confidence. They are by no means original, but I may be permitted to state them with a frankness others might avoid . First, we should reconsider the location of the Caribbean Community Secretariat (CCS). It is difficult to run a regional integration movement from Guyana since it is not easy to recruit outside staff and communications are difficult. Second, it is wasteful and confusing to have the CSME managed from the CCS and the external free trade negotiations handled by the RNM. The two initiatives are intimately interlinked and should therefore be merged. Third, the time for the CSME as a separate market may well have passed. The CSME is really a preparatory activity for the larger external trade negotiations. Fourth, it is unlikely that the CSME will come into existence based on unanimous country support. We should therefore get rid of the principle of unanimity in decision-making and allow a smaller group, maybe of the larger Caribbean countries, to move ahead on their own, giving the other countries an option to join afterwards.

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Fifth, we should present to the public a comprehensive cost-benefit analysis of the CSME. The large amount of money that the introduction of a regional common market requires – including all the national costs of changing laws and holding referendums, if required constitutionally, is probably beyond the normal expenditure capabilities of member countries and may require special taxation measures to prepare both the private and public sectors for these enormous reforms. Is this politically viable? Sixth, pushing the creation of the two quite different Caribbean courts in advance of the achievable timetable for the introduction of the CSME is a highly questionable priority. Why do the regional governments need to collectively enter into US$100 million of debt to create a court in mid-2003 when the CSME will not be in existence? Clearly the Caribbean Trade Court will be needed when the CSME is realised. But the Caribbean Appeal Court has nothing to do with the CSME. The marriage of the two is a political convenience, if not deliberate obfuscation. What is the logic of having a budget for the court and the identification of how to build a trust fund for the court in advance of there being a budget to introduce the CSME itself and as yet no identified funding for the regional market start up? Seventh, where is the public education programme for the CSME? Where are the political advocates of the CSME as a whole as distinct from a minor subcomponent such as the CCJ? To create a regional common market, as complex as that of the European Union, for example, demands regional political leadership that aggressively identifies why this development is for the national good. Those advocates are not visible. At least a six-year educational programme, i.e. three years before the event and three after, is required in the 15 concerned countries to sell this idea. At say US$0.5 million per annum per country, this requires real money. Eighth, it is unfair to point a finger exclusively at governments for the failure of the CSME to spark real public interest since the private sector and the regional bureaucracy are as much at fault. To re-establish confidence and interest in this important regional initiative, decisions which are unpopular need to be taken. As mentioned earlier, it may well require terminating the unanimity principle of the Caribbean Community and will almost certainly require additional tax revenue to finance an under-resourced national and regional bureaucracy, as well as the private sector, which does not have the internal resources to prepare adequately for these changes. Ninth, the UWI should be congratulated for sponsoring this conference on governance. It may nevertheless wish to alter the focus of its research. The directory of books in print (1992-2002) of the UWI Press contains details of about 220 publications. The most popular subjects are slavery and colonialism. There are very few publications that look at the future. The UWI is the overwhelmingly important – if not monopolistic – centre for thought in the

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Caribbean region. But its focus appears to be on the historical development of our region, not on its future. Just as the other types of leadership of the region need a revolutionary change in terms of focus and effectiveness, so does the UWI. The year 2002 demands that you put your best minds on to the improvement and better management of our future; it demands that your future graduates be trained to make the Caribbean the fastest growing economic area of the world. Your dependence on government funding and your natural loyalty to alumni (prime ministers or not), should not allow you to be uncritical of mediocre performance in national/regional governance. In the second part of my presentation, I urge that we allow the regional media to play a more effective role in enlarging transparency and accountability and countering corruption for the following reasons. First, a free press is an essential partner in any programme to advance transparency and accountability and fight corruption. The Caribbean regional press would be a willing partner in such a programme but has never found politicians or academics energised enough to join an effective alliance to achieve these ends. Second, at all levels, there has to be better access to information. Jamaica should be congratulated on its new, but as yet inactive, Access to Information Act. Other Caribbean countries need to pass such acts and encourage their use. A cultural change away from treating all public matters as official secrets is needed. In smaller countries the press is often intimidated when it tries to obtain certain types of information. Members of the public are wary of using the courts to compel disclosure because of the costs and possible repercussions. Maybe the UWI should deliberately take the lead in testing the effectiveness and user-friendliness of all regional Freedom of Information (FOI) acts. Third, changes to the libel laws of the English speaking Caribbean are urgently needed if the press is to play a more effective role in fighting corruption and advancing transparency and accountability. The following are some of the arguments in support of this proposition. i.

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The USA believes that transparency and accountability are best served by having an inquisitive and investigatory press, especially when it focuses on public officials and their work. The US libel laws therefore protect the press against libel, unless malice can be shown, when they report on public officials. The public good, the US believes, is served if the potential or actual conflicts of interest in public life are brought out for public scrutiny and discussion, even if in so doing the press makes non-malicious errors. In the Caribbean, where disclosure is countercultural, this protection needs to be forthcoming if the press is to fulfil its role of public informer and watchdog. Regrettably politicians control legal change and the press has been unable to win sufficient academic

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or popular support for the necessary pressure to be exerted. “This will never happen during my term” is the usual political response to press enquiry on this point! For the Caribbean press to become effective fighters of corruption The New York Times vs. Sullivan principles should be adopted. ii. There are serious problems with the size of libel awards. The law against libel is meant to compensate for character damage. In the Caribbean there have been awards for character damage that exceed compensation paid for accidental death. A balance must be struck between the protection of the right of the press to publish and create an informed citizenry and the need to have sanctions against character damage. Such sanctions should usefully be related in some way to other compensatory payments for say physical damage. Courts should be required to guide juries in their deliberations in relation to the size of awards. In fact, some countries have recognised that jury trial for libel often leads to inequitable awards and now have all libel trials held before a judge. The size of recent awards is of a level that would ensure the closure of almost any one of the Caribbean media houses. They certainly have had the effect of dampening enthusiasm for aggressive journalism advancing transparency, exposing corruption and encouraging accountability. The level of recent awards makes the Caribbean press an endangered species. iii. Regarding Wire Service defence, due to the difference in libel laws between the USA and the Caribbean, a time-bomb is bound to explode. Consider an example. A major TV network in the USA could broadcast a report on the suspect criminal activity of a Caribbean leader (or other public officials) and this could be rebroadcast by a cable or on-air TV station in the Caribbean. That same story would not be libelous in the USA – the country of original broadcast – but would be a libel when republished by the local TV or cable system! The only way this could be avoided would be to expect the local broadcaster to delay every live broadcast and vet the programme prior to airing it. This is impractical, particularly when the station’s viewers have direct satellite TV access. Here is an example of a law which puts the local media at a great disadvantage compared to the foreign media and which has not been updated to keep up with technological changes. What is called a “wire service defence” is needed. The libelled party should be obliged to sue the originator of the libel. Any alternative runs in the face of current technology and media access. Every local cable system and live rebroadcaster faces a severe and intolerable risk until the law is changed.

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iv. We should limit damages for correcting a mistake. The libel law should be amended to encourage, not penalise, the press correcting errors. At the present time the libel laws do not give specific protection to a medium that corrects a libellous mistake. A correction really confirms that the libel occurred and leaves the press exposed to unpredictable damages. This is counter-productive. At worst, damages in such cases should be limited to actual costs incurred by the libelled party up to the moment of correction. v. At the regional level, the Caribbean is now badly served in the creation and distribution of news. The Caribbean News agency (CANA) which was created to collect and distribute regional news has now failed. It was supported entirely by the regional media and the international community. Efforts to persuade regional governments to assist in its rebirth have been unsuccessful. Ministers of Information appear to meet once per decade. The collection of regional news is expensive and often does not attract readership or advertising. In spite of efforts, the flow of information from the CCS in Guyana is sporadic and not designed to be reader attractive. Guyana is a difficult place for the regional media to service for news collection. It is difficult to anticipate public support for regional economic integration when there is no Gleaner and distributor of regional news and opinion. Again this requires the creation of alliances beyond the capacity of the press. vi. It is unfortunate that the university has not projected itself as an advocate of press freedom, particularly as this freedom affects private media. The involvement of university staff has generally been in the area of developing regulations for the press and developing public sector media. In closing, I ask the question, What do we do? The Caribbean likes to be at the forefront of international thought and trends. In this rush, we spend little time ensuring that the activities in which we are involved are efficiently and effectively completed. Our reward systems encourage articulation not performance. Let us settle down and ensure that our regional and international trade negotiations create a better future for all of the people in the region. Let us build the civic alliances that are necessary to foster this success. The regional media is anxious to play its part. Too often the messenger is blamed for the inadequacy of governance!

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GovernanCe, SoCial ProteCtion and eMPloyMent in CariCoM: iS labour MiSSinG? ORVILLE TAYLOR

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he three themes of this paper, governance, globalisation and the matter of labour may appear to be cutting edge given the fact that they have been critical issues on the regional and international agenda since the middle of the previous decade. Yet all of these topics have been on the stage of international discourse before any of the present nations of the Caribbean Community and Common Market (CARICOM) existed as independent states. The first, governance is perhaps the most pressing since it has to do with the capacity of a political entity to determine its destiny. As most other concepts in the social sciences it is often ill-defined. Nonetheless, a working definition could be that of the International Institute of Administrative Sciences (2002). It describes it as “. . . the process whereby elements in society wield power and authority, and influence and enact policies and decisions concerning public life and economic and social development.” (IIAS:2002). Critical for governance is how political leaders take decisions which are in the best interest of the majority of its citizenry. It is both a local and Caribbean issue, and in the context of the contemporary environment, the question must concern how networks of regional authority and responsibility serve the residents within its confines. As it is today, governance was one of the first challenges to be faced by the emerging nations from the end of the 1950s to the beginning of the 1960s. As independence of the Caribbean states became imminent, the West Indies Federation became a pivotal issue. Well fabled by now, it does not need further elucidation. The ill-advised seceding of Jamaica, and the now cliched ‘One from ten leaves Zero’ was the first serious challenge for nationhood, demonstrating a parochialism that is all too difficult to cure. Federation was to have meant a conglomeration of nations, united in a relatively seamless political and economic union. This would conceivably imply free movement of capital and other material resources, the concomitant intraregional mobility of labour and a more or less common government. For the then Jamaican administration, ironically then led by the supposed father of that nation’s labour movement, federation meant the relinquishment of local

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sovereignty, and it became such a large issue that it was brought to a referendum and ultimately resulted in a change of government. It should be noted, given the topic of this paper, that membership in the Caribbean Congress of Labour (CCL), a regional trade union organisation, was also resisted by the local labour leadership in the years leading up to Federation. Thus, what is clear is that there was opposition to the idea of regional unity inasmuch as there was the push towards unification. Even today, more than 40 years later, the process is far from complete. To the credit of our leaders we have managed to develop a number of regional institutions. These include of course, the West Indian Cricket Team, CARIFTA and later CARICOM, and of course the University of the West Indies. On the current menu is the debate over the CARICOM Single Market and Economy (CSME) and the Caribbean Court of Justice (CCJ). Nonetheless, as with their predecessor, the failed Federation, there are the same pulls of insularity and myopia. West Indian cricket suffers from frequent squabbles over selection. There is an unevenness in response to the CCJ, and the two largest campuses of the university are heavily dominated by their host countries. Mona, in Jamaica has a population of some 90 per cent Jamaican students, and St Augustine, in Trinidad has a corresponding 80 per cent. It is Cave Hill in Barbados, the smallest, which has the least percentage of locals with 70 per cent. The point that must be made is that for any country of the Caribbean Community to survive in the present global regime, governance must incorporate some notion of regional integration, operationalised by common economic and political structures. The discourse must go beyond identity and express itself in tangible outcomes. In the contemporary world, while the Caribbean Community tarries in settling its historical differences, a new catchword has come to dominate the lexicon in international relations. This is the second concept; globalisation. Most of the discussion on the topic begins with a post-1995 period when the World Trade Organisation (WTO) began to replace the World Bank and the IMF as the main players in the world economy. Yet, to attribute to globalisation such a recent history is to completely misconceive the process. It is globalisation in the 16th century that led to the expansion of the European empires and the ultimate creation of the Caribbean colonies. There is no historical evidence of the region being disarticulated from the world capitalist system at any time in its history. The whole reason that we can talk about a Commonwealth Caribbean or a Caribbean Court of Justice is because of our common British colonial past, this leading to a uniformity of jurisprudence and much similarity of the existing statutes. This very university is the product of British imperialist expansion, as it was created as one of the many colleges of the University of London and was the University College of the West Indies (UCWI). Simply put, the University of the West Indies (UWI) is itself a product of an earlier era of globalisation.

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Nonetheless, there is a peculiarity of the current form of globalisation that differs from previous epochs, even though the historical factors are still instructive. With the ascendancy of the WTO to its hegemonic position in the world economy, there is now a regime of a fairly rigid set of standards regarding trade. Many of my other colleagues are far more capable of discussing the structure and workings of the WTO, so I will not belabour the point. What is significant is that the WTO now dictates an environment that puts in place a socalled era of free trade. Some of the features of the WTO’s mandate include its ensuring that there is free movement of capital and economic resources. Furthermore, trade should be able to take place without any artificial restrictions being put in place by the importing countries. Protectionism is outlawed, and nothing must be done by a government to give its producers any advantage over their international competitors. In the jargon of economics, the current environment that is presided over by the WTO is a modern day version of the idealised perfect competition, taken as axiomatic by the classical economists. Still, any student of elementary economics knows that in the production of goods and services there are two sets of elements that go into the generation of the final product. These are capital and labour, neither independent of the other. In fact, from a Marxian point of view, it is the latter that is more important since it is labour that transforms capital into a saleable product or service. If there is to be true perfect competition, then there needs to be free movement of labour, and coupled with, that basic minimum standards must exist under which labour, the other factor of production, is utilised. Of course, the issue of the international mobility of labour is not seriously discussed, even though the International Labour Organisation (ILO) has conventions and guidelines concerning migration for employment. The interesting paradox is that as the world becomes more globalised or rather “WTOized” nation-states, in particular the more industrialised wealthy ones, have increased their zeal in closing their borders. The events of 9-11 have not helped either (Taylor 2002a). Admittedly there are sponsored programmes for the utilisation of migrant Third World labour by the developing world. However, these migration schemes tend to be very selective. Either they fall at one end of the spectrum where they target the most educated, such as the recent recruitment of teachers and nurses in the USA and the UK, or they scrape the bottom to fill the demand for farm workers in Canada or the USA under the H2 programme and its Canadian counterpart. In the 1980s, in the heyday of the programme, as many as 20,000 Jamaicans were engaged annually in America (Ministry of Labour 1989). Notwithstanding these, the great majority of workers in the lesser developed countries are confined to their natal rocks with little hope of reaching the promised land of Uncle Sam to earn a living. This is against the background of a capitalist (if we can still use the word), being able to move his machinery and money across political boundaries without any restriction whatsoever.

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Thus, the asymmetry is obvious in that there are rigid standards related to the mobility of capital and the rules of trade while there is nothing on the international agenda regarding labour. This is the reality to which Caribbean economies must subscribe.

Labour Standards in the GlobaliSed World A clear travesty is created by the ignoring of labour in that there are no rigid standards regarding terms and conditions of workers in WTO member countries. This is not to say that labour standards do not exist within the globalised world. Quite the opposite; labour standards pre-date the United Nations (UN), the European Union (EU), CARICOM, the North America Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) and an assortment of other acronyms. Global labour standards have been around from as far back as the late 19th century with the work of the Frenchman, Daniel Le Grand, and continued into the turn of the century with the inauguration of the International Labour Office in Basle, Switzerland, in 1901 (ILO 1990: 3-5). As a standard setting entity, the ILO is older that the UN. The modern ILO was established as part of the agenda of the 1919 Paris Peace Conference, in the aftermath of World War I, and given full effect by the Treaty of Versailles. Its Labour Charter, inaugurated then, provides for: labour not being regarded as a commodity; the right of association; the payment of an adequate wage to maintain a decent standard of living; an eight hour work day or 48 hour work week; a weekly rest of at least 24 hours; the abolition of child labour; equal pay for equal work; equitable economic treatment for all workers, i.e immigrants as well as nationals; an inspection system to ensure the enforcement of the laws for worker protection. It is quite explicit in its basic orientation. In keeping with its mandate, the ILO is, . . . concerned with decent work. The goal is not just the creation of jobs, but the creation of jobs of acceptable quality . . . The need today is to devise social and economic systems which ensure basic security and employment while remaining capable of adaptation to rapidly changing circumstances in a highly competitive global market (ILO 1999: 4). Therefore, what is of importance is not the narrow econocentric regimen that focusses on employment levels, income or other such parameters. Rather, the type and quality of work and security of tenure are of primordial importance. The ILO’s 1998 Declaration on Fundamental Principles and Rights at Work synthesises the above-mentioned elements and forms part of a universal social pillar that supports democracy, transparency, equity and development. In a

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nutshell there are four essential principles that bind any member country of the ILO. These comprise the following elements: (i) (ii) (iii) (iv)

freedom of association and the right to collective bargaining, protection from all forms of forced or compulsory labour, the abolition of child labour and the elimination of all forms of discrimination in employment and occupation.

(ILO 1998) All of these are covered by basic human rights Conventions of the ILO, namely, conventions 87, 98, 100, 111, 29 & 105, and 138 & 182, which address, freedom of association, collective bargaining, equal remuneration, discrimination, forced labour, and child labour, respectively. None of these has to be ratified or adopted to be binding. As long as a country exists as a nationstate it is obligated to maintain these baseline conditions. However, the century-old ILO does not have the power to impose sanctions on a deviant government. If a country breaches any of the ratified or basic human rights conventions, the only recourse that the organisation has is to slap it on the proverbial wrist. It publishes an annual report titled Report of the Committee of Experts. In this publication, if there are persistent or grave violations, the errant state is reported in a “Black Paragraph”. This is the sum total of the ILOs power. It is like the metaphorical caged toothless lion. It is regrettable that the ILO is so impotent because it has a governance structure that in many ways is paradigmatic of the way governance could be exercised. Its governing body and membership is composed of governments, employers’ organisations and trade unions. There is no weighted voting system as obtains in some other parts of the UN, its parent organisation, or the IMF and World Bank. A member government has no more of a vote than a member trade union. To the powerless, ILO is given responsibility for regulating labour. The WTO, in addressing the question of labour standards, lucidly places the issue within the scope of the ILO. At the 1996 Ministerial Conference, “WTO members defined the organisation’s role more clearly, identifying the International Labour Organisation as the competent body to deal with labour standards” (WTO: 51). The issues relating to labour are not on its agenda and in its own words, it declares “strictly speaking, this should not be mentioned here at all because there is no work on the subject in the WTO, and it would be wrong to assume that it is a subject that lies ahead” (WTO: 51). Needless to say, the result of this kind of asymmetry is a world where capital is free to go wherever it pleases. Given the fact that higher labour standards translate into higher labour costs, investors will seek to go where there are lower labour standards and costs. These areas are not CARICOM but South East Asia and even parts of Latin America.

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Core Labour Standards and CARICOM Perhaps to its competitive detriment, the CARICOM region is one the of most democratic regions in the developing world. When it comes to ILO labour standards it is in many ways ahead of even the United States which has ratified less than half the number. On the whole, each country has ratified around 25 conventions including all of the above-mentioned ones. The constitution of each country has fundamental rights and freedoms. For example, sections 13 and 23 of Jamaica’s constitution point to these rights and freedoms. In Grenada, section 43 of the Labour Relations Act goes a bit further and may appear to compromise the right not to associate under section 11 of its constitution. That section forces workers in a bargaining unit to pay union dues even if they are not members of the union. For the purposes of this paper, there is the specific right of freedom of association and the right in particular to form and belong to trade unions. This last point is not surprising since the majority of governments in the region have had significant input from organised labour. Trade unions and political parties have had a long and enduring association. As an example, Jamaica has had only one prime minister or chief minister who had no direct or indirect link with trade unions. The connection between labour and political parties in the Commonwealth Caribbean has been well documented by Zin Henry (1979). Table 1 Core ILO Conventions Not Ratified by CARICOM States

C.87

C.111

C.138

C.182

X

X

X

Jamaica

X

X

St. Kitts & Nevis

X

St. Lucia

X

St. Vincent & the Grenadines

X

Antigua &Barbuda

C.98

C.29

C.105

C.100 X

Bahamas Barbados Belize Dominica Grenada Guyana

Suriname Trinidad &Tobago

X

X

Source ILO 2002

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The great majority of fundamental human rights, or core labour standards conventions, have been ratified by most of the governments. This is reflected in Table 1. All countries have acceded to all conventions related to freedom of association and forced labour. With the exception of Antigua and Barbuda which has not ratified convention 100 and Grenada, which has yet to give effect to convention 111, all have taken on the basic standards relating to the elimination of discrimination in the labour market. On the subject of child labour, Grenada, Jamaica and Trinidad and Tobago have not ratified any of the two relevant conventions. In fairness to these three countries, the ILO has not indicated glaring problems related to child labour. The fact is, as a region, the independent states of the English and Dutch Caribbean do not generate the same level of concern as other parts of Latin America on the subject.

Regional Unification and a Place for Labour? On July 4, 1973 the Treaty of Chaguaramas was signed and it created the Caribbean Community and Common Market. As indicated earlier in this paper this process had really begun several decades before. The ill-fated West Indies Federation was formed in 1958 and lasted four years until 1962 when Jamaica withdrew. Three years afterwards, in 1965, Antigua and Barbuda, Barbados and Guyana signed the treaty leading to the formation of the Caribbean Free Trade Association (CARIFTA). By 1967, at a Commonwealth Caribbean conference in Barbados, it was agreed that CARIFTA would come into effect on May 1, 1968. At the eighth Caribbean heads of government conference in Guyana in April 1973, it was agreed that a Caribbean Community and Common Market should be created, and in three months CARICOM was a reality. As the evidence will show, labour issues have also been a part of the agreements. In the preamble to the treaty, the commitment of the member governments to seek full employment and improved working and living conditions is enshrined (CARICOM 1973: i). This is given even greater focus in article 10, which mandated a standing committee of labour ministers which would formulate policies to fulfil the community’s objectives as regards labour. Chapter V of the Annex to the 1973 Agreement sets guidelines for the mobility of labour within the region, requiring among others that CARICOM nationals should be given preference in hiring over extra-regionals. 1989 saw a further development in the process of regional integration with the signing in Grenada of the agreement to establish a CARICOM Single Market and Economy (CSME). Driven by “the need to deepen the integration process and strengthen the Caribbean Community in all of its dimensions to respond to the challenges and opportunities presented by the global economy”, (MFAFT: 2) the aim of the CSME is to create a single economic space, which will “provide

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for inter alia, the free movement of goods, services labour and capital” (MFAFT:2). On cursory examination the CSME is, in theory, a microcosm of what the global economy governed by the WTO should be; it relates to the mobility of the two factors of production. Some progress has been made with respect to the mobility of labour in CARICOM. Protocol II, amending the principal Chaguaramas agreement, was adopted and it is now possible for graduates of the Universities of the West Indies, Guyana and Suriname to find employment in all member countries without work permits. Similarly, there is the removal of restrictions on the movement of “managerial, technical, supervisory staff including spouses and immediate family members” (MFAFT: 5). Needless to say, however, this is not much different from what obtains in the global economy as there are recruitment programmes for professionals from the region, to such an extent that Caribbean nationals are among the most successful ethnic groups in the United States due mainly due to the brain drain (Taylor 2003). The real test would be whether there is commitment towards the free movement of semi or unskilled labour. To date, no country has implemented any such policy and there does not seem to be any haste to do so. Thus, there is uniformity in regard to this element. Nonetheless, in placing labour more firmly on the agenda there has been a conscious effort, at least in principle, to develop common standards within the region. In 1993, the CARICOM Ministers of Labour met in St Lucia and agreed on a Declaration of Labour and Industrial Relations Principles that is intended to embody the “general Labour and Industrial Relations Policy to which the region aspires taking into account international labour standards” (CARICOM 1998: ii). At the thirteenth meeting of the Committee of Ministers of Labour in the Bahamas, the CARICOM Declaration of Labour and Industrial Relations Principles was adopted and appeared in print form in 1998 (CARICOM 1998). The moral commitment of the governments is unequivocal and eventually found expression in draft model legislation on occupational safety and health and working environment; the termination of employment; registration, status and recognition of trade unions and employers’ organisations; and equality of opportunity and non-discrimination in employment. In addition, a Charter of Civil Society for the Caribbean Community was adopted in 1997. Ciudad Reynaud (2002) observes, its preamble like that of the Chaguaramas Agreement, declares that the governments of the Member States share a common determination to fulfil the hopes and aspirations of their peoples for full employment and the improvement of living and working conditions. (Ciudad Reynaud: 201)

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The declaration has guidelines concerning freedom of association, collective bargaining, discrimination, employment policy, labour administration, disputes settlement, and consultation and tripartism, the salient feature of the ILOs structure and activities. The real question, however, is whether these conceptual standards on labour have found expression in extant law and practice in the respective countries. To suggest that the labour landscape among the various CARICOM countries is more dissimilar than alike would be disingenuous. As indicated, all states guarantee the right of freedom of association to all its citizens. Similarly, if not explicit in the constitutions, there is statute outlawing discrimination on the basis of sex, colour, class, creed or age. Some have gone as far as the Bahamas to prohibit discrimination based on HIV status. It is unlawful to pay women less than men for equal work. Under the Guyana Equal Rights Act and the Jamaica Employment Equal Pay for Men and Women Act, for example, gender distinctions in remuneration are outlawed. Nevertheless, the gender gap in earnings still exists, as the statutes mainly fall short of the ILO’s standard of work “of equal value”. Only Grenada with its recent Employment Act, designed with the assistance of the ILOs Caribbean Office, addresses this omission. All states have similar machinery for the recognition of trade unions seeking to represent workers and all have some variation of the three tiered system of dispute resolution, which begins with local level negotiations, conciliation/ mediation through the Ministry/Department of Labour, and arbitration or adjudication before a tribunal or court. In summary, there is not much that separates the various countries in the Caribbean. The similarities are far greater than the differences. Nevertheless, at least in the case of one country, namely, Jamaica, there is significant divergence from the norm. In respect of the termination of employment, this incongruence makes workers in Jamaica the most unprotected in the region and shifts the balance firmly towards capital, similar to the way the current global environment is structured.

Termination and Protection of the Contract of Employment in CARICOM When we use the ILOs benchmarks such as convention 158, regarding the termination of employment, a worker who is terminated must have recourse to a higher authority. This entity must have the power to examine the justification for the dismissal and to compensate or reinstate. Furthermore, if it is a case that the worker no longer has a job due to the employer reducing or ceasing operations then s/he must be paid redundancy or severance, computed according to the number of years of continued employment. Such is also the case where there is an occupational illness or on-the-job injury.

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In most countries, a dismissed worker has access to the conciliation/ mediation services of the Labour Department or Ministry and, if necessary, a tribunal or industrial court. This principle applies whether the worker is unionised or not. In Barbados a dismissed worker, found by the court to be unfairly dismissed, is entitled to the equivalent of a severance payment under the Severance Payment Act (SPA). With one of the most worker-friendly environments, it has provision for unemployment benefits as well as a Severance Payment Fund (SPF) from which a worker, abandoned by a delinquent employer, is paid. In contrast, Jamaican workers are among the most exposed. Unlike the situation in Barbados where an employer has to pay into the SPF as part of the workers’ safety net, an employer in Jamaica can pull up roots overnight. Under the Employment Termination and Redundancy Payment Act (ETRPA), s/he has no obligation to pay until after one year of closing the business. Furthermore, if the worker does not make a claim within six months, he/she is not entitled to a redundancy payment. The prospects for abuse are clear. Even worse, it is possible to lay off a worker for up to 119 days as often as an employer wishes. In Barbados, if this involves 12 of 14 weeks the worker can claim to have been dismissed for severance. Moreover, non-unionised Jamaican workers do not have recourse to arbitration in the event of their dismissal. This means that the great majority, approximately 80 per cent of the employed labour force, are without this basic protection even though it is provided in the CARICOM declaration and the various ILO instruments. Jamaica, unlike other countries, has a bifurcated system of industrial relations where complaints by non-unionised workers are reported to a Pay and Conditions of Employment Branch (PCEB) and disputes are referred by, trade unions or employers, to the Conciliation Division. The latter, if unresolved, are sent to the Industrial Disputes Tribunal (IDT) for resolution. The IDT has a range of powers including the authority to reinstate an unjustifiably dismissed worker. All Caribbean Tribunals and Industrial Courts are able to do so. Thus, the IDT is not unique. The difference is that if a worker registers a complaint over his/her termination, s/he in most other countries has the possibility of having the complaint taken to arbitration and ultimately achieving reinstatement. Complaints to the PCEB, if unsettled, can only go to the courts which may offer limited compensation, usually limited to notice pay, but cannot reinstate, however egregious the injustice. This dichotomous situation suits the employers, as it makes workers’ contracts more fragile, and thus reduces their bargaining power. Figure 1 shows that the number of disputes reported to the Conciliation division has been declining steadily in the last decade. This has been due, not to a reduction in industrial conflict as could be suggested, but a reduction in the unionised

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workforce, due to a spate of redundancies. The dimensions of this process are outlined in the ILO commissioned study, The Employment Relationship Scope, carried out by Taylor in 2001. Figure 1 Reported Disputes over Dismissal and Suspensions 1991 to 2000, Jamaica

80 70 60 50 40 30 20 10 0 1990

1992

1994

1996

1998

2000

Disputes Source: Ministry of Labour 1991-2000

Figure 2 Complaints to the Jamaican Ministry of Labour Relating to Termination of Employment 1991 to 2000 7000 6000 5000 4000 3000 2000 1000 0 1991

1993 Total

1995

1997

1999

Termination

Source: Ministry of Labour 1991-2000

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In contrast, Figure 2 shows the number of complaints to the PCEB. What this demonstrates is that the non-unionised workforce is increasing relative to the unionised. The two sets of figures are shadow images of each other. To make matters worse for workers, there is an emerging trend towards contract work whereby an employer makes unionised workers redundant and re-engages them under dubious contracts for services. When they are labelled contractors they have none of the rights contained in the CARICOM declaration or any of the regional treaties or statutes as they are not workers. It is interesting to note that in legislation in Trinidad and Tobago certain categories of contractors are classified as workers. Under the Trinidad and Tobago Industrial Relations Act (TTIRA) 1972, enacted before both the Chaguaramas Treaty as well as Jamaica’s Labour Relations and Industrial Disputes Act (LRIDA) of 1975, dependent contractors, who only supply their labour, are considered workers. In Jamaica to prove that a worker is a dependent contractor and thus, a worker, would require litigation. What seems to be the vogue is a notion that for an employer and, by extension, a country to compete successfully in the global market, labour should be suppressed. The phenomenon of contract work is being used to de-unionise the work force and there does not seem to be any move afoot to modify this. Despite a recent amendment to the LRIDA, there is no automatic route for workers who are aggrieved to have their dismissal arbitrated with a view to reinstatement or reasonable compensation. Given that this gap in worker protection has been well documented and brought to the attention of the public (Taylor 2002b), the only conclusion to be drawn is that the Jamaican policy makers consider that there is some competitive advantage in maintaining the lowest level of worker protection in CARICOM. Thus, it appears the Caribbean replicates some of the same shortcomings of globalisation at the regional level. Given the fact that labour standards are not now enforced, the countries with lower levels of worker protection could possibly have lower labour costs or, at a minimum, have less pressure on wages from a fragile labour force. Thus, the governance paradigm seems to assume a model of low worker protection.

An Anti-Labour Governance Paradigm? Somehow there appears to be a quaint orthodoxy that correlates economic growth with low labour standards. Thus, the model of governance in operation seems to depress labour in order to achieve certain economic outcomes. While this may have worked for the now failed Asian Miracle, and was the conceptual basis for Structural Adjustment policies of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and World Bank, it has no empirical support in the region.

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When the annual Reports of the Committee of Experts is examined for the mid to late 1990s the two largest economies, Jamaica and Trinidad and Tobago, have the highest number of breaches, with Jamaica having twice as many. Guyana, the Bahamas and Barbados have the fewest. In direct contrast, each has had significantly higher growth rates than Jamaica. The mean number of breaches per year has been around six for Jamaica as compared with just under two for Barbados, one for Guyana and less than one for the Bahamas. In contrast, the growth rate of Jamaica was consistently negative with a mean that is close to negative as compared with Guyana and the Bahamas with over five and four per cent, respectively. Thus the model of governance that relegates labour to a cost to be controlled is an ill-advised one which has no logical foundation. Yet it is pursued either by omission or by commission.

Conclusions: An Alternative Model? In its ongoing work on the subject, the ILO has been attempting to demonstrate that it is possible to have high labour standards, worker protection and economic growth. Given its structure, it is understandable that the Organisation supports a model of governance in which labour is central. It has a tripartite structure and therefore always emphasises a cooperative model of policy formulation involving the social partners. It has recently launched a Programme for the Promotion of Management-Labour Cooperation (PROMALCO) in furtherance of this objective. At the regional level, the model must be incorporative. Regional labour policy must therefore not be determined solely by Ministers of Labour or governments. Rather, the Caribbean Congress of Labour and the regional employer organisation must be directly involved in the decision-making process or at least in the establishment of the general framework in which labour and management would operate. The case of Jamaica, with its inferior levels of worker protection, demonstrates that without regional mechanisms for the enforcement of labour standards workers in particular territories can be significantly disadvantaged as individual countries seek to compete regionally and globally. It also illustrates how, even in the face of historical commonalities in the region, it is possible for serious inequities in the treatment of labour to exist. Yet, even as the subject of tripartism is gaining acceptance in the international dialogue, the model of representativeness is being questioned. The voice of workers and other persons who carry out economic activities outside the formal sector is not fully represented. Since the overwhelming majority of the employed labour force is not represented by a union and large

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number of persons work outside the category normally recognised as workers, the model may even have to be a regional “quatri-partite” one. This model is gaining currency and was placed on the agenda of the recent Ministerial Meeting of the Ministers of Labour and Social Security of the European Union in Spain in May 2002. In conclusion, true governance must incorporate labour, not only as an item on the agenda, but as part of the decision-making apparatus.

REFERENCES CARICOM Secretariat. 1997. Charter of Civil Society for the Caribbean Community. Georgetown, Guyana: CARICOM Secretariat. CARICOM Secretariat. 1998. Declaration of Labour and Industrial Relations Principles. Georgetown, Guyana: CARICOM Secretariat. Ciudad Reynaud, Adolfo. 2001. Labour Standards and the Integration Process in the Americas. Lima, Peru: International Labour Organisation. Employment Act of Grenada. 1999 Employment (Equal Pay for Men and Women) Act of Jamaica. 1975. Employment (Termination and Redundancy Payment) Act of Jamaica. 1974. Henry, Zin. 1979. Labour Relations and Industrial Conflict in the Commonwealth Caribbean, Montreal: McGill. Industrial Relations Act of Trinidad and Tobago. 1972. International Institute of Administrative Sciences [IIAS] 1996. ‘Governance’. www.gdrc.org/u-gov/work-def.html. December 17, 2002 International Labour Organisation. 1990. International Labour Standards: A Workers’ Education Manual. Geneva: International Labour Organisation. International Labour Organisation. 1994. International Labour Standards and Economic Interdependence. Geneva: International Labour Organisation. International Labour Organisation. 1994-1999 (annually). Report of the Committee of Experts on the Application of Conventions and Recommendations. Geneva: International Labour Organisation. International Labour Organisation. 1998. Declaration on Fundamental Principles and Rights at Work. Geneva: International Labour Organisation. International Labour Organisation. 1999. Decent Work: Report of the Director-General, International Labour Conference, 87th Session. Geneva: International Labour Organisation. International Labour Organisation. 2002. Globalization and Decent Work in the Americas: Report of the Director General; 15th American Regional Meeting. Lima, Peru: International Labour Organisation. Labour Relations Act of Grenada. 1999. Labour Relations and Industrial Disputes Act of Jamaica. 1975.

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Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Foreign Trade [MFAFT]. 2001. Jamaica. ‘Caribbean Community and Common Market Single Market and Economy’. Kingston, Jamaica: Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Foreign Trade. www.mfaft.gov.jm/Intl_Community/ Caricom.htm Ministry of Labour Jamaica. Statistical Bulletin 1989-2000 (annually). Kingston, Jamaica: Ministry of Labour and Social Security. Planning Institute of Jamaica. 1994-1999 (annually). Economic and Social Survey of Jamaica. Kingston, Jamaica: Planning Institute of Jamaica. Severance Payment Act of Barbados. 1973 Taylor, Orville W. 2002. The Employment Relationship (Scope) Jamaica 2001. http:// www.ilo.org/public/english/dialogueifpdial/pdf/wpnr/jamaica.pdf. Geneva: International Labour Organisation. Taylor, Orville W. 2002a. ‘Globalization, Racism and the Terrorist Threat: An AfroCaribbean Response.’ In The Paradox of Loyalty: An African American Response to the War on Terrorism, edited by Julianne Malveaux & Reginna Green. Chicago: Third World Press. Taylor, Orville W. 2002b. ‘The Jamaican Labour Relations and Industrial Disputes Act (LRIDA): A Critical Assessment.’ In Human Resource Development and Workplace Governance in the Caribbean, edited by Noel Cowell & Clement Branche. Kingston, Jamaica: Ian Randle Publishers. Taylor, Orville W. 2003. ‘Not Posses, Snipers or Terrorists: The Jamaican Success Story in South Florida’. In IDEAZ Vol. 1 No. 2. World Trade Organization [WTO] 2001. Trading into the Future: WTO The World Trade Organization. Geneva: World Trade Organisation.

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C H A P T E R

T W E N T Y - F O U R

ProMotinG Good GovernanCe: the role of the Media JOHN MAXWELL

b

efore we begin to discuss the question of the media and governance I want to say, straight off, that the words governance and media both offend me. I prefer the press to the media because it is more precise than the currently modish expression which describes an amorphous conglomeration of various agencies combining to produce myths by the score, great gobs of “entertainment” – mostly violent – and a great deal of material calculated to keep the masses ignorant, confused and afraid to venture from their media-appointed places in the world. I really do not believe that the fundamental purpose of the media, as it is constituted, can be to provide the public with the survival information we need, and I believe that if you do any real study of what is around you, you may come to agree with me. The press, I learned at the knees of Hector Bernard and O.T. Fairclough, was the shield and sword of the people, dedicated to the truth, giving voice to the voiceless and making life miserable for their oppressors. In relation to government and governance, I get a confused picture or vibe, as the media might term it, when reading documents on the web from official authorities on governance such as the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD). The OECD is the godfather of the globalisation movement. Reading their literature, I have formed the opinion that governance is a stealth mechanism to ensure compliance from people who are being prevented from knowing what’s going on above and about them. For me, governance is altogether too woolly, too indiscriminate – suspect. I am not sure what it describes, but I suspect that it has become an elite’s code word to conceal the creeping takeover of government by non-elected forces, groups and interests. For instance, people in Jamaica think labour reform means cleaning up the conditions under which people work and bringing labour standards into some compliance with civilised standards. When the World Trade Organisation talks about Labour Reform it is aimed directly at the idea so well expressed by Michael Manley, that the worker’s job is his property. While

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other property rights are entrenched in our Jamaican constitution, we are discovering that, under the WTO’s General Agreement on Trade and Services, workers do not have rights. We find these things out when the crunch comes, when finance ministers confess that they cannot change anything, that they have no power over policy. I get the feeling that the government of Jamaica is telling me that the real government, or perhaps governance of Jamaica, is elsewhere. Abraham Lincoln didn’t say “Governance of the people, by the people and for the people”! He said government which, in my opinion, is the essential tool for the securing of life, liberty and the possibility of happiness for most people. The distinction is important because I believe that the idea of selfgovernment, autonomy, independence and the protection of human dignity and human rights are likely to become lost in the soft and fuzzy concepts of governance.

Functions of Journalism Let me start by defining what I understand to be the function of the journalist. Journalism, as I understand it, is what most theorists say it is: one of the foundations of democracy. The function of the journalist and of journalism is to provide the essential information people need to make up their minds on the issues which concern them. An informed public opinion, we are told, is the best defence against misgovernment of any kind. As the world becomes more complex, people cannot discern every danger to their existence, survival or welfare as clearly as they might when they lived in tribes. Then, there was always a watchman, a sentry on the lookout for predators, both human and animal. As societies became more complex the watchmen became the town criers, professional news carriers warning about external threats and alerting the societies to opportunities. The news was essentially still about survival. By the time Lord Macaulay wrote in 1840 that journalists “were become the Fourth Estate of the realm”, after the king, church and parliament, journalists were becoming part of the establishment. People like Tom Paine, John Wilkes or John Peter Zenger or, for that matter, Roger Mais, are in very short supply these days. Some were thought to represent radical movements seeking to infiltrate or overthrow the establishment. If we represent the people to the best of my ability, I do not care what I am called. Now that many corporations have become much larger than most countries, under worldwide statutes, they enjoy personhood. (In 1998, of the 100 largest entities in the world, 49 were countries and 51 were corporation.) The corporate personality is now better recognised in some quarters than is the national or individual personality. Corporations have become principalities and powers owing no allegiance to national law, culture, tradition or custom – as the case of Enron neatly and comprehensively illustrates. The predators today are much

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fiercer and a lot more dangerous than they were not so long ago. But journalism, instead of rising to match this challenge, has retreated almost into irrelevance. We no longer occupy any kind of moral high ground. As we have failed to protect our societies, so have our value and reputation diminished. The late 20th century made many journalists celebrities. The explosion of the electronic media – radio, television, VCRs, digital media and the internet – guaranteed celebrity status to some journalists. The more celebrated one became, the greater the ease with which one could be incorporated into the power structure of the mega-corporations and be co-opted into the establishment; the more paralysing the realisation that one now had a great deal to lose by functioning as a real journalist. The war correspondents sharing foxholes and trenches with infantrymen have became passé. Beginning with the Vietnam war, journalists began their quiet march toward becoming high profile combatants in conventional wars as well as in the class wars. Many became millionaires while their employers became multinational mega-corporations. The media function became only a very small part of the commercial function and, necessarily, became subservient to it. Newsrooms are now ruled by vice-presidents with MBAs, not by editors like me. In the United States, where business and unions have never developed a modus vivendi, it is now difficult to imagine any television personality coming out in a labour dispute, for instance, on the side even of their fellow millionaires in baseball, because there is a clear divide between the mandarins of the media and the rest of humanity. The sports millionaires are predominantly black and Hispanic anyway, so their concerns are obviously different from the media millionaires. When the millionaires of the media are subverted by the MBAs in the boardroom, they cannot defend themselves by pleading their journalistic virtue: they are endangered not by more investigative, more combative journalists, but by people with prettier faces and more acceptable media presences. For this reason and for reasons of class and race identification, too, it is difficult to imagine any of these grandees speaking out for the civil rights of people unjustly condemned to death, convicted of crimes they did not commit, or for people mistreated or poisoned by big business. How can they move against the multifarious interests of the corporations which employ them? They are, instead, part of the vigilantes, part of the hanging party. How can they talk about these injustices when their employers are corporations like General Electric or Time Warner which now encompass almost every legitimate and illegitimate activity known to man? Some of the largest companies in media own banks and even casinos in Nevada. Are they part of the media too? Who do you go to in such a corporation if you want justice? A.J. Liebling said freedom of the press belongs to those who own one. The ordinary journalist has become a hired gun,without autonomy, without discretion and without connection to ordinary people. He

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can no longer act as the watchman for the social interest because he has been co-opted by the private businesses who own and control him. I would have liked to ask Oliver Clarke, chairman and managing director of the Gleaner, a few questions about the real responsibilities of the media. For instance, I wanted to ask him about this “wire service defence” that the Gleaner wants inserted into our own libel law and about his efforts to bring Jamaican libel law into consonance with US libel law, particularly in relation to the judgment in Sullivan vs New York Times. And I wanted to ask him about the demand that freedom of the press be written into our constitution.

Restructuring Libel Since a 1964 US Supreme Court judgment (Sullivan v New York Times) the US libel law allows journalists to destroy the reputations of public figures without the likelihood of being sued for or found guilty of libel, unless they can prove “actual malice”. That means that if a public official or public figure considers himself to have been libelled, he has got to prove that the journalist “knowingly and recklessly” made false statements or libelled him out of “express malice” – both of which are in my view almost impossible to prove. How do you divine the state of mind of a journalist, or prove that there are things which he “ought”to have known? Let us look briefly at the case of Richard Jewell, a security guard at the Atlanta Olympics who, as was his duty, reported to his superiors a suspicious package he had noticed. This package later exploded killing one woman and injuring dozens of other people. Jewell himself became the FBI’s prime suspect, and he was pursued by the media until it was finally proved that he had nothing to do with the bomb. When Jewell sued the Atlanta Journal Constitution and his other journalistic persecutors, they attempted to defend themselves by postulating that since Jewell was a public figure according to the rules expressed in Sullivan v New York Times, he could not successfully sue them. It was the same media which had turned Jewell the security guard into a public figure, by its pitiless pursuit and by keeping him constantly on the front page. It was therefore clear, they submitted, that he could not sue for libel. By that time his life was a shambles, his reputation in tatters and his mother near a nervous breakdown. The newspapers were enunciating an interesting new doctrine, that if you wish to libel someone with impunity, you need simply to make your intended victim into a public figure within the meaning of the judgment. Fortunately for Jewell and other victims of the media, the courts have tossed out this outlandish defence. I say fortunately because I do not believe that people surrender their rights simply by becoming better known than the average person. Some talk show hosts in Jamaica are operating as if the US law applies here, and many people are victimised by them, because most people do not know

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what protection they are afforded under our defamation act. In this area, as I see it, the media is clearly abusing its power, unfairly depriving people of the reputations to which they are entitled by casting unjustified suspicion upon them.

Whose Press Freedom? Freedom of the press is, in my view, a collective right, a community right, an expression of the people’s right to know, the right to freely communicate and express themselves. It confers no superior right to that enjoyed by the ordinary man in his individual exercise of freedom of expression. In our constitution, certain freedoms are guaranteed: freedom of expression, freedom of assembly, the right to a fair trial and so on. These freedoms are guaranteed to individuals, to protect them against oppressive encroachment or endangerment by the state or anyone else. Freedom of the press is a natural extension of individual freedom of expression. It guarantees to anyone the right to publish his opinions, to circulate them and to say what he likes as long as he does not infringe on the rights of any other person, including corporations. It is a trust, exercised on behalf of the public, to defend their freedom and to make them better able to govern themselves. If we are to single out freedom of the press for specific constitutional protection, this freedom, unlike every other constitutional guarantee, would be peculiar to one class of persons and would obviously be exercisable only by those who own the media; not by those who work within the media or by anyone else. As we shall see, the distinction is important because the proponents of specific freedom of the press guarantees do not appear to respect the professional integrity of the journalists employed by them. This was demonstrated a few years ago when the publisher of the Trinidad Guardian refused to allow his journalists to question the behaviour of the conglomerate which owned the paper. In graphic language, Mr Sabga was reported to have said that in addition to employing journalists, he also sold things like razor blades in his supermarkets and he was not about to let his journalists damage him any more than he would allow his throat to be cut by one of his razor blades. To him, the newspaper was simply another item for sale, another commodity. Truth itself, is now for sale. The Jamaica Gleaner, in its comment on the matter, was upset that nearly a dozen journalists had resigned because of the dispute. The Gleaner said that journalists should not concern themselves with management decisions which were outside their competence. They should settle down and go back to their jobs. I am still unable to fathom the reasoning behind that advice. Does it mean that the content of the newspaper is a management decision, that truth can be commodified? That editors are simply processors of words? We have already proved that machines can process words. Are they also capable of editorial

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discretion, of judging questions of taste and defamation? If two of the oldest and most powerful organs of the press can behave in this way, what would happen if freedom of the press were written into the Jamaican constitution, as it is written in the Trinidadian? Moreover, we need to examine what a constitutionally guaranteed press freedom would mean to the freedoms of those outside the press, such as those who are the targets of the talks show hosts. In some European countries, particularly in France since the Second World War, journalists’ right to personal autonomy, professional integrity and freedom of speech is recognised by law, and the French are, I understand, examining how they might be able to entrench these principles even more firmly into their law. Having experienced fascism and Nazism, they want to build additional security into the practice of journalism. What is intended here is not to give the journalists undue power but to protect them from undue influence from outside the profession, from politicians, big businessmen and, yes, from publishers. In the English-speaking world, the press is a corporate person and a business like any other, in whose personality the rights and integrity of journalists are necessarily submerged by the profit imperative. No ordinary business can afford to offend potential advertisers or other clients. In our kind of journalism, therefore, it is those responsible for the bottom line who count, not those who write the headlines. The function of the press is considered to be an integral part of democratic governance. But if journalists themselves have to subordinate their rights to free speech, where does that leave the ordinary citizen? Because of my perhaps peculiar interpretation of the meaning of freedom of the press, I have found myself in some dangerous situations. One was when, two years after independence, the Jamaican Parliament solemnly debated whether I, as editor of public opinion, should be put in prison and whether my contributor, Bill Carr, a university lecturer should be expelled from Jamaica for alleged rudeness to the prime minister. What was interesting then, and is interesting now in similar circumstances, is that no journalistic dog barked, as the saying goes. Later, when Public Opinion was threatened with closure because of government pressure on its advertisers and customers, the Press Association of Jamaica (PAJ) agreed with the government. The PAJ and its president, editor of the Gleaner, said that some people took their jobs as defenders of the public interest to extremes and that the matter was too complex for any clear statement of principles. The PAJ did, however, shortly produce a code of conduct for journalists, the major focus of which was the admonition that journalists should not be nasty to people in authority. The Inter American Press Association (IAPA), then meeting in Montego Bay, decided not to hear our case because it did not, as they saw it, concern or involve preedom of the press. The lesson was clear. The IAPA, which had defended right-wing Latin American newspapers against left

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wing governments, saw no reason to defend left wing journalists against right wing governments. I believe we need more people doing that; and we have a history of people doing that; like Fairclough and Roger Mais, like George William Gordon, Edward Jordon and the Rev. Henry Clarke , an ancestor of Oliver Clarke. The Rev. Henry Clarke was threatened with imprisonment by Governor Eyre because of his protestations on behalf of poor people in Westmoreland. In the courts, in Parliament and in other places, journalists are granted special privilege and facilities not enjoyed by ordinary people. Whatever privileges of access journalists normally enjoy are justified by the theory that they require those privileges so that they can better help people make up their minds rationally and in their own interest. The journalist is clearly operating as a delegate of the people, fulfilling a public function and is responsible to the people. In a world filled with cacophonous claims and counter-claims, choices become less distinct. It is the duty of the journalist, so it is said, to cut through the cacophony and carefully separate and select the important and vital from the dross, the propaganda. If the proprietors were given special privilege, what would they use it for, given the constraints of the MBAs in the back offices? Already we can see the diminishing emphasis on reporting from the courts, reporting crime, reporting Parliament and other public business. Journalists now depend on official spokesmen, people who have no responsibility to the public but who owe their allegiance to their employers. The public interest is banished to the back seat. It is not cost-effective. In most of the world the media has become part of the background noise, part of the commercial cacophony. So, journalists have neither the time nor the space to adequately explore the range of choices and, in some cases, are themselves unaware of what is possible. Ordinary people, the man or woman in the street, cannot therefore make up their minds with any certainty that their decisions are either rational or in their own interest – that is, if the choices are even put to them. Never has anyone put before the Jamaican people any choice on the Doomsday Highway, for instance, which is going to cost more than the cumulative total of all other public works projects in the history of this country. It is going to cover with concrete and sterilise an area the size of the parish of Hanover. It is going to slice Jamaica in two, create floods, social disruption and even more conflict. It is going to compel people to travel up to 15 miles if they live on one side of the road to get to the bar or shop or cultivation on the other side. We haven’t even thought about that. Nobody has presented it to us and our press has not considered it. And this is now seven years since it was first conceived. I find that disgraceful, scandalous. Almost all the information we have on this scheme has come from official releases, from parti pris spokesmen. Very little has come from journalistic investigation. I am not talking about columnists like myself, Peter Espeut and

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Stephen Vasciannie who, if not hired guns, are at least, tolerated agitators. Where is the factual reporting, the investigation, where is the environmental costbenefit analysis for the people of Jamaica? There is a great amount of rubbish being dispensed to the public, serious misinformation, some obviously deliberate, some simply due to ignorance. We are not being told the truth about what goes on in this country; about the dredging of Kingston Harbour and the redistribution of toxic waste, or the destruction of valuable biodiversity and archaeological remains on Long Mountain to clear the way for housing. We talk about the environment and people think we’re talking about some other country. What we do not know, for instance, is that in European countries, public pressure has led to new recognition of rights. We appear to be totally ignorant of the fact that: In the 1990s, most OECD countries officially recognised the right to environmental information as an enforceable right in national courts and, in some cases, even as a human right which can be enforced internationally. The many international legal instruments dealing with environmental information and, in particular, the EU Directive, the North American Agreement on Environmental Co-operation and the Aarhus Convention are setting obligations for all stakeholders in the field of the environment. The initial reluctance to free access to information has been overcome by most public authorities. (Environmental Information In OECD Countries Progress And Challenges Draft Outline, OECD, PUMA)

Failure to Function Let us discuss two stories which involved us, one as spectators, the other as almost voiceless participants. Eight years ago there were two stories in which I became involved, as usual, on the wrong side. One was the case of O. J. Simpson, against whom the pressfomented prejudice was so overwhelming that I still cannot believe that he could have received a fair trial anywhere in the United States. I am not making any judgment on whether or not he was guilty of his wife’s murder. Simpson was acquitted of the murder, but that was widely ascribed to the skill of his lawyer and the idiotic antics of the Los Angeles Police Department. What remains in my mind, however, is the behaviour of the press. An enduring image is a picture of O.J. Simpson published on the cover of TIME magazine which had been retouched – as TIME confessed later – to make him seem “darker than the hero he was”. (He was, of course, an American football hero.) Presumably, the darker he was, the more “black” he seemed, the more likely he was to have murdered his wife. Black heroes don’t marry blondes nor, in the opinion of Newsweek, was it really kosher for Simpson to behave as any other middle class

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American or any other member of his millionaire’s class might. “He even played golf”, Newsweek exclaimed, astounded by his pretensions, in an article designed to explain how Simpson had so easily been able to disguise himself as a civilised person. The question left unanswered was: what will these blacks think of next? A black man who behaves so outlandishly by marrying a blonde – whatever her class or his – must inevitably at some point revert to the primal savage lurking beneath that dark skin. During that period, almost every American TV show I watched illustrated most stories about crime and violence with a photograph of a black – usually a man, but often a menacing looking child. It was the same with magazine covers. Black children seemed to pose a particular threat to American civilisation until of course, people heard about the shootings at Columbine and other places where well-to-do white teenagers were shooting other white teenagers without, of course, having the ghetto excuse to fall back on.

Haiti In that same year, the Jamaican media was suddenly aflutter with the news that terrible things were happening in Haiti. In President Clinton’s words, people were “getting their faces chopped off”. We had paid no attention to the atrocities until the overflow of misery washed up on American and Jamaican shores, compelling some sort of action. Nowhere in the Jamaican press, it seemed, was there any journalist remotely sympathetic to the cause of the Haitians. What was particularly obnoxious to me was no one opposed, or seemed to want to oppose, the government of Jamaica’s craven stance that it would, against international law, connive and conspire with the United States to send back to Haiti people who had fled for their lives and who were entitled to claim Jamaican asylum. No one protested when an American hospital ship that I called a floating barracoon – was stationed in Kingston Harbour to illegally “process” Haitians who were legally entitled to claim Jamaican asylum. Most were sent back to Haiti. Some did not survive. I remember being berated by the then minister of foreign affairs, a doctor of philosophy, presumably because being a known socialist who had once stood as a PNP candidate, I was not supposed to say the things I did. What I still cannot understand was how, in such a situation, we were unable to see any identity of interest with these people – people who were our brothers, whose valour and example had accelerated the freedom that we subsequently gained from slavery; that we as West Indians, Caribbeans, whatever, did not understand that we had any duty whatsoever to those people over there. I am talking about a movement to help those people. I said at the time and still believe that the Jamaica Defence Force could, just as easily as the Americans, have thrown out Cedras and his gang. But we didn’t do anything – even afterwards – and that was what really

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hurt me. It hurt me as a journalist because I believe that journalism is an intimate part of everything that everybody does. It is part of the immune system of the body politic and anything that hurts people in Haiti hurts people here. What was being done was a crime under international law, but no one else seemed to care to examine this aspect of the behaviour of the two governments.

Journalists and Reporting “The first fact of American journalism is its overwhelming dependence on sources, mostly official, usually powerful”, Walter Karp pointed out in Harper’s Magazine a dozen years ago. Since then, the problem has grown even more acute. A multitude of journalists advance their careers by (in Woodruff’s words) “working with” movers and shakers in government. Behind the scenes, the tacit deals amount to quid pro quos – mutual back-scratching. Officials dispense leaks to reporters with track records of proven willingness to stay within bounds. “It is a bitter irony of source journalism,” Karp observed, “that the most esteemed journalists are precisely the most servile. For it is by making themselves useful to the powerful that they gain access to the ‘best’ sources.” While some fine journalism, assertive and carefully researched, gets into print and onto airwaves every day, the islands of such reporting are drowned in oceans of glorified leaks and institutional handouts. Liebling said something else which I think is relevant: “People everywhere confuse what they read in the newspapers with news.” Globalisation is upon us, suddenly like a thief in the night. Our press, long used to reporting situational detail about meetings on federation in the fifties, on fair trade in the sixties, on the IMF in the seventies and structural adjustment in the eighties and foreign exchange and “competitiveness” in the nineties was never able to explain to the ordinary people exactly what was at stake in any of these high-level negotiations and consultations. So federation failed, structural adjustment failed, the banks failed, the exchange rate collapsed and HIV/AIDS is cutting a swath though our teenagers and women. But that one, we don’t know very much about. HIV/AIDS is more prevalent in the Caribbean than anywhere in the world outside of Africa. Our press has never got round to attempting to explain globalisation or the WTO, believing that the audience will absorb it by osmosis, I expect, but from where? Our press has never got round to dealing with the facts about HIV/AIDS, apparently believing that crime is as much bad news as we can take. HIV/AIDS is now killing more people than crime, and the rate among teenagers is doubling every year. If that rate is not stopped, we will very soon run out of teenagers. Does anyone care?

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Surprised b y Gl obalisa ti on by Glo alisati tio Governments, elected by the people, have of course, been even less scrupulous than the journalists – but why should we wonder at this? If the journalists’ job is to keep the governors honest, we have none but ourselves to blame if they go astray while our attention was diverted by scandal or criminal misbehaviour or some new dancehall sensation. Long ago we were told that if we prostrated ourselves, bankrupted ourselves, devalued ourselves and kowtowed to any passing expert we would get loads of foreign investment. The Second World War ‘cargo cults’ of the Marianas and other Pacific islands were, perhaps, more rational. The islanders, having seen plane-loads of cargo arriving for the Americans then besieging Japan, and watching the planes arrive without any more apparent stimulus than the building of a runway, began to build runways, waiting for cargo. We never saw any cargo, but we continued building the runways just the same, and we were encouraged to do so by a press which, in my opinion, simply refused to take any position not explicitly directed by their owners. So, globalisation took most of us by surprise, and though two Caribbean journalists, Ian McDonald in Guyana and myself, wrote warning about the coming of globalisation and the WTO, nobody seemed to take us seriously. After all, the newspapers and the media generally had choicer fish to fry, Grammy Awards, the problems of Brian Lara and of course corruption and crime. McDonald and myself were free to make fools of ourselves. The more rational would concentrate on transcendental matters such as fixed deposits and the repro rate. The result is that now the World Trade Organisation and its apologists in the press all over the world, have succeeded in hoodwinking a sizeable part of the population into thinking that anything that sounds as good as globalisation did, must be good for us. Journalists in the Financial Times, Forbes magazine, the New York Times and similar organs, keep wondering why people like us don’t understand the so-called “imperatives” of globalisation – equating globalisation with civilisation, a most grandiloquent example of Orwellian doublespeak if there ever was one. Our governments are going into globalisation knowing as little about it as the Americans know about Iraq with whom they are proposing to do battle. The Jamaican government itself has divested itself of serious political expertise in dealing with the WTO. They moved the one person who knew what was going on and made him minister of something else, because he had a parliamentary seat that they wanted to hold. The press has not said a word about this. There has been no comment. A man like that is of critical importance to us and to other people like us. What he should be doing is working to make coalitions to resist the Monsantos, the Chiquitas, the EU and all those other people. We are in the position where most of the people dealing with such matters do not know

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what they are doing. For instance, people in the water sector do not know that if you privatise any part of the sector, under the GATS rules the entire sector is up for grabs and you cannot de-privatise any part in the future. Our own Ministry of Water was totally unaware of that fact, one of the most salient and dangerous facts about globalisation. This means that once we surrender Negril, we will have to surrender any choice cherries the foreign investors feel may be profitably picked. This, in turn, means that the globalisation process operates in exactly the same way that asset stripping entrepreneurs like “chain-saw” Al Dunlap operated in the 80s and 90s, until the shareholders at Sunbeam caught up with him. You take over a company with unemployed cash reserves or other assets, sell off the undervalued parts, close down the unprofitable or less profitable parts and pocket the cash. What is more, if you have nice compliant bankers as ENRON had, you don’t even need to have the money in the first place. You buy with borrowed money and get out while the shareholders, the employees and the pensioners are trying to dig themselves out from under the rubble. And, wait for it, if we sell out to a private company, local or foreign, what guarantee is there that they won’t sell Ocho Rios water to Florida, for instance? In the free market, under WTO rules , if you can’t pay for a commodity, bad luck. If Florida will pay more than Ocho Rios, bad luck. Under WTO rules, governments are legally unable to make laws which will force any company, local or foreign, to give any kind of special treatment to the host country. We are, I am sure, going to hear much more debate about this, after the fact, instead of what should have been before the fact. Our press has allowed people to talk about privatisation without any discussion of what it means. We do not know, for instance, that public enterprise can and has outperformed private enterprise in Jamaica. More than four decades ago, the government of N.W. Manley took over the bankrupt Bronstorph Ice Company. Renamed Jamaica Ice, the company operated without government subsidy, just like any other company. Jamaica Ice was so successful that within three years its privately owned competitor, the Kingston Ice Making Company was itself on the verge of bankruptcy. By that point (about 1964) another government was in power so they sold the healthy publicly owned company to the bankrupt private company and everything was once again alright in the best possible of all privatised worlds. Another signal public success was the National Commercial Bank (formerly Barclays) which became under government ownership the biggest bank in Jamaica and one of the most profitable. So public ownership, in Jamaica doesn’t have such a bad history. There are other examples: the public ownership of much of the hotel industry saved the tourism industry from total meltdown in the seventies. Public ownership also restored profitability. We have bought the idea that private ownership makes things more efficient. Not only do I dispute that contention, but I say, even if it did, so what?

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The value of democracy is not based on its efficiency. It is based on how well it serves the public interest. That, however, is not what the OECD thinks: Governments may take policy processes to the international level as a strategy to escape domestic opposition and to limit the number of players involved in policy. The “behind-closed-doors” nature of international trade negotiations, for example, has been noted as being helpful in overcoming protectionist pressures on the domestic front. Claiming “tied hands” as a result of international agreements, may be a way for governments to present policies at home that are – despite being in the national interest (however defined) – unpalatable to certain groups, and therefore politically difficult to implement. There may, in practice, be an implicit trade-off between efficiency and democracy. (Strategic Management and Policy-making, OECD, PUMA. Globalisation – What Implications for Democratic Decision Making?) This seems to me to be a piece of totally dishonest advice, but it is precisely the methodology used by governments to get around the imperative to deal honestly with the people and to tell them what is going on and how their welfare is likely to be enhanced or, in most cases, endangered.

Misinfo rm ati on Misinform rma tio In our culture, as in most other countries, journalists no longer go looking for news. They depend on handouts. But some even need to be pointed in the direction of the handout. The government’s water sector policy has been in existence for four years and was published on the worldwide web at least a year ago and, even before that, ministers made statements about privatisation and the restructuring of government, in the interest, no doubt of better governance. On the web too, you can find World Bank and IDB documents, five years old, dealing with water privatisation in Jamaica. Of course, there are lots of examples of deliberate misinformation which is easy if the press waits for handouts instead of looking for news.

Mazar al Sharif Just the other day there was noise about somebody finding lots of dead bodies near Mazar al Sharif in Afghanistan. If you had been following the war you would have realised that these bodies were there months ago, after the CIA and British special forces helped the Northern Alliance “quell a revolt” in a prison. Most of us knew that a massacre had taken place. The American press has now discovered it because the press of other countries continues to make a stink about them. At the time, the place was crawling with American reporters.

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It was where John Walker Lindh was captured. But they saw nothing, unlike the British, French, Italian, Japanese and other reporters on the spot. A few years ago, faced with a similar massacre in Srebrenica in Yugoslavia, the American government and press decided to accuse President Milosevic of responsibility for that and other war crimes. Milosevic is, right now, in front of a war crimes tribunal in the Netherlands. So tell me, what prevents the Americans coming before the same tribunal for the same reason? There doesn’t seem to be any reason as far as I know. Part of the problem is that justice is different for the rich and the poor, and one of the things we need to do is to make sure we can deliver justice to poor people.

Community development A few years ago, shortly after I began my talk show, the Public Eye, I had the opportunity to interview two people who had just done a study on the conditions of the Jamaican helper. Rosina Wiltshire and Gillian Munroe related research results which made my blood run cold, and related some of the experiences they had collected from the people they had interviewed. It was a tale of outright exploitation, of abuse, underpayment and, in some cases, conditions approaching slavery. I decided to take the matter further by asking domestic helpers to phone me to tell me of their own experiences. The result was a flood of information, corroborating and expanding on Wiltshire and Munroe’s research narrative. It was mind boggling and riveted the attention of the Jamaican public for more than a year. During this time, a lady who is present at the conference today [Beverly Manley] got her husband to invite me to their house one day to ask me what I thought could be done about the situation Public Eye had revealed. The unions can’t help them, said the unionist who was prime minister. One person working in a yard can’t join a union, you can’t negotiate, you can’t go on strike. I had been thinking about the problem myself, and so I suggested a National Minimum Wage with a department to enforce and regulate it. Michael and Beverly Manley both leaped on this idea and a few weeks later, during the prime minister’s budget speech, he announced the National Minimum Wage. Before that, however, the idea had a thorough airing on Public Eye. Most people thought it could not work. What I am explaining here is the media functioning as part of the immune system and the sensory system of the body politic. We pulled out, from ordinary people, what it was that they really wanted – exposing the grievances below the surface. There were stories from women who were imprisoned in their rooms for 24 hours and more because of some imagined theft, about people who were regularly raped and so forth. Those stories produced a situation in which householders were buying locks for their telephones – to keep things quiet –

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while others were giving advice about what should be done. The whole community was engaged in a collective discussion and search for a solution to what the community had at last recognised was a an enormous problem, festering just below the threshold of their consciousness. The process was finally sealed by the attention given to it by Prime Minister Michael Manley and we devised a solution which made some sense. These days, instead of working toward that kind of developmental and social consensus, we are talking about “corruption”, slandering whole classes of people without any attempt at providing proof. Of course there is corruption in Jamaica, but saying so doesn’t change anything. Why has the bold and audacious Jamaican media/press not exposed corruption? Transparency International says Jamaica is about halfway down the scale of world corruption. They should be able to give the press some leads.

The need fo r transp aren cy for transparen arenc People are preaching to us the need for transparency which is said to be an essential precursor to the descent into our midst of all those lovely “Boopses in the sky with Diamonds”. Just be transparent, wealth will surely follow. “Corruption” is by no means confined to Jamaica. The biggest companies in the United States, Britain and other parts of the world are involved in mismanagement, corruption, fraud, theft, deception of shareholders, obtaining money by false pretences. The president of France, former chancellors of Germany and Austria, the prime minister of Italy, all set examples which we follow but don’t seem to talk much about. The World Bank and the International Monetary Fund (the authors of the so-called Washington Consensus) are, in my opinion, the economic equivalent of the Black Death. Their prescriptions have destroyed the viability first of the governments and then of the people of a succession of countries from Argentina to Zimbabwe. They have prescribed, for poor countries in distress, exactly the opposite of what their masters prescribed for themselves when they were in distress. Yet we do not hear, from most of the media, any complaint about the poisonous medicines we are compelled to take. We are like sick people in the 14th and 15th centuries, being bled to death by leeches, being fed mercury and arsenic for our own good, to cure high blood pressure, insanity or whatever. According to documents obtained by journalist Greg Palast from the World Bank, the wise and beneficent directors of our fate have even factored into their structural adjustment equations the so-called “IMF Riot” which are almost inevitable consequences of the standard medicine. They know what they are doing. We don’t.

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Worse, our local governors are coerced into informing us that these patent medicines are their own idea, the Doomsday Highway may be exactly like ones in Bolivia or in Santo Domingo, the privatisation of water exactly like schemes in Argentina, Guinea Bissau and Nicaragua, but our guys will tell you they thought up these nightmares on their own. They must have had good advice. The rich countries club, the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), has been masterminding the move towards globalisation. Together with the US Trade Negotiator and the World Business Council, the panjandrums of the Free Market systems have drawn up utopian schemes for controlling the world and its unruly inhabitants in the boondocks. Note the following statement: Governing in a democratic political system necessarily involves a degree of incoherence. Coherence is but one among several criteria of good governance in democratic societies, where governments are expected to be responsive to competing interests. Social and political factors bring into play an array of forces that rarely converge toward coherent sets of policies. Interest groups seek to shape public policy in ways which, taken as a whole, serve disparate ends. The information media can mobilise public opinion, and create expectations of quick governmental responses. Opinion polls bring contradictory short term pressures to bear on longer term policy direction. Seen in that light, good policy making is less a question of avoiding contradiction than one of managing it. This implies that policy-making systems must increase their capacity to balance and reconcile divergent pressures. (Work on Strategic Management and Policy-Making, OECD, PUMA Building Policy Coherence) Crudely put, our governors need to understand the principles of divide and rule, the need to manipulate public opinion to suit the purposes of higher powers. When countries like Jamaica subscribed to the World Trade Organisation they were apparently under the impression that their voices would have some democratic effect. They have since discovered that the interests of the megacorporations, the transnationals, are what the WTO is really about. The WTO has done a great job of managing contradictions, mostly arising from the concerns of the developing world. They simply ignore them. And the insignificant interest groups – the developing countries – are motivated by their indigenous social and political factors which bring into play an array of forces that rarely converge toward coherent sets of policies. We in the Caribbean, especially in Jamaica, have abdicated any position of leadership within the developing world and are thus unable to bring any degree of coherence into the struggle against transnational corporate domination. Their message is simple: it’s the bottom line, stupid! Our message is incoherent, diffuse,

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unfocused and ineffectual. In our countries, there is a signal absence of informed public opinion. The watchmen and the gatekeepers have joined the Gadarene rush for profit. Those countries, like us, which have followed the strictures, dictates and advice of the Washington Consensus are now on their way to collapse and disintegration; in the new worldwide version of the Monopoly game we are all going directly to jail. We will not pass GO – the takeoff point. We feel that we are special, that it can’t happen here, that we cannot, in the words of the World Bank’s Alex van Trotsenburg, become “almost a non-country” like Somalia and such. The only thing that makes us different is our almost total ignorance of what is happening elsewhere in the world. We think we are different. I beg to differ.

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GovernanCe for Poverty eradiCation and SuStainable develoPMent: iSSueS in develoPMent CooPeration1 NARESH SINGH

Introduction

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ost countries of the world have adopted the goals of poverty eradication and sustainable development as stated in their official documents. For instance, CIDAs Sustainable Development Strategy 2001-2003 states that: “the purpose of Canada’s official development assistance is to support sustainable development in developing countries, in order to reduce poverty and to contribute to a more secure, equitable and prosperous world”; DFIDs White Paper “sets out the Government’s policies to achieve the sustainable development of this planet. It is first, and most importantly, about the single greatest challenge which the world faces – eliminating poverty”; policy statement by the DAC confirms the commitment “to reducing poverty in all its dimensions and to achieving the seven International Development Goals” (developmentgoals.org/ Poverty); and World Development Report 2000/2001: Attacking Poverty follows two other World Development Reports on poverty, in 1980 and 1990. These objectives of poverty reduction and sustainable development will be measured against the MDGs which “call for reducing the proportion of people living on less than $1 a day to half the 1990 level by 2015-from 29 per cent of all people in low and middle income economies to 14.5 per cent” (developmentgoals.org/ poverty). The goals have been commonly accepted by 147 states as a framework for measuring development progress. Countries have also recognised governance as a central factor in contributing to progress and in helping achieve these goals. To illustrate, the OECD confirms that: good, effective public governance helps to strengthen democracy and human rights, promote economic prosperity and social cohesion, reduce poverty, enhance environmental protection and the sustainable use of natural

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resources, and deepen confidence in government and public administration [and that] . . . governance and development go hand in hand. Without good governance structures, developing countries cannot hope to compete efficiently in global markets. The World Bank recognises local governance and national governance as two of the main areas of application of empowerment principles (access to information, inclusion and participation, accountability and local organisation capacity) which go in hand in hand with poverty reduction objectives. What remains to be seen, however, is the policy programmatic and operational linkages between governance as broadly defined and the goals of poverty reduction and sustainable development. Such linkages have not been clearly articulated. For example, the distinction between constitutive and distributive governance which is necessary for appropriate emphasis if goals are to be translated into reality. Moreover, many still support governance as an end in itself and, while this may be appropriate in many circumstances, for development cooperation, governance as a means to poverty reduction and sustainable development is much more amenable to support. By using the single concept of sustainable livelihoods to reflect the twin goals of poverty reduction and sustainable development, this paper makes the case for linking governance to the desired development goals, and suggests practical steps for doing so.

Sust ainable D evel opment and Pover ty Erad on Sustainable De velo Povert Eradiicati tio (Sust ainable Livelih oo ds): Wha t ha ve we Learned? (Sustainable Livelihoo oods): What have The evolution of sustainable livelihoods (SL) as a key concept of development confirms the beginning of a new era in international development cooperation by stressing that development simply does not work for people unless it is conceived and realised by them. Gone are the days when development was a top-down affair, organised by government institutions for the people. So are the days when poverty eradication was viewed in terms of redistribution of public resources to meet anticipated needs of the poorer segments of society. SL implies concepts as ownership and empowerment, both associated with a bottom-up approach, where access to resources and incentives to action have replaced the redistributive needs approach of the past. This remarkable shift in development thinking, which may be described as a silent revolution, has still to be fully operationalised by multilateral and bilateral agencies. Their action does not always match their rhetoric. By focusing on how governance relates to the realisation of sustainable livelihoods, this paper tries to indicate what can be done to ensure that SL does not merely remains a rhetorical device. The idea of sustainable livelihoods was first introduced by the Brundtland Commission on Environment and Development as an approach to enhancing

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resource productivity, securing ownership of and access to resources and incomeearning activities, as well as ensuring adequate stocks and flows of food and cash to meet basic needs. Sustainable livelihood security was seen as a precondition for stable human populations and a prerequisite for good husbandry and sustainable management of natural resources. Agenda 21 expanded the concept and was the first intergovernmental forum to demand sustainable livelihoods for all as a universal objective. By integrating SL into poverty eradication strategies, agenda 21 also contributed to incorporating the concept into mainstream economic development thinking. Subsequent fora such as the Social Summit in Copenhagen and the Beijing Conference on Women have made use of SL in their programme statements as have an increasing number of agencies, both multilateral and bilateral, as they have increasingly turned their attention to poverty eradication. At the core of the SL approach are two broad principles. First and foremost is its integrative potential. The concept allows policies to address issues of development, sustainable resource management and poverty eradication simultaneously. Second is its emphasis not just on jobs but on the full complexity of livelihood systems which need to be both understood and addressed in the context of families, households and communities. The overall policy objective of SL, therefore, must, as the Social Summit emphasised, be that of identifying the livelihood systems, survival strategies and self-help organisations of people living in poverty, and working with such organisations to develop programmes for combating poverty that build on their efforts, ensuring the full participation of the people concerned. (World Summit for Social Development 1995, Programme of Action, para 26). Individual scholars, notably Chambers and Conway (1992), Davies (1993), and Singh and Titi (1994), have continued to buttress the concept and developed participatory methodologies that facilitate the implementation of SL. SL has evolved in recent years as a cornerstone in the programme thinking of many agencies. Growing out of the concern with human development – and their desire to link that to agenda 21 – SL has gradually become a major policy objective with the following principal dimensions:

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use of self-empowerment focus on community assets and strength (including local knowledge, coping and adaptive strategies) improved access to resources recognition of the cross-sectoral nature of the approach and the need, therefore, to find levels of analysis and action commensurate with its complexity and dynamics

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• • •

livelihoods as a function of activities, assets, and entitlements which people use to make a living emphasis on the capacity to cope with shocks and stresses as well as the ability to deal with economic efficiency, social equity, and ecological integrity recognition of the linkages between micro action and macro conditions and policies

By putting the emphasis on what poor people can do by and for themselves, it follows that the system must be adjusted to serve them rather than be guided by some general and vague state policy objective that means little or nothing to the poor because they never see it implemented. SL has the potential of bringing public policy closer to the real interests and demands of poor people. In order to do so, however, institutions at the macro level – both national and intergovernmental – must revise their strategies. It is here that the concept of governance comes in, because it draws attention to the rules that determine the conduct of public affairs.

Clarifying the Governance Concept Governance is a more diffuse – and in some respects – contested concept than SL. The international development community seems to have adopted a definition which implies that governance is everything, and therefore, nothing. The various agencies that use the concept suggest that governance refers to the way a country gets things done. UNDP has adopted a definition which sees governance as the exercise of economic, political and administrative authority to manage a country’s affairs at all levels (UNDP 1997:2-3). In this perspective, governance comprises the mechanisms, processes and institutions through which citizens and groups articulate their interests, exercise their legal rights, meet their obligations and mediate their differences. In the UNDP programme context, governance is said to have three legs: economic, political and administrative. Economic governance includes decision-making processes that affect a country’s economic activities and its relationships with other economies. Political governance is the process of decision-making to formulate policy, while administrative governance is the system of policy implementation. As can be seen from this and similar definitions in the international development community, governance is an all-encompassing concept; it permeates all sectors – public, private and voluntary – and all phases of making public policy. It has the same vague ring surrounding it as development management had in the 1970s. Adopting such an all-encompassing definition has its advantages when it comes to providing justification for a broad programme thrust such as being

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attempted by many donors. Governance, as so defined, helps legitimise a wideranging portfolio of programmes. The purpose of this paper is not to question the relevance of this usage of governance within CIDA, or any other agency, but to indicate the need for simultaneously adopting a more specific definition that allows programme officers to get a better handle on the concept as it applies to the realisation of SL. As suggested above, SL is a radical departure from previous perspectives on development and poverty eradication. By implying the need to start with the constraints and opportunities facing individuals, households and communities, there is a rationale for a coherent and concise definition of governance that suits this objective. When programme officers talk of governance in relation to SL, they need to know that they are doing something that is specifically governance and how that particular use of the concept helps promote SL. The first task here, therefore, is to provide a more specific meaning to governance and see how it differs from other relevant concepts. There are two aspects of the governance concept that need rethinking in relation to SL. The first is that governance – as broadly understood, especially in the academic literature – is associated with regime rather than state or civil society. This means that the concept refers to the constitution or reconstitution of normative rules that guide public or political action. Governance is one aspect of politics and not all; it focuses on the basic – or constitutional – rules that determine behavioural conduct and action. The second is that governance is different from policy-making, public administration, or project management. As suggested in Table 1, governance takes place at an analytical meta-level, meaning that the other activities listed above are circumscribed by the rules established at the regime or governance level. Table 1: Governan ce and its rel ati on t oo ther co ncepts and ac tivities activities Governance rela tio to other con

Level

Activity

Concept

Meta

Politics

Governance

Macro

Policy

Policy-making

Mesa

Programme

Public Administration

Micro

Projects

Management

It is important to emphasise that these different levels are empirically interconnected, but there are good reasons for keeping them analytically distinct. Rules are, empirically speaking, set at different levels. For example, a community may decide to change the rules by which its members abide in order to improve the prospects of enjoying sustainable livelihoods. Such a revision of rules – the

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local community regime – has a bearing on how policy is made and implemented or singular activities (projects) managed. Governance is also present at higher levels, ultimately in terms of establishing and managing the constitutional principles of a given country. The more precise meaning given to governance here means that it is possible to distinguish between two sides of politics. One is the distributive side which addresses the perennial question of who gets what, when and how? This side of politics is usually referred to as political economy because it focuses on how public resources are allocated in society. The other side is the constitutive side which addresses the question of who sets what rules, when and how? This is what we call here governance, because it focuses on the rules of the political game. This distinction is particularly important in relation to SL. The conventional needs approach relies more on the distributive side and does not ask for changes in the rules of the game to achieve its objectives. SL, on the other hand, which focuses on empowerment and enhanced access to resources, calls for a change in the rules and, by implication, a shift in power relations. SL, as an approach to poverty eradication, therefore, requires attention to the constitutive side of politics, i.e. governance.

Governance as a Management Tool In this perspective, it is important that governance is treated not just as a loosely connected set of activities (or a portfolio of programmes) but as a tool that programme officers can apply in promoting SL. As a management tool, governance may be treated as the equivalence of strategic management in business administration. Governance deals with coping and adapting to an uncertain and changing environment. In business, these conditions arise first and foremost from changes in the market and in technology. In politics, such changes are also caused by the wishes of empowered groups of people to change the conditions under which they are ruled. Governance, then, encourages actors to think beyond business as usual or the need for only incremental changes that do not call for a change in the regime. Governance, like strategic management, becomes a way of looking at a problem in the context of the big picture, of adapting systems of rule to changes in the environment (political, economic, technological as well as sociocultural), and of encouraging leaders to find consensual – and positive – solutions to problems their constituents or followers encounter. With this way of treating the governance concept, it becomes a way of engaging politics, including the need for changes in power relations, rather than hiding it behind a set of generalised phrases. At first glance, this revised use of the concept may appear controversial. It implies getting involved in support of changes in the internal political arrangements of a sovereign state. Such fears, however, are exaggerated. First of

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all, virtually all multilateral and bilateral agencies are already involved in such transgressions. Democracy and governance programmes by such agencies do exactly that, whether it is explicitly recognised or not. The difference between such programmes and what is being proposed here in the context of an SL approach is that governance becomes more than an end in itself. Good governance exists when rules related to specific SL objectives are successfully implemented. This is a hands-on way of approaching governance and a way of demonstrating a direct relationship between democracy and development that current uses of the concept do not really allow because it is too vague and, when disaggregated, reduced to a set of programme activities that are typically not reinforcing each other. It is precisely the ability to identify how different types of programme activities may be mutually supportive that has been missing in past uses of the governance concept. Becoming a little more practical in the application of the concept, therefore, is necessary if it is going to be related to the objectives of erasing poverty and promoting sustainable livelihoods. The rest of this paper is spent identifying one (but by no means the only) way of doing so.

Governance in the SL Context As suggested above, it is now more widely recognised that the demobilisation of the state-centred and state-directed approach to development which has been ongoing for the past two decades does not end with the liberalisation of the economy. This is only a first, albeit important, step in the emergence of an alternative approach that starts with the individual, household or community. Because actors enter the market-place differentially endowed it is not an even playing-field. Already the rich have an initial advantage and special measures are typically needed in order to enable the poorer segments of the population to succeed. With low public levels of confidence in government and public sector institutions at large, and a trimmed-down state machinery, compensatory interventions by government are not likely to play the role in development thinking that they did in the past. That is why the SL approach emphasises greater reliance on local resources and strategies to cope with social and economic issues, empowerment of local actors, and the need for improving their access to additional resources that can help them make progress on their own. Reducing their sense of vulnerability and powerlessness implies realigning power relations and creating an environment that is not only enabling (the concept that is a product of economic liberalisation) but also reassuring (the concept that is more closely connected with SL). Governance, referring to changes or management of the rules of the game at different levels in a society, is an important aspect of realising SL but not enough on its own. It needs to be seen in the context of other potential measures

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such as technological means to enhance the local resource base and right policies to encourage greater self-reliance and the prudent use of scarce public resources. By being concerned, however, with the strategic aspects of change – the big picture – it is especially important in order to provide a vision of and justification for changes in the relations between public authorities and citizens as well as among groups of citizens. It is also important to acknowledge that governance in the context of SL means working both at macro and micro levels. Leaders with a vision and the political courage to challenge the status quo – at whatever level it manifests itself – are needed in order to realise the conditions that will allow a successful implementation of SL objectives. At the same time, it is clear that local citizens themselves have a much more active and meaningful role to play in improving their own livelihoods in a sustainable fashion and thereby contributing to a sustainable human development at the national level. Since the ultimate end of constitutive politics – or governance – is the realignment of relations between public authority and citizens with a view to enhancing the legitimacy of the regime, it is important to point out that the SL approach can deal with programmes in several different ways. In this paper, we suggest a four-pronged approach that takes into consideration that changes in power relations are the result of leadership interventions from above as much as citizen demands from below. The first aspect of changing power relations is articulation, that is the readiness and ability of individuals to demand the freedom to make decisions of their own on issues that concern the use of common-pool or public goods. The second aspect is mobilisation, that is, the readiness and ability of groups of citizens to work together to maximise gains for themselves without doing so – in a zero-sum fashion – at the expense of others. Like articulation, this aspect refers to the generation of citizen demands from below. The third aspect is distribution of power, which becomes important as more and more groups begin to compete for influence. In order to accommodate this growth of demand for freedom and the right to organise for enhancing SL, it is important that the leadership is ready to distribute power in such a way that the political system becomes more pluralist and groups have access to complementary resources through the market, the state, or other relevant institutions. The fourth aspect is confirmation of power. This typically takes place through the decisions taken by judicial institutions but is more generally dependent on the readiness of both citizens and public institutions to respect the principle of rule of law. This aspect is important in an SL context because it points to the importance of a rights-based approach to development. The operationalisation of governance in relation to SL is built around the realisation of these four aspects of power in the context of specific programmes. Precisely how this has been done is summarised in Table 2 below. We shall now discuss how each of these four aspects actually can be translated into a set of programmes that are mutually supportive and have a direct

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relationship to how sustainable livelihoods can be developed and enhanced. As indicated above, this is not necessarily the only way of doing it, but it is an effort to provide a coherent governance programme that is associated with and supportive of the SL programme objectives. Table 2 Opera ti onal a spec ts o f governan ce in the co nte xt o f SL. perati tio aspec spects of governance conte ntex of Power Aspect

Governance Focus

Programme Concern

Institutional Issue

Articulation

Self-Organisation

Ownership

Empowerment

Mobilisation

Social Capital

Capability

Civil Engagement

Distribution

Social Space

Access

Pluralism

Confirmation

Strength

Rights

Rule of Law

Articulation Being able to articulate one’s own views on a public issue is the first step on a long path toward realising SL. It is when individuals begin to articulate their own views that a meaningful discussion and dialogue with others emerges and the prospects for spontaneous organisation of efforts become real. If SL – like human development – means expanding the choices for all people in society, it also implies increasing the opportunity of both men and women to participate in, and endorse, decisions affecting their own lives. To be sure, it is unrealistic to assume that every person would be able to participate in all decisions affecting them, but it is important that as a means of increasing such opportunities, they are able to organise themselves freely at the local level and claim ownership of the decision-making process at that level. Governance, therefore, means changing the rules to the extent that such self-organisation is becoming increasingly possible. A governance measure may not in itself be enough but it must be regarded as part of any effort to realise SL. Such measures may include new rules for who can participate in community affairs and decide on such matters. For example, in many patriarchal societies, the idea of extending opportunities to women on an even basis – and taking complementary measures to realise that objective – would be one relevant case in point. Studies have shown that women in such societies are especially hesitant to voice their opinion in public unless they have been given a chance to learn how to speak and thereby gain confidence to interact with men. Another would be a group of peasants or workers initiating a move to have the rules changed in order to allow them greater influence over what transpires in a factory or on the farm where they work. The latter may have an opportunity to feel that they are stakeholders in the exercise. This is not

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only a matter of enhancing social equality but also one of prudent management. A member organisation, therefore, may often be a more efficient way of getting things done than a regular corporative structure. The important thing here is to use governance as a lever. The idea that governance deals with the big picture can be used in order to demonstrate how issues that have been buried in a parochial context may be raised to a new level and thereby open up opportunities for change in the relations between members of a given community or group. An emphasis on the strategic role that governance plays in public affairs is also important for the purpose of demonstrating the commonalities rather than the differences in communities or groups. Governance itself, therefore, can have an empowering effect as it serves as a catalyst for organisation of efforts at the local level. Especially when one deals with poor people, it is important to stress that any governance measure must be seen as complementary to other supportive measures. For example, many people live in such poor circumstances that aspiring for more freedom and control over one’s own destiny is overshadowed by other concerns, notably just getting by. In Africa, for example, it is quite common that the manfolk has lost interest in working together because they no longer trust others. They have retreated into an existence where each lives and works pretty much for himself. Readiness to organise with others has all but vanished. The result is often that the burden to secure the livelihoods fall upon the shoulders of women, who organise in groups with the sole purpose of earning a meagre income that allows them to buy food and clothes for themselves and their children. In these circumstances, it can be argued, the prospects of selforganisation in communities is very low and improvement in SL can only be achieved with the development of indigenous technologies that are not costly and the local population itself can use and develop. People may find it somewhat easier to organise when the enemy is social rather than an inadequate resource base only. For example, wherever there is a legacy of exploitation by one group of another, antagonisms have typically crystallised into feelings of solidarity that can form the basis of new group action. In this situation, the local actors themselves may regardless of their economic resource endowment take action together to change the circumstances of their life. In so doing they are also likely to change the rules of public conduct. Such self-organised action may lead to giving these people rights – civil-political or social-economic – that they had been previously denied. Institutions have acquired experience of working with participatory methodologies that may be particularly suitable for the purpose of promoting these types of governance measures. Some such methodologies, however, are likely to be more successful than others, as not all of them necessarily emphasise the ownership dimension of such approaches. It is important, therefore, that programme staff are familiar with the various participatory analysis approaches

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that are being used and can arrange for a proper assessment of how appropriate they are for a governance in SL type of activity.

Mobilisation Articulation is only the first step in an approach that emphasises the need for greater local initiative and ownership. It focuses on making the individual more ready to take initiatives of his or her own. Self-organisation, in this respect, is evidence of the search for power, if not power itself. These local initiatives, however, stand little chance of becoming really empowering experiences for people involved unless they lead to the mobilisation of social capital. The latter here translates into trust and readiness to engage in reciprocal action. Trust itself is an outcome of reliability in social interactions. When individuals realise that they have something in common and stand to gain from concerted action, trust may not be too difficult to develop. Such conditions, however, are not omnipresent. Very often, people start interacting with each other in a climate of distrust. This makes the task of creating trust so much more difficult. Since SL implies the use of local knowledge and information, the principal challenge is more often social than technical. People usually have the requisite technical know-how, but what is often missing are the social skills that translate into sustaining local initiative and power. That is why the concept of capability is more appropriate than capacity, which connotes technical or physical ability. By referring to capability, the approach emphasises the importance of institutional or social dimensions in realising the objectives of SL. Particularly significant is the readiness and ability of people to engage each other in a civic manner, civic referring to behaviour that is consistent with the rule of law and is tolerant of the view of others. While there has been a good deal written about the need for scaling up successful local initiatives, the point here is that equally important – maybe a prerequisite for scaling up – is scaling out, i.e. the idea that people can extend their contacts beyond the scope of their primary social organisation – household, village or community – and work or interact with people whom they may not have known before. Such branching out is necessary if local actors are going to have access to more resources and challenge monopolies or entrenched social forces that otherwise may subvert or destroy local initiatives. Mobilisation of local power and the formation of social capital is a sensitive process that requires both tact and integrity of programme officers responsible for implementing SL programmes. The governance aspect of this process is not so much the technical issue of establishing, for example, savings and credit institutions or other community-based initiatives, but really the task of encouraging a revision of the rules that guide who is responsible for what and who can interact with whom. Many donor offices already have experience of

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working with some of these issues. The Local Initiative Facility for Urban Development (LIFE) has been involved in encouraging local-local dialogues with a view to improving solutions to local problems as well as creating opportunities for local groups, including women, to participate in public policymaking. Lessons from programmes such as LIFE should be of relevance also to realising SL objectives. One such experience is that leaders must be credible to their followers. Trust and confidence in organisations is fomented only when leaders themselves show respect for their followers and the latter understand both the constraints and opportunities which their leaders face. Again, therefore, governance measures alone won’t necessarily make the difference. They have to be seen in the context of other inputs or measures that help realise local aspirations. These include ensuring prompt delivery of goods or services that are important for enabling local groups to sustain their own project initiatives; better use of local resources; and, avoidance of high-cost solutions that cannot be sustained by local stakeholders. These latter measures, notwithstanding, it is important that the particular governance dimensions are not overlooked or downplayed. As suggested above, governance deals with realigning relations between the authorities and citizens and among groups of citizens in society. Such interventions are not achieved merely by the stroke of a pen. They need to be carefully nurtured and followed up. Donor programme staff cannot be in the midst of such an exercise but they can help such a process along by assisting local groups of people to gain strength by allowing them to get involved with others and to become more efficient in getting things done. This does not mean creating large-scale – and bureaucratic – types of organisation around a successful local initiative in order to replicate it elsewhere. Rather, it implies nurturing loose local partnerships or alliances based on dialogue and reciprocal interaction, where learning comes at a pace that is commensurate with local capacities and processes. The rules that need to be reformulated, therefore, are not along administrative but political lines. They should make various actors mindful of the need to respect local ownership while at the same time feed new ideas and other resources into the minds of various stakeholders. This typically requires more patience than what many actors, especially in government, are ready to allocate to the exercise. Yet, one of the principal lessons learnt from previous attempts to foster development is that accelerating the process in an artificial manner without local understanding and support leaves it unsustainable. Social capital is formed when actors have enough time to get to know each other and learn from each other’s experience. Trust, confidence, and reciprocal action emerge in a manner that supports civic engagement especially in those circumstances when the autonomy of local action is respected and not neglected; when it is building on local initiatives without being perceived by others first and foremost as a threat to their own livelihoods. Current efforts to strengthen

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civil society need to become especially sensitive to this aspect. Success in this field does not consist merely of tangible material improvements that can be measured but also of more diffuse – yet important – process outcomes such as greater trust among stakeholders and better understanding and appreciation of each other’s constraints and opportunities for action.

Distribution As suggested above, both articulation and mobilisation of power are really prerequisites for the pursuit of sustainable livelihoods. It is the provision of opportunities for local actors to set their own agenda so that it suits their circumstances which is at the core of SL. This does not mean that what is being advocated here is some form of local autarchy. That is neither desirable nor feasible. What the previous two sections have advocated, however, is the need for local actors – individuals, households, groups, and communities – belonging to the poorer segments of the population to become empowered vis-à-vis other actors in society by relying more on their own resources and skills. Still, the realisation of an SL approach cannot be pursued from the bottom up only. Even if local groups get empowered and can be more in charge of their own destiny they will sooner or later encounter the limits to their new power set by other groups in society. To avoid choking local initiatives, therefore, it is necessary to enlarge the social and political space that they enjoy. The political leadership plays an important role in realising this by offering the poor greater access to resources provided by the public, private or voluntary sectors. This implies realigning the relations of power in society in such a way that the opportunities for benefiting from the availability of public goods become easier and more even. More specifically, governance for SL under this heading involves two measures of special significance: (a) delegation of power and responsibilities, and (b) the institutionalisation of political pluralism. The delegation of power and responsibilities must aim at ensuring that locally elected bodies are allowed to play a greater role in administering development. Many acts of decentralisation have been pronounced in the past but they have only amounted to an administrative decentralisation – deconcentration of administrative authority – rather than delegation of real political power and responsibility. What is needed is a much more genuine decentralisation that involves the delegation of power to autonomous local authorities with the right to collect their own revenue. Such authorities may be at district level but it is important to emphasise that at that level these institutions are still far from the poor. A genuine decentralisation, therefore, should also include a devolution of authority to levels below the district where the opportunities for poor people and their representatives typically are greater.

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Too much power in the past has been concentrated to central government ministries and other state institutions that have been accountable upwards to individual ministries rather than to the public. Very few of these have worked in the public interest. The vast majorities have been inefficient and corrupt. Delegation of power and responsibilities, therefore, has in many countries included privatisation of many such state institutions. Although privatisation is no panacea because there is always a risk that privatised enterprises are taken over by individual tycoons with little interest in the public welfare, as long as there is competition the prospect is there that such hegemony can be challenged. Whatever one thinks of the market, it has at least one characteristic that is helpful in the context of the SL approach: the rules of the market tend to be less restrictive than those found in the political arena and in the market it is typically also easier to arrive at split-the-difference type of compromises over their content. The market, therefore, is an important counterweight to the state and a potential ally of SL as long as it provides opportunities for local actors to have more influence over their own affairs. A genuine political decentralisation is the best way of ensuring that such matters as building schools, health clinics and roads are increasingly handled by local authorities with the right to control their own revenue – if not all, at least a substantial part of it. Organisations – both private and public – that provide complementary resources for local development, e.g. credit and technical services, are also part of the institutional landscape that will support SL. What is typically needed here are not big and expensive investments but relatively small amounts of money that can be prudently used by local actors. UNDP, for example, has already worked with small-grants programmes for some time to promote community-based initiatives. These include LIFE (already mentioned above), Partners in Development Programme (PDP), the Sustainable Agriculture Network (SANE), Africa 2000, and Asia-Pacific 2000. Decisions concerning these programmes and their implementation have been taken by national selection committees, which ensure inclusive and participatory decision-making and implementation. It seems important for donors to build on this experience as it considers adopting an SL approach. In the interest of enhancing partnership in member countries and as a means of promoting a demand-driven approach spurred by groups of local – and typically poor – people, there is good reason to evaluate the experience with small grants and revolving loan funds for rural development and take the necessary steps to institutionalise measures that encourage greater local responsibility for development. The idea of public, but politically autonomous funds that focus on a particular sector or thematic concern, e.g. women and children, is a natural sequence to what donors have already done and a measure that fits the ideals associated with SL. Such funds would be registered as legal entities in the member country and administered by boards of trustees drawn from both government, civil society and the resource providers.

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It is important that these funds, however, are not funded and controlled by one donor alone as that tends to reduce the sense of local stakeholder involvement. Such funds should serve as catalysts for multi-donor funding in a given sector or for a given thematic concern. That way, local stakeholders will have a chance of experiencing ownership with the resource providers constituting a minority, yet influential enough to blow the whistle (if necessary) and serve as a moderating factor in any unresolved issues between the various local stakeholders represented on the boards. These funds would require governance intervention to ensure that impartiality rather than partisanship determines resource allocation. This is an issue that has taken on increased importance as most countries around the world have moved in the direction of multi-party democracy. In this new political dispensation it is not unusual for groups of people to be denied access to public resources because governments punish them for having voted for the opposition. The autonomous development fund model would transcend partisan loyalties and make available to any group, regardless of political stance, resources that are necessary for their own development. Managing a multi-party regime has proven to be complicated and difficult in many countries where a democratic legacy is absent and where ethnic or religious divisions in society provide a fertile ground for politicisation. Yet, a politically more pluralist dispensation is in the long run an important ingredient in the SL approach. People must feel free to express themselves in public and also organise without fear. These are freedoms that do not necessarily come without demand from the citizens themselves, but it is important that the leadership is ready to guarantee such freedoms. This means that the government and other prominent actors in society are ready to respect human rights and freedoms enshrined in the constitution. Donors have already engaged in a multitude of activities, typically in its governance programmes, that relate to this SL concern. For example in Guatemala, after years of civil war, donors have assisted in the restoration of individual dignity by fostering programmes aimed at a more active citizenship. In South Africa, it has supported the Women’s Development Foundation, which focuses on the political participation by women in local government. In Eastern Europe – and other places, for that matter – donors have worked with national organisations to establish human rights mechanisms and other fundamentals of a functioning legal system. These are all part of what are termed here governance measures that aim at reconstituting rules that promote a more popular and participatory approach to development.

Confirmation Confirmation of realigned relations of power is perhaps the most challenging of all governance measures. What is at stake under this heading is the

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institutionalisation of power relations that are meant to give greater social space and strength to groups that previously may have been both ignorant and placid. Much of what has been suggested under the previous heading would be to little avail unless the new rules can be assured by institutions in society. Such a process does not get completed over night. It takes time and it involves finding ways that allow actors to engage each other without first and foremost sensing that they are losing face. As suggested in Table 2, providing disadvantaged and poor segments or groups of society with greater strength centres of the establishment of a human rights regime, in which the rule of law prevails. This is particularly important if one is concerned with poverty eradication and SL. Because of their comparative weakness, these groups are particularly prone to abuse of power by other actors in society. The latter often take action as if the poor do not matter. This is true, as history tells, both in the economic and political sphere. An unregulated market tends to cause its own failure, because actors do not start with the same endowment of resources. The result is the marginalisation of many who cannot manage to compete in such a context. Similarly, a state-controlled system where the market has been reduced to no role in allocating resources, also leads to a skewed distribution of benefits, because those in power have no one to challenge them. What is needed, therefore, is a regime in which the costs of a market or state failure can be reduced to a minimum by virtue of rules that respect each person on an equal basis and are attuned to the conditions of the poor and disadvantaged in society. Fortunately, the global political climate is beginning to change so that new opportunities exist for the first time to really make headway in this direction. That is why the governance dimension of SL is so vital to the realisation of its objectives. Being able to put in place a system of rules that (a) allow actors in society to realise that politics is a positive-sum game, and (b) provide guarantees that the rights of the poor cannot be trampled upon with impunity is the highest priority in order to make SL work. The SL approach has the great advantage of being comprehensive and thus viewing the condition of the poor not only in socioeconomic but also in civilpolitical terms. This means that in tackling poverty this approach invites actors to bring into consideration concerns about both socioeconomic and civilpolitical rights. There must be a growing political understanding that not allowing the poor to develop on their own terms is a cost, let alone embarrassment, to society. This means that the economic and social systems need to be reformed as well so as to cater for the interests of such people. Governance measures to redress previous imbalances in the social and economic sectors would include ensuring that development in these sectors is being viewed not in a patronising manner as meeting perceived needs, but in terms of an activist rights approach. The latter would emphasise that states are not solely responsible for the destiny of their peoples but the latter themselves,

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through their own organisations, share in this effort. Such a redefinition of how to do development, however, requires a broader understanding and recognition of the rights that go with it. Various social and economic rights that are targeted on improving the living conditions for the disadvantaged in society, not the least women and children, must be elevated to a higher level of political significance. They must be interpreted in the context of the big picture which means that these rights should be presented as helpful not only to those particular groups but also to society at large. Although the issue is not resolved how far such rights can be assured in the courts, it is not at all beyond reason to assume that step by step progress can be to have such rights become justifiable. It would be a mistake to attempt to try to do so with all the various social and economic rights that have been approved in international conventions in the last few decades, but some of them are clearly more likely to be possible to work with. Such positive rights may include the right to education or the right to housing. The importance here would be to work with cases that may set precedents that can be used in other instances. Having a progressive judiciary which sees its role as creating new rules for how society conducts its affairs becomes important. Judicial power does not have to contradict popular power. If imbued with the notion of how rights fit into the bigger picture of securing more sustainable livelihoods for a larger percentage of people, it can play a very constructive role. In short, judges can be on the side of the poor, as the work of the Supreme Court in India over the years with its activist public interest litigation approach demonstrates. If work on social and economic rights entails both creating and securing rights for the poor, any effort in the domain of civil and political rights would be focused on reassuring people that they apply equally to all. The international community has adopted a multitude of conventions that reaffirm these rights, even though the ratification of these instruments and their incorporation into national legislation still falls far short of expectation. One issue facing those working on SL, therefore, is to ensure that these conventions are being made part of national laws and effectively implemented by the court systems. This is not going to be an easy task because with a more complex human rights regime in the making at the global level, there is also scope for different interpretations of which particular set of rights apply in a given situation. For example, in recent years – confirmed at the International Human Rights Conference in Vienna in 1993 – there has been an interest in securing the rights of indigenous peoples or minorities. This has been an important step forward in the broader context of development but it is clear that such a rights regime can also be called upon to challenge the notion that rights are universal. This is what has happened, for instance, in Fiji where the indigenous population, a de facto minority but in control of the army and most other instruments of the state, has invoked the new rights of indigenous peoples to challenge the political powers of the immigrant Indo-Fijian majority.

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Such contestations, notwithstanding, the important point about the emergence of a global rights regime is that state sovereignty is being challenged. In the past 50 years, the international community has moved from a recognition of the rights of all people to enjoy political independence within the context of their own state to one in which the notion of sovereignty is shifting away from state and territoriality toward people, or groups within peoples that are especially vulnerable. This gradual change in outlook is now being acted upon as both governments and non-governmental organisations refer to universally adopted declarations on human rights as justifications for getting involved in the plights of people who are being exposed to oppression or exploitation by state machineries or unscrupulous individuals with economic power. The idea of interference in the affairs of another state is no longer a principle that everyone endorses. While it is true that the notion that what happens to people in one country is a concern of all, regardless of whether they are citizens or not, may be abused – or at least applied in such a way that it appears as if the strong bully the weak – it opens up important opportunities for governance measures to be taken to implement SL. Programme officers in donor organisations cannot ignore such opportunities but should – and need to – support initiatives in the interest of SL even if it means challenging those in power. It is in this context that support of strengthening judiciaries becomes important. The more judges are able to act free of fear or favour, the greater the chances are that the social capital and social space that organisations of the poor and disadvantaged may have obtained for themselves can be adequately confirmed. There must be a firm and fundamental sense of agreement regarding which rules apply to relations between state and citizens and the interaction among the latter. Without the institutionalisation of such an understanding, the poor and disadvantaged will continue to face problems in realising greater control over their livelihoods. Governance measures under this heading, however, would not necessarily have to be confined to strengthening state institutions like the judiciary that have an official role of adjudicating on how rules apply to specific cases. Equally important is that these confirmatory measures include attention to institutions that can challenge efforts by those in state power – or those with money – to influence court judgements in a particular direction. This means supporting not only human rights organisations that work to educate the public on their civil and political rights but also such organisations that can ensure that the market itself becomes more social, i.e. considerate of the interests of the poor and disadvantaged. Such organisations have a particularly important role to play in teaching society that the market is a potentially constructive institution in which conflicts over resources can be resolved in a positive-sum manner. By proposing and institutionalising new rules for how the market operates considerable gains can be made in ensuring that SL can become a reality for the poor. More difficult but nonetheless equally important is the task of getting political actors to view themselves in a positive-sum perspective. This involves

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making them more inclined to see political compromises as victories rather than defeats, as the case continues to be in many countries where autocratic tendencies still remain. This may involve organising seminars or workshops that expose such actors to what the techniques are for negotiating and resolving conflicts. The problem has been so far that leaders never get to know about these until they are involved in a crisis and learning on the job in such circumstances is not very congenial to internalising these techniques. Preventive measures to help politicians to learn these techniques in more congenial circumstances are important for donor organisations to consider in its approach to SL. Donors have scattered experience from involvement in measures discussed under this heading, but it is an area that may be especially important to pay more systematic attention to in the context of realising SL. The task of helping societies realise that politics can be a positive-sum game is both sensitive and difficult. It may require, therefore, a special study that would indicate precisely how the organisation may move ahead in this area in order to realise its own SL objectives and thereby help member countries to become more effective in doing that on their own.

Governance Issues from Monterrey to Johannesburg From Monterrey to Johannesburg, good governance has been identified and reaffirmed as a prerequisite for future aid allocation. In March 2002, the United Nations Conference on Financing for Development held in Monterrey, Mexico, succeeded in putting in place the framework for a “development compact” under which commitments by developing countries to transparency, good governance and respect for human rights and the rule of law were matched by donor commitments towards policy coherence and accelerated support for good performers (CIDA, p. 4-5). The concept of a development compact has been reaffirmed at the G8 Summit at Kananaskis, Canada, in June 2002. And the WSSD, in Johannesburg, September 2002, highlighted challenges of full acceptance by developing countries of good governance and country ownership as cornerstones of successful development and economic integration as well as recognised governance and institutional framework “within each country and at the international level as essential for sustainable development”. Beyond these summits, OECD ministers issued a statement in which they outlined their role to encourage policy coherence for development, supporting developing countries’ governance capacity, improving aid effectiveness and ensuring adequate aid volume as well as strengthening partnerships and accountability. In a report on the WSSD, they reaffirmed their commitment to strengthen cooperation with non OECD countries to promote good governance and effective policies (Observer, p.54).

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Good governance as a critical factor for development progress has also been emphasised in a number of studies, including the World Bank’s Assessing Aid (1998) and the Role and Effectiveness of Development Assistance(2002). And in its 2003 report, the World Bank confirms that a broad portfolio of assets – physical, financial, human, social and environmental – needs to be managed responsibly if development is to be sustainable. Effective institutions such as property rights, rule of law and others such as education and science and technology that are essential for the creation of human-made assets are needed to achieve the goal of sustainable development. Most importantly, policies that lead to an equal distribution of assets, increased access to assets (access to information and to justice) and increased participation and inclusiveness are crucially important if the institutions in place are to perform effectively their functions. This is to say that institutions alone are not enough and that a combination of a set of factors is required to attain the desired goal. From policy coherence to good domestic governance in recipient countries to partnership mechanisms, these three levels of good governance are needed to ensure effective developments co-operation.

Good Governance for Effective Development Coo pera ti on Coopera perati tio Challenges to Donors In the context of globalisation and the growing interdependence between states and interrelatedness between issues, ensuring policy coherence is crucial if aid assistance is to be effective. Policy coherence implies that governmental policies should work together and in tandem to reinforce common objectives. Although translating principles into actions is rather a challenge, the objective of policy coherence, with poverty reduction as a central goal, has been accepted and widely supported within the OECD, the G8, the World Bank, the IMF and the UN system. Policy coherence should be achieved in areas – as identified by the OECD – such as trade and investment, international finance, food and agriculture, natural resources and environmental sustainability, social issues including labour standards, immigration, health and governance and conflicts (CIDA, p.17). Other areas of crucial importance and require policy coherence are debt, market access and tied aid. Unsustainable debts negatively affect poverty, social and environmental situation of a country (Van Hees, p.3). Debts, therefore, form an obstacle to sustainable development. The WSSD put debt relief alongside improved market access and higher levels of ODA, as a crucial milestone towards reaching the MDGs which aim to reduce poverty by half by 2015. In terms of market access and trade, least-developed countries represent about 11 per cent

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of the world’s population and account only for just 0.5 per cent of the world’s exports of goods and services (CIDA, p.19). Greater policy coherence is, therefore, required in relation to tariffs, quotas, regulatory barriers and subsidies which have, on the long-run, the opposite effect of what they are originally intended to achieve. As to tied aid, the practice of requiring that aid funds be used for purchases in donor countries is considered by many to represent a clear case of policy incoherence and is inconsistent with trends towards trade liberalisation, the dismantling of investment barriers and with the promotion of effective development partnerships, local ownership and capacity building strategies. At the 2001 G8 Summit, leaders endorsed an agreement reached by the OECDDAC which commits donors to untie aid on seven categories of aid to leastdeveloped countries: balance of payments and structural adjustments support, debt forgiveness, sector and multi-sector programme assistance, investment project aid, import and commodity support, commercial services contracts and ODA to non-governmental organisations for procurement-related activities (CIDA, p.21). It is now the time to translate rhetoric into action. In this context, Canada through CIDA is assessing the effectiveness of its aid programmes and is seeking to refine its aid policies to give them more focus. The principles that will guide these efforts include providing increased attention to leadership role of developing countries (local ownership), promoting greater coordination with other donors and fostering greater coherence in Canada’s policies that affect developing country partners. Good governance, building capacity and engaging civil society are also principles and factors of aid effectiveness and development progress. In terms of policy coherence, and market access, effective January 1, 2003, Canada will extend duty-free and quota-free access to all imports with some exceptions (CIDA, p.19). Changes will also be made in the tied aid policies designed to reinforce aid effectiveness. Along with the principles of strengthening aid effectiveness, decisions will be made according to geographical and sectoral allocation of CIDA’s resources; country concentration becomes important if programmatic approach and aid assistance are to be used effectively. CIDA’s programming orientations will be situated within the locally owned frameworks identified by developing countries, particularly through PRSP process which involves a legitimate participatory approach.

Challenges to Recipient Partners In recipient countries, good domestic governance (policies and institutions for securing stability including rule of law, justice system, human rights and security) is recognised as a prerequisite for achieving aid effectiveness and country concentration based on this recognition is being seen as necessary for aid to be used effectively. The mantra seems to be that rewarding good performers

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helps achieve sustainable results. Good performers are one of the three categories according to which developing country partners can be divided based on their level of development and their ability to effectively use development assistance (CIDA, p.9-10). The first group of countries are middle income developing countries generally characterised as having a relatively strong governance capacity, sectoral and national plans for reducing poverty. Their requirements for development assistance often involve specific high-level technical assistance rather than large amounts of resource transfers. The second group of countries is the low income countries with weak capacity governments that are, however, committed, to varying degrees, to reforms, increased transparency, democracy as well as committed to taking ownership of their development challenges. The third group of countries consist of the poor countries with extremely low governance capacity and little commitment to reform. According to this concept of selectivity, only countries with “good policies” and “good governance” should receive substantial amounts of development aid since aid is said to be effective only in such countries. The challenge for recipient countries is, therefore, to be categorised as good performers. It is argued, however, that aid practices should be defined in terms of poverty needs, the level of ownership, participation and local commitment to poverty reduction and not according to pre-set policies (the WB and other donors’ performance-based aid allocation system continues to put much emphasis on old Washington-Consensus type of policies such as plain trade openness that have an unknown, if not negative impact on the poor. Evidence shows that that pro-poor expenditures, instead of pre-set policies, are sufficient conditions to ensure aid effectiveness in the broad sense. Based on such evidence, each low income country should receive an amount and type of aid defined according to its poverty needs, described in country-owned pro-poor strategies. Such process has to be transparent, participatory and focused on pro-poor expenditures and policies (Moving beyond Good and Bad Performance, p.1). The challenge remains that recipient countries should show commitment to poverty reduction goals.

New Partnership Mechanisms between “Donors” and “Recipient” countries At the 2001 G8 Summit in Genoa, African leaders presented a clear articulation of their commitment to positive change in the form of a plan to promote stability, reduce poverty and end Africa’s marginalisation. NEPAD is an example of a new form of partnership between Africa and the developed world based on mutual respect and responsibility and the international principles of aid effectiveness. It reflects increased political will and leadership and emphasises African ownership of the development process with assistance from development

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partners. Like NEPAD, innovative partnerships should be established between developed and developing countries to help move from projects to programmes to policy and ultimately to stronger governance relationships. The shift from projects to a programme and country level with a focus on sustainability is consistent with the objectives of strengthening aid effectiveness. In support of PRSP, as a programming instrument, SWAPS or sector-wide approaches involve implementing projects that support sectoral plans or contributing aid funds to a common pot that the developing country would then use to implement its sectoral plan. Whether PRSP or SWAPs, these instruments emphasise local ownership and donor coordination as well as reflect a comprehensive approach to development. They also reflect a strong emphasis on strengthening government capacity in developing countries, through the provision of technical assistance and the establishment of policy environments conducive to social and economic progress. The drawback with SWAPS, however, is that it is sectoral as opposed to cross-sectoral. By nature, SWAPS is, therefore, limited. On the other hand, a sustainable livelihoods approach is a broad programme approach which allows space for cross-sectoral participatory development. In the provision of providing technical assistance to developing countries to strengthen their policy capacity in the appropriate areas, good governance will be fostered and sound policy enhanced. Over time, governance relationships will be strengthened.

Appl yin g the prin ciples t oaC arib bean Governan ce Applyin ying principles to Carib aribbean Governance Agenda The ultimate goal of a Caribbean governance agenda must be to build and maintain strong economies with sustainable livelihoods for all. There is, however, a gap between what should be and what is and translating goals into reality is not always an easy task. This agenda, in fact, faces challenges due to a number of reasons. Among others, are the multiple vulnerabilities stemming from both internal and external factors. Internal factors include small open economies, disposition to natural disasters, fragile ecosystem and high per capita infrastructure costs while external factors include trade issues, prices of world market primary commodities such as sugar and bauxite, tourism (aftermath September 11). In addition to these vulnerabilities, the issue of constitutive politics poses a challenge to this agenda. How to influence the rules and those who make these rules lies at the very sources of vulnerability, whether at the local, national or international levels, is a challenge to the whole system in place, a challenge which requires leadership and will at all levels of local, national and international levels.

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At the local level, actions should be geared towards empowerment through decentralisation (which could have reverse effects leaving the poor exposed to the mercies of the local overlords) (Bardhan, p.18). Empowerment requires that the top allows space to the bottom to demand power and that the shift in power relations takes place through articulation, mobilisation, distribution and confirmation. Micro-macro linkages should be established and bottom-up and top-down approaches combined. This is when the role of sub-regional local level networks of government organisations, NGOs and CBOs become crucial. In Jamaica, for instance, there is a clear need to develop appropriate mechanisms to empower the emerging community-based organisations as a means of strengthening Jamaican democratic governance (Munroe, p.6). These new institutions of voice at the community and other levels provide ready material for empowerment within the framework of a democratised local government, including decentralised and regionalised economic development planning (Munroe, p.8). Well conceived partnerships between different instances of the community and of governments at the national and international levels could effectively contribute to rebuilding the social capital including rebuilding trust across ethnic and institutional divides. In addition to local action and micro-macro linkages, managing the forces of globalisation is essential to make openness work for all, especially to allow the local levels of societies to seize the opportunities offered by globalisation. Clearly the process of globalisation requires increased decision-making at supranational level whether regional, hemispheric or global. More effective cooperation is required between governments to strengthen reforms in intergovernmental organisations (e.g WTO) to make such bodies more open and transparent in order to reduce the “external democratic deficit”(Munroe, p.3). Enhanced grass-roots participation to influence governmental functions and increased support for community-based organisations and civil society bodies are also important mechanisms for representation and accountability (Munroe, p.4). It is also important that Caribbean countries make use of their strategic influence in relevant external fora, national and international, to bring about the desired change as defined in the agenda. Partnerships with donor countries is another effective way to exert influence on power relations to their advantage to build strong resilient economies with sustainable livelihoods. New goals, skills, resources and accountability criteria could also be defined for the foreign service. Most importantly, as shown by the Jamaican case, which represents lessons that can be learned in other developing countries, poverty reduction should be upgraded into national priorities. It is shown that most poverty reduction programmes in developing countries are formulated, designed and implemented sectorally. As a result, they lack the necessary integration and co-ordination. There is a need for a clear mandate given under the national budget for all relevant governmental agencies to pursue poverty reduction under agreed

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national objectives which implies that poverty reduction should become an integral part of national development policy across the board (P. Osei, p.786). Effective partnerships between community, governments and private sector could also offer an alternative institutional arrangement in the process of poverty elimination (P. Osei, p.787).

Conclusions The purpose of this paper has been to demonstrate the significance of governance to SL and the various ways that it can be conceived and operationalised. It has provided a somewhat more specific definition of governance in order to enable donors programme staff to treat it as a tool of the trade rather than an all-encompassing rubric for a broad set of agency programmes. As such, it does not contradict but focuses the efforts already being made to use the concept in these organisations. Governance, as defined here, becomes especially important because it emphasises the big picture, thereby elevating discourse about what needs to be done to a meta level where the rules for policy and action are being set. It is acknowledged that donors already have extensive programme experience in the areas covered above, but that the new approach entails becoming more sensitive to the political dimensions of development, especially the significance of rights as opposed to needs as its basis, and provides an operational way forward. The issue that remains to be addressed here is how far governance in the context of SL can be translated into a programme manual. The suggestion is that the issues associated with governance are not easily treated in a technocratic manner. Rather, they rely on good judgement and the creative application of each programme officer in a given country context. What this paper has tried to demonstrate is the underlying logic or potential for dynamic use of governance in an SL approach. It indicates various ways of creating social and political synergy effects that foster SL. In the final analysis, however, how exactly the various power dimensions identified above may relate to each other, e.g. in terms of sequencing, will depend on the situation in each given country context.

NOTES 1

This paper is based in large part on an earlier draft paper entitled “Governance for Sustainable Livelihoods. Operational Issues” prepared by Goran Hyden at the request of Naresh Singh, while at the UNDP.

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References Chambers, Robert and Gordon Conway. 1992. “Sustainable Rural Livelihoods: Practical Concepts for the 21st Century”. IDS Discussion Paper No 296. Falmer, Sussex, Institute of Development Studies. CIDA, September. 2002. Canada Making a Difference in the World. A Policy Statement on Strengthening Aid Effectiveness, Ottawa, CIDA. Davies, Susanna. 1993. “Versatile Livelihoods: Strategic Adaptation to Food Insecurity in the Malian Sahel”. Falmer, Sussex, Institute of Development Studies. Munroe, Trevor. “2002. Voice, Participation and Governance in a Changing Environment. The Case of Jamaica”. University of West Indies. Osei. P. 2002. “A Critical Assessment of Jamaica’s National Poverty Eradication Programme”. Journal of International Development, 14:786. Pranab Bardhan. “Democracy and Development: A Complex Relationship”. University of California at Berkley. Singh, Naresh and Vangile Titi. 1994. “Adaptive Strategies of the Poor in Arid and SemiArid Lands: In Search of Sustainable Livelihoods”. IISD Working Paper. Winnipeg, International Institute for Sustainable Development. Van Hees, Lemoine and Haegens. 2002. “Putting Sustainable Development First”. Eurodad. UNDP. 1997. Governance for Sustainable Human Development. New York, UNDP. World Summit for Social Development 1995. Program of Action. New York, United Nations. Observer No.233, August 2002, p.54 http://www.developmentgoals.org/Poverty.htm www.eurodad.org/articles/default.aspx?id=373 (Moving Beyond Good and bad Performance) http://Inweb18.worldbank.org/External/lac/lac.nsf/Countries/OECS/1ffdd81022fb1f6685256 www.worldbank.org/poverty/empowerment/whatis/elements.htm

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Caricom: From Community to Single Market & Economy

PART 6 REGIONAL GOVERNANCE

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The Re vised Trea ty o f Chagu ara mas Revised Treat of Chaguara aram

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he provisions of the CARICOM Single Market and Economy (CSME) were originally inscribed in nine Protocols (1989/1992) to The Treaty of Chaguaramas Establishing the Caribbean Community (1973). That Treaty has since been amended to incorporate those Protocols and is formally designated The Revised Treaty of Chaguaramas Including the CARICOM Single Market and Economy. The areas the Protocols covered were: establishment, services and capital; industrial policy; trade policy; agricultural policy; transport policy; disadvantaged countries, regions and sectors; competition policy and consumer protection; dumping and subsidies; dispute settlement. In addition, macroeconomic policy convergence, fiscal policy harmonisation, monetary union/single currency, as well as the Caribbean Court of Justice, complete the mandate for implementing the CSME. The free trade regime and the common external tariff (CET) were core features of the earlier Common Market and of course are essential components of the CSME. There is no provision in the Treaty for a Community Transnational Enterprise Law, nor is there for harmonised Labor Law and Property Law, features that would normally be expected in a single market. This paper will review briefly the progress achieved to date under all of the salient economic provisions that together are considered to constitute the CSME mandate. Following this review, certain aspects of the Caribbean Community’s approach to creating a single market and economy that have implications for its future viability will be discussed. They include fundamental values and the conception of a single economic space, national sovereignty, and financing the Community institutions. This will be followed by the author’s prognosis on the future of the CSME and related proposals that might help to advance this elusive quest.

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Progress of the Caribbean Single Market and Economy The Institutional and Legal Framework The record of decisions made and timelines set by the intergovernmental organs, especially in respect of the institutional and legal framework of the CSME, is impressive. In contrast, the record of implementation of these decisions by the member states is very poor.

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The Caribbean Court of Justice The Caribbean Court of Justice (CCJ) has attained (July 2002) the minimum number of country ratifications (three) for entry into force. Ratification procedures vary from state to state and completion of the process by other states could involve longer delays than anticipated. No member state has so far enacted the Agreement establishing the CCJ into domestic law. Action also has to be taken by the Caribbean Development Bank on the decision that a sum of US$100 million should be sourced to establish a Trust Fund to finance member states’ contributions to this institution.

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Competition Policy Implementation of the Treaty provisions has not been undertaken in any member state. They are now examining model laws.

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Intellectual Property Rights Several member states do not have laws on Intellectual Property Rights (IPR) and have not taken action on WTO/TRIPS compliance. No action has been taken to date on the establishment of a regional administration for IPR, about which there are also national reservations. Virtually nothing has been done in respect of the Treaty provisions regarding establishing mechanisms for the protection of indigenous culture, expressions of folklore and traditional knowledge.

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Company Law Virtually nothing has been achieved to date in respect of the harmonisation of company law, and in any case some member states have serious conceptual difficulties about the approach to it.

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Financial Services- Banking, Insurance and Securities Action on harmonisation in these fields seems to be for the distant future as studies are only now being undertaken on the similarities and dissimilarities in existing national legislation.

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Customs Law The model law that has been prepared has been adopted by only one member state. It has been abandoned de facto by the Organisation of Eastern Caribbean States (OECS), which has devised its own law. In any case, several member states have serious difficulties with the model law.

Government Procurement The CSME has no provisions on government procurement, which is a feature of the WTO, the FTAA and ACP-EU New Trading Arrangements. No action has been taken so far on drafting and negotiating a Community Government Procurement Protocol. •

Standards and Technical Requirements The Caribbean Organisation for Standards and Quality (CROSQ) has been established but there are concerns about the adequacy and reliability of funding for the institution.

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Dispute Settlement Apart from the role of the CCJ in respect of dispute settlement, several other dispute settlement modes are provided for in the Treaty, including a Conciliation Commission and Arbitration Tribunal. Most member states have not submitted nominees for the List of Arbitrators and Conciliators.

Market Access Free Movement of Goods According to the Caribbean Community Secretariat (CCS) some 95 per cent of intra-regional trade is free of barriers. Nevertheless, after 30 years of the Community’s existence, intra-regional exports amount (in 2000) to only 18 per cent of total regional exports, having increased from 11.5 per cent in 1990. Moreover, in domestic value-added terms the absolute value of intra-regional trade would be substantially less (perhaps one-half) than its nominal value. While the increase that took place over the last decade is almost wholly attributable to Trinidad and Tobago, some 75 per cent of this country’s intraregional exports consists of mineral fuels, lubricants, chemicals and related materials that would have taken place without the free trade regime. There has been a small increase in the intra-regional exports of Barbados but this has been offset by the complete stagnation in those of the Eastern Caribbean states and a substantial decline in Jamaica’s.

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Intra-regional trade probably could be increased to some extent since there still remains in several member states unauthorized barriers and licenses, as well as discriminatory internal taxes and other fiscal charges. However, even with the removal of these remaining restraints, intra-regional trade is unlikely to rise to a significantly higher level without the kind of transformation of the productive structure that would make this possible.

Free Movement of Services No member state has yet enacted legislation to put into effect the Treaty provisions on the removal of restrictions to trade in services (including selfemployed service providers, entrepreneurs, technical, managerial and supervisory staff, spouses and immediate dependent family members)

Free Movement of Persons All states with two exceptions (and The Bahamas that does not participate in the Common Market) have implemented legislation enabling the movement without work permits of certified tertiary graduates (skills). Movement is nevertheless subject to constrains, the severity of which varies from state to state, such as national certification requirements, immigration procedures, administrative delays, the rights and status of family members, and other contingent rights. Most states have not yet put into effect legislative and administrative arrangements for the movement of media workers, artistes, musicians, and sports persons. Although the skills legislation has been adopted in most member states for more than five years, relatively few skilled persons have actually moved to other Community States (statistics are not available). Ironically, there seems to have been more movement among unskilled persons though they are not included in the “free movement” legislation.

Free Movement of Capital To date no member state has enacted legislation or implementation programs to put into effect the Treaty provisions on the removal of restrictions to the free movement of capital. Complicating issues that need to be determined concern the different modes under which capital moves in and out of member states that are governed by specific national laws (e.g. direct foreign investment, portfolio investment, banking, insurance, securities, real estate, industrial establishment, repatriation, etc) and also vary from state to state.

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Common External Protection While most states have adopted de jure the fourth phase of the CET, a common external protective regime is still far from having been achieved. This is due to the incomplete or defective application of the CET, and the increasing use of derogations from it; the presence of non-tariff barriers, including standards, health and environmental protective measures, subsidies, and inter-country differences in value-added and in the application of rules of origin.

Sectoral Policies The Treaty provides for sectoral policies in respect of agriculture, industry, services and transport. These policies are mostly expressions of intentions to promote, cooperate, collaborate, and coordinate actions in respect of a variety of common problems. They fall very far short of what would be expected of sectoral policy in a single economic space. Even at the level of inter governmental cooperative actions (with the exception of limited aspects of the tourism sector) little or nothing has actually been achieved.

Macroeconomic Coordination The Treaty provisions are also expressions of intentions to promote, collaborate, coordinate policies conducive to sound national macroeconomic policies, and again are not what would be expected of a commitment to create a single economic space. In fact, even at the level of inter-governmental collaboration on macroeconomic policies very little has been done or even attempted. The Council of Ministers of Finance and Planning (COFAP) itself nevertheless recognized (in 2001) that “lack of macroeconomic coordination could result in severe disintegrative effects…. and that countries must be prepared to cede some degree of sovereignty in economic policy formulation to the regional level”. Fiscal Policy Harmonisation Technical work on the issue has scarcely begun. COFAP agreed that a tax harmonisation framework and tax harmonisation guidelines should be developed for its consideration, and a Working Group on Fiscal Policy has been established. Likewise, a Community Investment Policy, including a harmonised system of investment incentives, is a long way off as technical preparations are still in progress. A Protocol on a Harmonized Corporation Tax Structure has been prepared and is presently going through the process of inter-governmental examination. The CARICOM Double Taxation Agreement has been signed and

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ratified by most member states and is effective among eight of them that have put the enabling legal framework in place.

Monetary Integration/ Union The approach to this issue has been to monitor set macroeconomic parameters against pre-determined targets, so as to gauge the extent of macroeconomic convergence, the accepted pre-condition for moving to a single currency. Not only has attainment of the targets generally been below expectation in respect of all parameters, but also no sanctions are provided for underperformance. In considering the issue of monetary union, COFAP recently accepted the recommendation of the Committee of Central Bank Governors that a monetary union involving all CARICOM Member States is not achievable at this point in time, but should remain a long-term goal. For all practical purposes a single currency for the single market has been abandoned.

Fundamental Values and the Single Market and Economy The poor record of implementation indicated above cannot be wholly due to inadequate institutional capacity. There is no apparent correlation among the member states between their institutional capacity and their record of implementation. Nor does there seem to be a correlation between the complexity of the task and institutional capacity. In any case, institutional strengthening is not an answer to weak political conviction. It is said, “it took the complete collapse of Europe and its political and economic decline to create the conditions for and give impetus to the idea of a new European order” (Euro-Lex). The fundamental values inspired by this experience are expressed in the EU Treaty. The Treaty begins with a commitment to create “an ever closer union among the European peoples”. Its objectives include” to promote economic and social progress and a high level of employment and to achieve balanced and sustainable development, in particular through the creation of an area without frontiers, through the strengthening of economic and social cohesion and through the establishment of economic and monetary union, ultimately including a single currency..” It aims “to strengthen the protection of the rights and interests of the nationals of its Member States through the introduction of a citizenship of the union”. In contrast, the revised Treaty of Chaguaramas merely recognizes a number of narrowly defined technical objectives, such as “improved standards of living and work”, “enhanced levels of international competitiveness”, “enhanced functional cooperation”. There is nothing in the Treaty objectives that commits states to the essential values of Caribbean Community. Yet the creation of a

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unified economic space is now the declared purpose of the Community. Thus while projecting at the inter-governmental level symbols of economic unity, national political authorities operate in a mode of narrowly focused goals disconnected from any ultimate vision of Caribbean Community. The CSME continues to be defined in the same way as the concepts applied to the earlier Common Market, that is the gradual, state-by-state, removal of barriers. The European Union when it inaugurated its single market in the mid-1980s introduced the concept of the internal market that created an area without internal frontiers in which the free movement of goods, persons, services, and capital is ensured. Physical (checks on persons and goods at internal customs posts), technical (national rules in a variety of fields) and tax-related (different indirect taxes) frontiers were thereby abolished. The change to a single market was accompanied by changes in the Community legislative system (European Directives, approved by qualified majority voting for most subjects, that are obliged to be transposed into national law in the member states) designed to encourage adoption of the measures needed for completion of the single market. However, in CARICOM, the SME in effect reasserts the maintenance of frontiers, within which access conditions are to be progressively liberalised and selected legislation harmonised. The frontiers stays but crossing is to be made easier. The distinction can be understood if one considers the difference between persons, goods and capital crossing the border, say, of St. Michael into Christ Church in Barbados and the same attempting to enter that country from another CARICOM state.

National Sovereignty The Caribbean Community intends to create a Single Market and Economy with each member state retaining maximum national sovereignty. It intends to do so apparently through a mode of discretionary inter-governmental cooperation. These objectives clearly are contradictory. The effects of this approach are manifest in the failure to achieve any significant progress in respect of the program of legislative harmonisation, the removal of barriers to the movement of people, services and capital, and the titular commitments made to macroeconomic coordination, fiscal harmonisation and monetary integration. This was also the experience of the European Community. By the mid 1980s there had been no substantial reduction in non-tariff measures; except for certain professions, the free movement of services had been instituted only as nondiscrimination on the grounds of nationality; free trade in goods was still restricted by anti-competitive practices imposed by public authorities. According to the European Parliament stagnation in the achievement of the common market was largely attributed to the choice of detailed legislative harmonisation as the method of removing the obstacles of national technical regulations, when

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harmonisation was in fact very difficult to achieve…” The Single European Act of 1985 that created the European single market was the answer to this impasse. It incorporated the concept of the internal market referred to above and radically altered the legislative decision-making machinery. CARICOM however, unlike the EU, in moving to a single market kept the old common market concepts (of frontiers and state-by-state liberalisation of market access) and legislative procedures (of inter-governmental harmonisation and national ratification) in place. This dichotomy lies at the root of the impasse in CARICOM. Beyond the legislative and market access areas, it is becoming increasingly apparent in CARICOM that such issues as sectoral policy, macroeconomic coordination, fiscal harmonisation and monetary integration simply cannot proceed in an environment of unadulterated national sovereignty. The CCJ is itself an illustration of sovereignty being breached by default. In its original jurisdiction the Court becomes necessary since in its absence the municipal courts of all member states would be competent to interpret and apply the Revised Treaty, with the possible consequence that their decisions may not be consistent. However ensuring consistency of legal decisions in this way results in an important aspect of supranationality being inserted into an otherwise inter-governmental mode of cooperation. Indeed, even outside the CSME framework, encroachments on the principle of national sovereignty are observable, for example in respect of such sectoral policy areas as offshore financial services and regional security (illicit drugs, arms trafficking, money laundering).

Financing the Caribbean Community and Single Market and Economy The CSME calls for the establishment of a number of new Community institutions. They include the Caribbean Court of Justice, a standards organisation, a competition commission, a conciliation commission, a regional securities body, a regional intellectual property rights office, and a regional development fund. Most of these new Community institutions are premised on the existence of national counterparts that actually do not presently exist in most member states. Already the Community supports over a dozen regional organisations, including the Community Secretariat, the Regional Negotiating Machinery, and the University of the West Indies. In the absence of an independent source of income for the Community institutions, all these new institutions will require annual national appropriations (apart from the CCJ for which loan-based arrangements are being made through the Caribbean Development Bank). How this will be achieved, including the resources for the national counterparts, remains to be seen. There can be little confidence that governments will be prepared to fund these institutions in an environment that is already politically strained and financially distressed over

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commitments to the existing regional institutions- not to mention at a time of economic stagnation. The financing issue was also one that confronted the European Community and was resolved by a decision in 1970 on “own resources” for the Community. In fact, this was originally provided for under the Treaty of Rome, which stipulated that the EEC was to be financed by national contributions for a transitional period before changing to a system of own resources. Own resources have been found in a mixture of “natural” own resources, which are revenues collected by virtue of Community policies such as customs duties, agricultural levies, VAT own resources, and GNP based balancing resources. Presently the own resource system is based on a ceiling of 1.27 per cent of the Union’s GNP, with a maximum call-in rate of VAT starting from 0.75 per cent and declining. The European Court is financed out of the Union’s own resources. By way of comparison, 1.0 per cent of the GNP of the CARICOM States (excluding Haiti) would amount to about US$ 300 million a year. The CCS annual budget is now US$10 million, plus donor resources of US$4 million a year. A fully operational CCJ is expected to need annually US$4 million. The financing issue, and particularly the institution of an own resources system, thus becomes a real test of political conviction, and exposes the artificial dichotomy between the political and the economic on which regional integration philosophy is presently based.

Prognosis and Proposals There is little reason to believe that the CSME will live up to its expectations unless the three questions identified in this paper are positively addressed, that is, what are the fundamental values of the Community? Where does Community intent to go in respect of national sovereignty? And, is the Community prepared to back the CSME with adequate and assured own financing? While the answers to those questions are likely to be negative in the present political environment, a few suggestions might be made here to help pave the way forward. Regarding the first question, a special session of the Conference of Heads of Government might be prepared on the fundamental values and objectives of Caribbean integration, with a view to adopting a declaration on them. On the second question, two avenues might be explored. One is the use of an ad hoc fast track authority for the Conference of Heads of Government to declare European-type Directives in limited, specified areas of legislative harmonisation, such as competition policy and consumer protection, intellectual property rights, financial services, customs, and company law. The authority might be given sequentially and for a limited period of time, so as to test the feasibility of the system. These Community Directives (based on model laws

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prepared for the Community or even selected best-practice existing laws in a member state) would immediately have the status of Community law and member states would be obliged to automatically transpose them into national law. The other is to make use of the principles of subsidiarity and proportionality. These principles are intended to limit superfluous intervention at the Community level and unnecessary complexity in the harmonisation process. According to the subsidiarity principle the Community must act where the objectives to be pursued can be better attained at that level, and that the Community must not act where the objectives can be satisfactorily attained by the member states acting individually. The principle of proportionality means that the need for specific legal instruments must be thoroughly assessed to determine whether there is a less constraining means of achieving the same result. The main conclusion reached is that framework legislation, minimum standards and mutual recognition of member states existing standards should always be preferred to excessively detailed Community rules. A large number of issues probably could be treated under one or other of these reduced instrumentalities (e.g. educational accreditation, dumping, standards for trade in goods, trade in services, the movement of capital, macroeconomic and fiscal harmonisation) to circumvent the excessively slow and tortuous path of Community legislation. A full determination of the possible scope of their application would be helpful. With respect to the third question, while recognising that it represents a leap in the development of Caribbean integration, a small step might be taken that could be a creative precedent for the future, while minimising political contention in member states. The CCS annual budget at $10 million is very modest. The institution has served the region well for over thirty years and it is likely to be a durable feature on the region’s landscape. The Conference of Heads of Government could consider transferring its budget, wholly or partially, to an own resources arrangement, based on a marginal addition to the CET, within pre-determined dynamic limits. The national appropriations thereby released could be applied in the transition period toward the new institutions to be created. Indeed, including the CCJ under the same arrangement would have some merit, including enhancing the Court’s independence and reducing the opportunity cost of its funding, as compared with the CDB loan-based Trust Fund arrangement. The CET-plus adjustment would be insignificant. Ultimately, as fiscal harmonisation is achieved, the VAT could become the base of the Community’s own resources system.

*

The views expressed in this paper are personal and should not be attributed to the Government of Guyana, or to the Inter-American Development Bank.

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RegIOnAl InTegRATIOn InSTITuTIOnAl ARRAngeMenTS: undeRlyIng ASSuMpTIOnS And COnTeMpORARy AppROpRIATeneSS VAUGHAN LEWIS

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he Governments of the member-states of the Caribbean Community have been engaged, at least since taking the decisions embodied in the Grand Anse Declaration of 1989, in a prolonged process of reform of the orientation of the Community and Common Market, and of the instruments required to match that revised orientation. The new orientation derives from recognition of three processes as they affect the functioning of CARICOM: (i)

the multilateralisation of decision-making required of CARICOM in its external economic relations in the post-Cold War post-WTO environment; (ii) the necessity, in the era of “open regionalism” to focus on, and to arrange the common market space less as an arena of intra-regional trade fostered by state initiative, instruments and investments, and more as an economic platform emphasising free movement of factors and facilitating full rights of establishment for regional and foreign investment and related economic activities; and (iii) that in response to external processes, the boundaries of the common market are increasingly fluid and changeable as the Community feels constrained to increase its “economic size” and diplomatic weight in the wider hemispheric and international economic systems affecting it.

Mul til ateralis m and D ecisi on-M akin g ultil tila teralism Decisi ecisio n-Makin aking In respect of the first of these, the necessity to respond to the transformation of the European Union into a Single Economic Market; the recognition, since at least 1992, that agreements made with the EU in respect of future Caribbean-EU trade regimes are no longer discrete and final, but are subject to the wider jurisdiction of the WTO regime, and the recognition therefore, that the WTO

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regime itself is now integral to the economic decision-making of Common Market regime, has shifted the focus of CARICOM concern from the management of the domestic (that is intra-regional market) regime to face-to-face relations with the WTO multilateral regime as the determining instrument of the legitimacy of subordinate trade regimes. This has been the case for example, in the prolonged whether negotiation of for new EU-ACP banana regime, or in elaborating a response to the complaints of the OECD relating to off-shore financial services. In effect, the eras of first, British intermediation and diplomatic protection (prevalent up to about 1990 in the banana regime case), or European Union (Commission) intermediation (as in the negotiation of an acceptable banana export regime in the contemporary post-GATT and WTO period), are over. The Caribbean Community now had to establish direct and continuing presences at the “centres” of the multilateral regimes, so as to be able to permit adequate surveillance and response to their changing parameters. This applies even in the case of the use of intermediary multilateral institutions like the Commonwealth Secretariat, as in the case with the countries’ difficulties with the OECD. The implications of all this for the arrangement of the necessary technical resources and the modes of their support, immediately come into consideration. Further, it is an open question as to whether the case for particular treatment, within the framework of emerging multilateral regimes, in recognition of “special and differential characteristics” of small-island states, can be sustained over the long-run. The neat “developing-developed” categorisation is fast disappearing, and CARICOM states find themselves in an era of extremely diverse “states as economic types”, following the transformation of the global system into a complex of states with differing economic endowments and social assets, all allegedly travelling along the path of “transition to capitalism”. This observation does not negate the need for continuing diplomatic efforts in regard to “special and differential characteristics”. But it recognises the need for CARICOM governmental understanding that, as in the past, the dominant entities determining the evolution of multilateral regimes will also determine the concessions that they make on the basis of their estimation of the “strategic”characteristics of third countries relative their own economic orientations and the negative processes that they perceive as emanating from particular states or regions. The United States treatment of Mexico pending, and after, its entry into NAFTA is illustrative of this. In other words the focus on the military or ideological aspects of security having changed, new connotations of “strategic”in economic relationships, now come into play. What follows from this is that the Caribbean Community as currently politically and economically defined (bounded) - the smallest trading bloc with a population of less than six million and a combined GDP of US$20bn - is not,

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in the post-1990 world, coming on to the screen of any major country, or set of countries which determine the rules of multilateral trade or international production, as having an economic, psychological, exemplary or other significance that would merit characterisation as “strategic”, and therefore special attention and special treatment. That some very small entitities exist within the European continental geopolitical and geoeconomic framework, and are able to adapt to the changing requirements of the European or wider international spheres, reinforces sentiments against embedding recognition of “special characteristics” within multilateral regimes. (This permanent embedding is really the issue). And that small countries like Jamaica and Singapore, which, in the middle of the 1960s, had similar population sizes and per capita incomes, though having differing natural or created endowments, have had different economic evolutions, reinforces the tendency of major powers or multilateral institutions to put less emphasis on the “special and differential” issue as the significant one determining chances of economic progress. From this perspective, size, and any deficiencies said to derive from it, are not seen as independent or determining variables in the evolution of economies. What is therefore implied from this perspective, is that further clarification of the assumptions underlying the Community’s international diplomacy, and the required institutional underpinning for it , is necessary. And this must be done in the context of determining to what extent the endowments of member states permit particular modes of collective (regional) economic strategies, taking into consideration current regimes of international production and trade, in combination with modes of national and regional economic strategy appropriate to the endowments of the member-states and to current modes of international production. It is not however clear that within the Caribbean Community, the necessity for a concept and practice of regional (that is collective) economic strategising (harmonisation) is accepted, even though it is implicit in the operationalising of a single market and economy which all have assented to. On the other hand however, incipient and increasing informal (private sector) financial and commercial integration- creation of multi-country-based private economic operations – in and beyond the CARICOM region proper, suggests a growing private sector – as distinct from government – notion of regional economic strategising. We shall return to the institutional implications of this.

Str uc tural Ad just ment pen Regi onalis m and Struc uctural Adjust justment ment,, O Open Regio nalism Al terna tive O rient ati ons Alterna ternative Orient rienta tio The second of the processes to which we referred at the beginning of this paper concerns the effects and implications of the implementation of structural

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adjustment measures on the regional integration system. While the Nassau Understanding on Structural Adjustment agreed by CARICOM in 1984 can be seen as an attempt to harmonise national responses to the measures required by the IMF/World Bank, the differing short-term outcomes for the countries involved in terms of achieving macro-economic stability did not permit any return to harmonious decision-making in terms of the common market system. What the Nassau Understanding, in concert with the Grande Anse Declaration (1989) did was to confirm at the level of guiding economic philosophy or strategy, the de facto ending of a commitment by the political directorate, as accepted in 1973, to the use of the common market process as a means of achieving regional import substitution as a significant element in further national and regional economic growth. The commitment to the CARICOM Single Market and Economy with its immediate emphasis on the lowering of tariffs, appeared to give the transition from the customs union of 1973 to a single market a continuity in concentrating on the upgrading of the internal common market, reflecting the importance attributed to ensuring the resumption of intra-regional trade. In fact, however, though it was not put in this way, the 1992 decisions marked a change of balance and focus by CARICOM between concentration on the functioning internal market to emphasising the need to focus on making an appropriate response to global economic liberalisation as reflected in the establishment of NAFTA and the European Single Economic Market (SEM), and the effect of the GATT (later WTO) decisions on the reorganisation of the banana regime and thus on European Union responses to multilateral rule-making. This is, in effect, a way of saying that the decision-making of CARICOM now became more subject to the requirements of the international system, than to any internal dynamic emanating from within, or decisions within, the internal market. And this marked a conversion to what has come to be called “open regionalism” in consonance with developments occurring among developing countries (Mexico, Argentina, later Brazil, and significantly from a size point of view Costa Rica) within the hemisphere. It is the institutional implications of this shift or conversion, not openly stated at the time by the CARICOM political directorate, or even by the technocratic leadership, which concern us here. It is instructive that the “deepening” of the European Common Market was marked by a new institutional initiative, the Treaty on Economic Union (Maastricht) which explicitly recognised that new institutional measures had to be established in accordance with the advance to, among other things, monetary union, in order to ensure the effective implementation of the new commitments. The focus of the Report of theWest Indian Commission (of which this writer was a member) was, following the Mills Report recommendations, to propose measures for increasing national implementation efficiency (including

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assistance from the Secretariat where necessary, as in the case of legislative drafting); on establishing a national focus at the Ministerial level with responsibility to the regional system for ensuring implementation; and on establishing a Court for adjudicating on disputes. Perhaps in retrospect, it can be said that one of the things which was missing in the decisions then taken, was what we might call “any sovereign commitment of the national political process or institutions” to ensure that even when a regional court has adjudicated, citizen (corporate or individual) obedience would follow. In other words, the missing institutional ingredient here was (is) the application of the principle of “direct effect” of Community decisions within national states, the acceptance that the Treaty of Chaguaramas as amended by the Protocols would be made to constitute national law, and that decisions, regulations and legislation approved by the Conference of Heads of Government would automatically have the force of law within member-states. Non-obedience would therefore be automatically justiciable. Without this, the decisions of a Caribbean Court of Justice would have no assurance of being capable of implementation and of non-implementation of such decisions being “sanctionable”. It goes without saying that, given that decisions of the Community relate not only to trade between corporate entities, or between corporate entities and individuals, but to decisions made by governments, to accept the principle of direct effect is to accept that the state would no longer have the legal capacity to act as a intermediary betweeen Community decisions and their implementation, and therefore - in cases where the state is a litigant or has failed to implement agreed decisions - as a brake on such implementation. To concede this is to accept a limitation on sovereign powers which, up to now, CARICOM member states have maintained. But it is noteworthy that this is a conclusion which the United Kingdom government has had to arrive at, resting, as its decision-making has historically done, on the “supremacy of parliament”. The principle of direct effect acts as an important inhibition on national reversibility of regionally agreed decisions. It inhibits contention too, over the legitimacy of decisions as against issues of operational implementation. If we accept the view advanced above, then though it might be feasible to partially agree with the view recently advanced by the Barbados Prime Minister that it was folly to agree to such a short period of implementation as a four-year one for the implementation of the provisions of the Single Market, we can also argue that even a longer period set at the time would really have had no guarantee of being kept. For an important consideration in what has, or has not, taken place, is that the Grande Anse decisions, and the1992 measures emanating from the Heads of Government Conference of that year , being seen as furthering the internal market process, were given a priority subordinate to that given by governments to the implementation of structural adjustment measures specific

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to their countries, since intra-regional trade has been perceived as less critical to immediate survival. Whether the CARICOM states can bite the bullet of implementing institutional measures intended to guarantee commitments made at the regional level is, of course, a critical question – given their intense preoccupation with “sovereignty”. It has to be presumed that the orientation towards “open regionalism” includes recognition on the part of governments that what we have referred to as “informal financial and commercial integration” over the economic space of the common market, is now the predominant form of integration, and that in that context the regulatory responsibilities of the Common Market Secretariat will be different from those developed to manage the intra-regional trade aspect of the system. With the lowering of both intra-regional protective tariffs and the common external tariff, measures to ensure intra-regional comparative advantage among national industries (subsidies, incentives, tax relief) lose their relative significance. Economic actors able to utilise available resources to operate at appropriate economies of scale relative to the regional market, are now likely to be leaders in this informal financial and commercial integration. This would appear to be the trend as a country like Trinidad and Tobago for example, has been able to achieve a degree of structural adjustment and macroeconomic stability capable of allowing it to take advantage of its relatively more favourable natural endowments vis-a-vis its CARICOM partners. That country would now have an interest in seeking investment and trade possibilities in other (non-CARICOM) countries where tariff levels are similar to her own, or are susceptible to being negotiated to those of her level. In so doing however, there is recognition that the scale of the existing CARICOM regional market, and the rapid implementation of the single market provisions over that market, would be an important base or platform for her engagement with other countries. A further consideration is that with a single economic space orientation the compensating instruments originally contained in the Treaty of Chaguaramas to ensure “balanced development” are likely to be deemed no longer critical in the “open (regionalism) market” constructed by implementing the Single Market provisions and the matching of “international” tariff levels. What follows is that CARICOM Secretariat regulatory responsibilities (as deriving form the original Chaguaramas Treaty) become of diminishing significance. Little or no relevance is likely to be attached to invoking Articles pertaining to temporary imposition of licences and quotas. And there is less consideration given to ensuring the maintenance of concessionary arrangements made to “lesser developed countries” – themselves losing comparative advantage in agricultural or agro-industrial products, and with industries succumbing to failure in the new “open markets” environment. The fate of the regional Oils and Fats Agreement, a victim of technological change and the desire of enterprises in the MDC’s to maintain markets, is illustrative of this phenomenon.

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In the open regionalism environment then, one in which economic activities of CARICOM member states are increasingly subject to global or wider regional multilateral institutional surveillance, two processes of relevance to the development of the countries would appear to follow. First, the concern of countries whose economies have accomodated themselves more rapidly than others to the wider extra-CARICOM regional environment, will be to give priority to (a) maintaining the openness and harmonised character of the regional single market as a guarantor of relevant scale economies and as a quid pro quo in international private or state-to-state negotiations; and (b) seeking institutional access to the wider regional (hemispheric)markets in areas in which it perceives itself to have some comparative advantage or in which they are in competition with countries producing similar commodities as itself. The early(1995) Jamaica/Trinidad & Tobago assertions of willingness to adhere to NAFTA are illustrative of this point. And it is obvious to close observers of regional negotiations during and after 1992 that the intense pressure of some countries within CARICOM to ensure that all states moved with despatch to “appropriate tariff levels” was in pursuance of these objectives, as against consolidation of the common market as an entity in itself. The institutional implication of this, if we are looking forward, is a shift in CARICOM Secretariat economic management responsibilities again from a focus on the internal market ( which really loses its integrity as a discrete entity), to (i) establishing surveillance, regulatory and analytical competence vis-a-vis the measures adopted to ensure the integrity of the single market in terms of the adherence of its regulations, legislation and institutional mechanisms to standards and commitments adopted in multilateral negotiations; and (ii) developing the necessary diversified capabilities for continual negotiating, monitoring and litigating in the various multilateral institutional fora. It is the latter activity which the West Indian Commission perceived as missing in the CARICOM institutional system and which obviously provoked the recommendation for a Caribbean Commission with extensive authority to operate in the international environment and to monitor commitments made there: . . . the creation of an executive authority - the CARICOM Commission with competence to initiate proposals, update concensus, mobilise action and secure the implementation of CARICOM decisions in an expeditious and informed manner (West Indian Commission Report, 1992, p.507). We shall return to this. But the policy implication of what has been has been advanced above, is that there is need for a review of the “economic responsibilities” side of the CARICOM Secretariat that would lead to an orientation that would focus on these “future new” activities implicit in the open regionalism and

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extra-regional “market-access seeking” stance of leading countries in the Community. Secondly, if our assumptions about the changing nature of the Common Market (in transition from common to single market under external influences) are correct, it would also be fair to assume that one effect of this developing orientation would be a reduction of emphasis on internal equalising, reciprocity and compensatory mechanisms characteristic of the original Treaty of Chaguaramas. In the working of that system, it will be recalled, the Caribbean Development Bank was considered a critical instrument required to create balance, equalisation and compensating development for the countries designated as less developed. As economic decline and structural adjustment have lessened differences in per capita income, and some states have lost critical capabilities, the role of the Bank has become more widespread over the Community as a whole. But it will be noted that in the experience of the European Community, a critical element has been the so-called Structural or Cohesion Funds that have permitted not only less developed regions of the original member-states to undergo structural transformation within the framework of liberalisation, but also provided critical confidence to late-joiners like Spain and Portugal that economic integration within a framework of more advanced economies would not be deleterious to their global or sectoral development. These experiences suggest a critical re-evalutation of the aid-allocation process within, for example, the ACP-EU process in which, particularly in an era of declining multilateral institutional aid, the Caribbean Development Bank would play a more integrated role with the Community in elaborating the mode of linkage between the Caribbean commitment to some form of non-reciprocal free-trade area relationship in the post-Cotonou Caribbean-EU dispensation, and the negotiation of the facilitating “structural funds” required by member states of Community to ensure phased accomodation to the new trade framework and growth with equity, along lines experienced by the less developedcountries/ regions of the EU. If this is to be persuasive, it would imply also that the dependencies of the states of the EU would have some element of participation in the Bank, particularly if the promotion of “regional projects” are to continue to be a significant focus of the Caribbean-EU relationship. What is suggested as applying to this latter relationship might well serve as a model to encourage a process of “equalisation”within the context of whatever schema evolves for the participation of the CARICOM states, in particular the smaller states, in the proposed FTAA. It is noted that the 1994 Summit of the Americas decision limited participation of regional institutions to the major ones of the Inter-American Development Bank and the OAS.

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It is difficult to see the smaller states of the Community in particular benefitting from any arrangement which does not include a deep involvement of institutions accustomed to working in terms of their special and differential characteristics as far as the structural transformation process is concerned. What is institutionally implied here then, is a formalised networking of the CDB’s capabilities with the negotiating machinery of the Secretariat, so that the interpolation of facilitating instruments, including cohesion-type fund arrangements, becomes an integral part of the so-called free trade area or regional economic partnership agreement negotiations. This suggests a closer institutional meshing of certain levels of staffing of these two major regional institutions, working to an elaborated policy framework as far as the identification of the “development implications” of adjustment policy packages pursuant to engagement in integrated economic relationships with either the EU or the FTAA zone. It would be fatal to engage in terms of a separation between trade liberalisation initiatives and structural development requirements. For this would give increasing credibility to a trend recently remarked upon by David Jessop If there is any message in early 21st century history, it is that powerful trading blocs will liberalise irrespective of the consequences for developing countries and then only under pressure consider a basis for compensation or amelioraton of the effects.

The Impli cati ons o f “Fl uid” Regi onal Boundaries Implic tio of “Fluid” Regio The third of the processes referred to at the beginning of the paper has its origins in the “deepening vs.widening” issue that has been part of the both the conceptual and practical discussions in, and on, CARICOM. The discussion does not need rehearsing here. Suffice it to say that the decision induced by the European Union to extend CARICOM into CARIFORUM for the purpose of the ACP-EU relationship dispelled the assumption, held by many CARICOM technocrats, that deepening should precede widening. The institutional implications of managing a CARICOM/CARIFORUM system were obviated by establishment of a separate CARIFORUM Secretariat with responsibilities for implementing the aid arrangements of the Convention. This resolved the problem (perceived by Anglophone techonocrats/policy advisers) of accomodating within the same (CARICOM) institutional framework, countries - the Domincan Republic and Haiti - believed to have less stable and predictable decision-making systems. But the CARIFORUM Secretariat is itself by now likely to be more apprised of the intricacies of European Union aid provisioning than the CARICOM Secretariat itself; this raising the question of the utility of maintaining two

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systems – one concerned with negotiation of Caribbean-EU relations, and the other concerned with the implementation of one part of the programmes emanating from these agreed relations. In any case, it will be interesting to see whether, under the pressure of negotiating some form of REPA ( if this is to be the new arrangement) the Caribbean Community will be able to resist the pressure of elaborating the full institutional implications of the integration of Haiti and the Dominican Republic into the Caribbean Community, assuming that the Dominican Republic does not prefer a stand-off position that allows her to capitalise on networking with Central America/Mexico. This assumes too, that the (Caribbean) Community, rather than a CARIFORUM institutional form will be the one more acceptable to the European Union for institutionalising long-run REPA-type relations.(We do not of course assume that this is the Europeans’ prerogative, but assume that solutions to such issues tend to be “mutually beneficial”). It is this, in the limiting case of relating to countries closest to the original CARICOM “concentric circle” as envisaged by the West Indian Commission, that indicates the general issue of what we refer to as fluidity of boundaries of the regional system as we in CARICOM know it. In a practical sense, since 1983 and the evolution of the Caribbean Basin Initiative, and therefore the policy definition of a Caribbean Basin, the question has been posed for the Caribbean Community of the long-term operative framework for Caribbean economic development cooperation where such cooperation involved both trade and aid. Indeed to the extent that the Caribcan arrangement came into existence with more or less the same objectives as the CBI, and the Canada-United States Free Trade Agreement was negotiated, the Caribcan and CBI arrangements, taken together, can be said to have presaged an integrated interamerican framework of future Caribbean-North American trade/ economic relations.The adherence of Mexico to Nafta has forced the point. The convergence of tariff levels, at the hemispheric levels is likely to reinforce this tendency. Orientations in the Central American area indicate this tendency, as those countries seek to approach access to the NAFTA by way of working out free trade agreements with Mexico. This approach partly obviates the need for a collective CECAM approach as Mexico is seen as a sort of advance guard for these states in the changing trade environment in their immediate geographical environment. (Though it will be noted that the so-called “Northern Triangle” states of Guatemala, El Salvador and Honduras have jointly negotiated a free trade agreement with Mexico). It is most likely that Belize, a member of the Caribbean Community, will wish to adopt a similar approach. And the Dominican Republic, perhaps tired of waiting for direct membership of the Caribbean Community, has taken the dual path of establishing free trade agreements with both CARICOM and Mexico.

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In a sense however, unilateral negotiation for free trade relationships in the wider hemispheric and international environments by such small countries can have the disadvantage of inhibiting the harmonisation of the economic space of the single market (CARICOM), if phasing arrangements are not concerted. So to that extent, it can be asserted that the centralised or co-ordinated implementation of Single Market provisions requires a closer institutional cohesion among the countries, if there is simultaneous negotiation/implementation of liberalisation measures at the hemispheric or wider international levels. In institutional terms this must mean a closer integration of the single market institutional arrangementsof the Community Secretariat with the negotiating arm (currently the Regional Negotiating Machinery – RNM) of the Community responsible to the Heads of Government Conference. It is, of course, this very problem which the West Indies Commission tried to deal with in its Report, but failed to get governmental acceptance for recommendations made in respect to a solution. So, in default of a resolution of the issue, and in response the global pressures, the current RNM was established, but institutionally hanging in relation to the overall Community institutional framework. A more recent (2002) attempt has been made however, at more firmly embedding the RNM in the Secretariat’s institutional structure. It will be noted that the European Community/Union’s institutional structure is an holistic one, with the Trade Commissioner’s office (DG1)being institutionally integrated into the Commission, while having the responsibility or competence to represent the Commission and therefore the Community/Union in international trade negotiations. This is, of course, done on the basis that a common commercial policy of the Union has been established in respect of the particular negotiating areas. The EC/EU also took the initiative, in providing the European Commission with the necessary competence to negotiate on its behalf, of giving it a specific international identity in relevant fora: that is a lead position vis-a-vis the memberstates, combined with a status of equivalence to the member-states in such fora. This was a critical step (with its implication of derogation of sovereignty) which the Caribbean Community has not been able to take. In the European case it is facilitated, (meeting fears of possible ‘bargaining away’ of sovereign rights) by the close reporting relationship between the Commission and DG1and the Council of Ministers, with the Committee of Permanent Representatives playing the important role of integrating national objectives into regional policymaking. (It should be noted in passing, though, that in the “high political sovereignty” area of Common Foreign and Security policy, the Treaty on European Union and then the Treaty of Amsterdam institutionally separated this sphere of activities from European Commission responsibilities, creating a separate ‘High Representative’ responsible to the Union).

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In the CARICOM structure, this intermediary or intermediating structure does not exist in this depth, and therefore this degree of cohesion and continuity: specific, periodic COTED meetings formally take its place, and in reality the Prime Ministers’ Sub-Committee on External Relations provides the stamp of authority. As CARICOM’s trade negotiations responsibilities become increasingly complex, both in scope and technical sophistication, it is unlikely that this institutional structure can hold. This is partly because differences of orientation among countries, based on the differing urgencies of their integration into wider networks will require a more cohesive concensus on the required paths of negotiation. There are already indications within CARICOM, that there is insufficient basic consensus on external commercial/economic directions as structural adjustment measures have imposed differential effects on countries implementing them. Differences on the priority to be accorded to South-South negotiations vis-a-vis those relating to the EU and FTAA; the hostility expressed to the now deceased Dominica Prime Minister Rosie Douglas’suggestion of “integration”of his country into the EU; and differing views on immediate integration into NAFTA if offered, give hints of this, and suggest differing conceptions of bounded networks of interests. Yet the necessarily close relationship between the evolution of the Single Market and Economy and the international liberalisation processes impinging on member-states, requires a deepening of institutionalised policy harmonisation procedures, to match the urgencies of harmonisation of international negotiations. It also imposes the necessity for harmonisation of priorities among these states of limited human resource capabilities. The existing institutional framework does not appear to permit fulfillment of these tasks. We therefore summarise this section by concluding that a policy decision needs to be taken in respect of finding an institutional solution towards medium term integration of the external negotiating competence of the Community into a more harmonised relationship with the institutions of policy preparation and implementation of the single market and economy. This will itself require, as we have earlier suggested, a review of the relative weighting of the traditional internal market responsibilities of the Secretariat, as against the ‘new’ single market processes facilitating regional private commercial integration, and the relationship between the latter and the process of external negotiation. It needs to be taken into account also that the regional geo-economic sphere of relevant negotiation of Community interests may extend beyond the traditional boundaries of the Caribbean Community as market integration processes determine new networks of common interest. It is unlikely therefore that the resolution of this issue will be an orthodox one.

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INSTITUTI ONAL FRA MEWO RK SO F CO MM UNIT Y REL ATI ONS INSTITUTIO FRAMEWO MEWORK RKS OF COMM MMUNIT UNITY RELA TIO What is implicit in the above discussion is that there are a number of institutional frameworks that can be identified as underpinning the functioning of the Caribbean Community and its relations with its external environment. Further these have to be seen as historically flexible or malleable, in relation to changes in that environment, and therefore subject to adjustment or amendment. These can be summarised as: (i) (ii) (iii) (iv) (i)

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The Decision-Making Framework The Executing Framework The Adjudication Framework The Consultation Framework

In respect of the Decision-Making Framework, we have suggested that this has been evolving in terms of the pressure to widen the geopolitical scope of the membership of the Community to cope with the necessarily close relations which Community members now have to engage in with countries of close proximity. We have noted, for example, that changes in the EU’s approach have made the issue of the extension of the boundaries of CARICOM (to encompass Haiti and the Dominican Republic) an increasingly urgent one. If Cuba were to have found itself subscribing to EU norms for accession to the Lome/Cotonou Convention, this pressure would have become even more acute, and there would, to many, be little legitimate justification for maintaining the “core” concept of the Community as identified in the West Indian Commission. The idea, and thus the “identity” of “Caribbean Community” would then encompass a wider geographical sphere. Secondly, to the extent that a future Caribbean-EU institutional post-Cotonou relationship might well wish to encompass European concerns about the development of its dependencies in such a manner that the latter could participate in a liberalised Community economic platform, namely the Single Market and Economy, to obtain optimal gains from the financial and commercial integration of the area, then the decision-making framework would also have to permit their accommodation. That Montserrat is already a full member of the Community and Common Market (and recalling that Montserrat originally had certain concerns about the mode of her integration), is probably sufficient precedent. The issue is one of recognition of the need for certain derogations of decision-making commitment, and of abstention from the necessity to make certain commitments deemed crucial to metropolitan-power authority. The functional areas of

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(ii)

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telecommunications, air transportation and management of the Caribbean Sea from the point of view of resource use as well as monitoring of illegal activities, are likely to emerge as crucial here. Thirdly, the Community has recognised the importance of accessing markets in the South American continents, commencing with those countries which border the Caribbean and which are now encompassed within the Association of Caribbean States. But there is also awareness that, within the scope of hemispheric integration processes, these states are inclined to pursue deeper integration within the South American continent itself. The extent of Caribbean Community integration relationships with the rimland countries will therefore be most likely subject to these deeper integration process (Andean/Mercosur countries); and in this context the wider Antillean integration sphere would need to engage its particular integration interests in those settings. This will be, again, a justification for institutional arrangements for this wider Caribbean Community area that harmonise macro-economic policy making with assured mechanisms for implementing and sustaining decisions made. It is this deepening of institutional decision-making structures that will preserve an international identity for the area within the wider hemispheric integration settings. Finally, it will be recognised that, as the Community engages in establishing dual (hemispheric and Caribbean-EU) sets of regional integration systems, as well as establishing a structure for engaging the WTO multilateral framework, a consistency in decision-making processes and policy parameters will need to be maintained. This again reinforces the need for an institutional framework that assures this, both in respect of the widening subregional sphere and particular orientations that individual countries or groups of countries may develop. In respect of the Executing Framework we have noted the importance of developing a mode of institutional integration that recognises (a) the transition from internal market integration emphasising development through regional important substitution to single market integration that emphasises the process of clearing the internal market of obstacles to factor movements and providing a recognisable, harmonised platform that matches that of the wider liberalised environment; and its relationship to (b) the simultaneous process of negotiating access to that wider environment and the compensatory instruments necessary to successful utilisation of such access. A closer institutional networking of (a) the instruments for single market surveillance and regulation (aspect of Secretariat activity) with

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(b) the external negotiation structure (RNM) and (c) the aid formulation (aspect of CDB activity) mechanism is therefore required to permit harmonised integration that ensures balanced intra-regional development along with balanced participation in the multilateral integration processes. And we have noted that the maintenance of international identity and external appreciation of Caribbean institutional commitment in international negotiations, requires that a status equivalent to the authority of the states, be given to the external negotiating instrument international fora, along the lines of the EU formula (iii) The need for amendment of the existing Adjudication Process recognises the long-observed inadequate instruments for ensuring implementation of decisions made, within appropriate time frameworks. The problem is now exacerbated by the loss of intermediating countries or institutions in international negotiation and litigation which the Community now faces, as the traditional protection processes have disintegrated; and a preference is pressed particularly within hemispheric integration relationships, for “level-playing fields”. We have indicated that these pressures from the international environment suggest institutional arrangements which may previously have been thought of as derogating from state sovereignty; but that the very process of maintaining international identity for the Community now requires their implementation. We have suggested, in that connection, that the mere establishment of an appellate Court (the CCJ) without the internal (national) facilitating instruments - the institutionalisation of the direct effect principle, will be insufficient to achieve what is required. (iv) An appropriate Consultative Framework is a prerequisite to the processes of policy preparation, decision-making and execution. This was recognised at the origins of the Community by the provision for partial involvement of the two major social sectors of labour and the private sector in the Conferences of Heads of Government. The circumstances have now changed in at least four ways: first, the nature of the regional economic integration process itself is changing. The single market process in combination with the market liberalisation of the wider environment suggest a larger private-sector (as against state sector) preeminence in economic growth processes in the Region than previously. This in turn suggests that a more formal integration of this sector into the policy-preparation process, through the Secretariat and more formal macro-economic policy discussions at the level of Heads of Government is required - particularly because the regional macroeconomic framework is now more subject to private influences.

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Secondly, the negotiation process has led to a new multilateral regime (the WTO) has now made on the issue of relative labour costs and relative conditions of labour (along with that of the environment) in the industrialisation process, a significant one. Governments’ having to make commitments at the multilateral level, now necessitates the involvement of labour and NGO’s related to the work process at the level of regional policy preparation. The restructuring of the Secretariat to accomodate the formalisation and continuity of such consultation is necesssary. Thirdly, the continuing, as against the formally periodic, involvement of governments in international economic negotiation, and the loss of mediating institutions/countries as diplomatic advanceguards in such negotiation, requires an established “knowledge technostructure” for providing appropriate information and negotiating strategies necessary to sustained negotiation. In some measure the RNM structure has attempted to provide this. But in the long term, in small countries and regions, such a facility necessarily resides in some measure in the tertiary institutions. The last Lome Convention recognised the need for concessionary financing for linkage of higher institutions across the Cariforum area for the purpose of upgrading competence; and negotiations with the InterAmerican Development Bank recognised the need for modernisation and restructuring of University of the West Indies’ systems and structures. Yet these initiatives, while fostering institutional reform, have not really resulted in increasing academic coherence across countries and sub-regions, thus creating the base for a body of knowledge that would enhance, inter alia, the process of ensuring the region’s appropriate engagement with the new hemispheric and international orders. The creation of a regional technostructure underpinning this process is a medium-term priority.

CONCLUSION The tendency in institutional reform is to react at the point of crisis. In the case of the Caribbean Community area this has been exaggerated by the relative suddenness of the Region’s direct involvement in the sphere of multilateral negotiations at a time at which that environment, in its post-Cold War phase, is extremely dynamic. The Caribbean states, holding tightly to traditional notions of state sovereignty, as against notions of sovereignty-sharing now more prevalent in other regional areas, have hesitated to make institutional adjustments in the direction of the latter. Decisions, not bound by commitment institutionally

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articulated between the integration system and national implementation structures, have lacked credibility in both intra-regional and international fora. This situation has been exacerbated, first by intense preoccupation with the requirements of domestic structural adjustment; and then, in more recent times, with incipient differences of orientation to the changing international environment not explicitly explored within the framework of regional policy preparation and decision-making. Particularly in the sphere of harmonising the regional framework with the commitments deriving from multilateral negotiations, a further degree of institutional cohesion is required. And this is more so at a time when international processes are imposing new networks of arrangements between countries, and among private entrepreneurs and corporations, which lead to rearrangements of relationships among countries in proximity, lessen distances as factors in private enterprise and state-led integration, and make traditional boundaries fluid. The temporary institutional structures, organised by the Community to respond to the increasing dominance of international processes in national decision-making, need consolidation and harmonious integration with existing structures which themselves, in turn, require amendment. We have suggested some spheres in which these changes are required.

NOTE This paper was originally prepared in April, 2001 for a Technical Group operating under the Caribbean Regional Negotiating Machinery, and revised for the 2002 Mona Academic Conference on “The Governance Challenge: National, Regional and Global Dimensions”, held at the University of the West Indies, Mona, on 30 August1 September 2002.

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REFERENCES 1

Treaty Establishing the Caribbean Community: Chaguaramas , 4th July 1973 (Caribbean Community Secretariat)

2

Nassau Understanding: The Structural Adjustment and Closer Integration for Accelerated Development in the Caribbean Community , Nassau, Bahamas, 7 July 1984 (Caribbean Community Secretariat)

3

Mills, Gladstone et al: Report on a Comprehensive Review of the Programmes, Institutions and Organisations of the Caribbean Community (Caribbean Community Secretariat, 1990)

4

Time For Action: Report of the West Indian Commission, Chairman: Sir Shridath Ramphal, (1992)

5

Demas, William G., West Indian Development and the Deepening & Widening of the Caribbean Community, ( Critical Issues in Caribbean Development No.1), Ian Randle Publishers and ISER, University of the West Indies, 1997

6

Wallace, Helen & Wallace William (eds.), Policy-Making in the European Union (Oxford University Press, 4th Edition, 2002)

7

Hartley, T. C. The Foundations of European Community Law (Oxford University Press, 1998, 4th Edition)

8

Axline, Andrew W., Caribbean Integration: The Politics of Regionalism (London: Frances Pinter, 1979

9

Revised Treaty of Chaguaramas Establishing the Caribbean Community Including the Caribbean Single market and Economy (Caribbean Community Secretariat, 2001)

10 Owen Arthur, “Regional Free Market Will Take Time”, Trinidad Guardian, 21 Nov. 2000

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Sub-RegIOnAl gOveRnAnCe: The OeCS expeRIenCe K. DWIGHT VENNER

T

he countries of the OECS are now at the crossroad of their political and economic history as they grapple with fundamental developments in the domestic, regional and international environments. The complex changes which are taking place in the structure of the international economy that are a result of major technological and institutional developments and the vulnerabilities felt by critical sectors within developed and developing countries have set the stage for a substantial reordering of the international system. This reordering will have a significant impact on all the states in the international system and in particular the small and the vulnerable. In order to successfully come to grips with these circumstances the role of the state and of institutions and groups within the geographic confines of nations and regions will have to be substantially redefined. The concept of governance in its various manifestations will have to be appropriately fashioned to allow nations and regions to respond strategically to these new and complex circumstances. The OECS countries recognised this need under different circumstances two decades ago when faced with the necessity to confront the fact of their existence in a fluid regional and international environment with very limited resources. The result of their contemplation and reflection was the Treaty of Basseterre 1981 which brought into being the Organisation of Eastern Caribbean States. The preamble to the Treaty is very revealing of the sentiments and circumstances of the political leaders and their countries at that time. They affirmed their determination to achieve economic and social development for their peoples as enunciated in the Agreement establishing the East Caribbean Common Market. A critical assertion was that they were inspired by a common determination to strengthen the links between themselves by uniting their efforts and resources and establishing and strengthening common institutions

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which could serve to increase their bargaining power as regards third countries or groupings of countries. The final part of the preamble expresses a determination to satisfy the legitimate aspirations of their peoples for development and progress. These sentiments were expressed when the progress in regional arrangements at the wider regional level seemed to have ground to a halt with the Heads of Government of CARICOM not having met for many years; there was political instability and ideological pluralism in attendance given the events in Grenada; and there was a major world recession following the oil crisis of 1979. The countries of the sub-region were also feeling the effects of several major hurricanes. The prospects for these extremely small countries seemed quite dim and they felt rejected by the failure of the many efforts at political integration in which they were abandoned first by Jamaica and Trinidad and Tobago, and then Barbados. The Treaty of Basseterre was the formal expression of arrangements which were in train for the mid 1960s as the countries of the Windward and Leeward islands drew closer together in critical functional areas while they decided on their constitutional future. The arrangement in the interim, Associated Statehood with the United Kingdom, was a half-way house, giving the countries a chance to contemplate and reflect on future constitutional arrangements. While independence was the ultimate goal, the path to it offered two choices. Firstly, a joint declaration by all states which would have provided them with the opportunity to write their own constitution so to speak, or alternatively, singular independence which required negotiations with the British. One can only speculate that the British had given a careful reading to Arthur Lewis’ The Agony of the Eight in which he asserted that good governance superseded economic benefits in the integration of very small societies. The following quotation from the article is quite explicit. In a small island of 50,000 to 100,000 people, dominated by a single political party, it is very difficult to prevent political abuse. Everybody depends on the government for something, however small, so most are reluctant to offend it. The civil servants live in fear; the police avoid unpleasantness; the trade unions are tied to the party; the newspaper depends on the government for advertisements, and so on. Independence constitutions of the individual countries have been very rigid and extremely difficult to amend and human rights have been carefully written into them. This however, could not and did not prevent abuses as the case of Grenada so dramatically and traumatically illustrated.

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The Treaty of Basseterre was an attempt to put in place arrangements which spoke to an extremely high level of functional cooperation, the establishment of critical mass and the capacity to negotiate effectively with third parties in order to provide the citizens of these countries with a higher standard of living. The purposes of the OECS as laid out in the Treaty give a clear indication as to the wide scope of its functions. Article 3 (i) states that the purposes are: (a)

(b) (c)

(d)

(e)

(f)

to promote cooperation among the member states and at the regional and international levels having due regard to the Treaty establishing the Caribbean Community and the Charter of the United Nations. To promote unity and solidarity among the member states and to defend their sovereignty, territorial integrity and independence To assist the member states in the realisation of their obligations to the international community with due regard to the role of international law as a standard of conduct in their relationships. To seek to achieve the fullest possible harmonisation of foreign policy among the member states: to seek to adopt as far as possible common positions on international issues and to establish and maintain wherever possible, arrangements for joint overseas representation and/ or common services; To promote economic integration among member states through the provisions of the Agreement establishing the East Caribbean Common market. To pursue the said purposes through its respective institutions by discussion of questions of common concern and by agreement and common action.

From the preamble and the purposes emerge a view of the undertaking which is wide in scope and detailed in its workings. There is a scope of governance which straddles both the national and the sub-regional. This is clearly confirmed by a review of Article 3(2) which identifies seventeen areas in which member states endeavour to coordinate, harmonise and pursue joint policies. For purposes of classification we have categorised them into five basic areas as follows: 1. 2. 3. 4. 5.

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Law and Order Foreign Affairs Public Administration Management of human and natural resources Economic cooperation

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A detailed outline follows: 1.

LAW AND ORDER (a) (b)

2.

FOREIGN AFFAIRS (a) (b) (c) (d) (e)

3.

External relations including overseas representation Trade agreements and external economic relations Financial and technical assistance from external sources International marketing of goods and services including tourism External transportation and communication including civil aviation PUBLIC ADMINISTRATION

(a) (b) (c) (d) 4.

The Judiciary Mutual Defence and Sovereignty

Public administration and management Audit Income tax administration Customs and excise administration

MANAGEMENT OF HUMAN AND NATURAL RESOURCES (a) (b) (c)

Tertiary education including university Scientific technical and cultural cooperation Matters related to the sea and its resources

5. ECONOMIC COOPERATION (a) (b) (c)

Economic Integration Currency and central banking Statistics

While all of these provisions have not been implemented, a significant number of them have been instituted in areas which are fundamental to the formation of the state - The Judiciary, Mutual Defence and Security, Currency and Central Banking, Overseas Representation. In fact it could be claimed that if all the provisions of the Treaty of Basseterre and the East Caribbean Common Market were implemented it would lead to the creation of a new state. As it is, the workings of the OECS resemble very much that of a confederation in practice.

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This is a critical factor given the definition of governance that we would ascribe to which is Governance is the exercise of political, economic and administrative authority in the management of a country’s affairs. Country in the case of the OECS is defined as member states as well as the collective arrangement. In analysing this geographical domain it is critical to examine the main elements of government, that is, the legislative, the executive and the Judiciary as well as the application of laws, regulations, policies, programmes and projects to the domain. In the case of the legislature there is no sub-regional body to which legislators are elected. However, legislatures have been required to pass laws ceding sovereignty to regional institutions as well as passing uniform laws across the domain. With respect to the executive, the OECS Authority is the main political decision making body as it comprises Heads of Government, that is, Prime Ministers and Chief Ministers. This body has real executive decisions to make such as the appointment of the Chief Justice, responsibility for the financing of the Secretariat, appointment of foreign representatives, approval of policies and projects. The Judiciary is an OECS responsibility with respect to the Court of appeal and the High Court while the magistracy is local. With respect to the economic policies that apply across the OECS, the following can be stated: (a) (b) (c)

Monetary policy is collective across the OECS Fiscal policy is applied at the national level Trade policy is undertaken nationally, sub-regionally, and regionally.

The OECS has a wide range of projects in solid waste management, natural resource management, education reform, procurement of pharmaceuticals. In the regulatory sphere, there is the Directorate of Civil Aviation and the Eastern Caribbean Telecommunications Authority, ECTEL and the Uniform Banking Act. From the above, it can be seen that there is a super structure of governmental functions at the OECS level which are critical to the governance of OECS member states. One can identify clear political structures and institutions at the OECS level which impact directly on the governance of these countries. At the highest level would be: (i) (ii)

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The OECS Authority of Heads of Government The Monetary Council of the Eastern Caribbean Central Bank

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(iii) The Council of Economic Ministers with responsibility for Trade and Development At another level there are the meetings of the sectoral ministries, for example Health, Education and Agriculture. The OECS Authority can be considered to be a quasi Cabinet with portfolios being assigned to various heads of government. The Monetary Council is a very interesting institution as monetary policy is a sub-regional as opposed to a national responsibility. The Council can set interest rates, change reserve requirements, declare the parity of the currency, and alter the backing of the currency. The large majority of members of the Council are also Ministers of Finance in their individual capacities and so in order to achieve monetary policy goals there has been a convergence of fiscal policy. The Economic Affairs Committee deals with trade and development issues and attempts to bring together these policies into a coherent whole before the OECS interfaces with CARICOM and the rest of the world. The OECS countries with the reality of having a monetary union and a common judiciary can claim to have achieved a very high level of integration and functional cooperation. The question then would be how has this enhanced governance or the prospects for increased good governance? The answer lies in the increased capacity to fulfil the states’ functions efficiently and effectively and the checks and balances and objectivity that counteract the dangers Lewis saw in small states outlined above. There are a number of critical elements which have to be examined that range from: (a) (b) (c)

the expectations and needs of domestic populations. The capacity and objectivity of sub-regional/OECS arrangements Regional and international obligations, standards, and surveillance arrangements.

There are broader and more fundamental issues which characterise good governance aside and apart from efficiency and effectiveness. The concept of good governance following the Commonwealth Secretariat is a concept which comprises the complex mechanisms, processes, relationships and institutions through which citizens and groups articulate their interests, exercise their rights and obligations and mediate their differences. They go on to say that good governance addresses the allocation and management of resources to respond to collective problems, it is characterised by participation, transparency, accountability, rule of law, effectiveness and equity. Governance includes as its major actors the state, the private sector and civil society.

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The state functions to create a conducive, and legal environment. The private sector functions to create increased economic activity, jobs and income. Civil society facilitates political and social interaction, mobilising groups to participate in economic, social and political activities. In the OECS there are four elements which have been identified as having an important influence on good governance. 1. 2. 3. 4.

Democracy Fundamental rights and freedom Rule of Law Public sector management.

The OECS countries have practised liberal democracy since adult suffrage and subsequently independence. Elections have been free and fair and governments have changed with some frequency. Fundamental rights and freedoms have been enshrined in our constitution and have been respected in most cases. The rule of law has been respected in our jurisdiction, but the efficiency of the administration of justice must be addressed with some urgency. Public sector management is the most critical area which will have a tremendous impact on growth and development, and by extension on good governance. A recent World Bank Report came up with the following conclusion. It stated, Given the enormous challenges faced by OECS countries, it is likely that without major reforms the public sector may not be able to: 1. 2. 3. 4. 5.

Effectively represent national interests in the increasingly complex international arena. Provide the proper guidance and environment or the service quality needed for private sector development. Develop and implement enlightened domestic policies for different sectors. Make optimal use of extremely limited resources to meet rising citizen expectations. Respond effectively to the fast paced, less forgiving external environment.

The governments of the OECS have responded to domestic pressures in the areas of increased expectations and the need for transparency by increasing public expenditures and establishing fora for public interaction. On the external front, the range of surveillance mechanisms is extremely widespread and are stretching the administrative and technical capacity of these states.

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There are IMF Article IV consultations, the FSF, the FATF, the OECD, Amnesty International, Green Peace, Transparency International, etc. The nature of the environment in which the OECS currently finds itself will seriously challenge its capacity to manage not only its domestic arrangements but its regional and international relations. The capacity for economic development will depend on the presence or absence of good governance and good governance will be affected by economic growth and development. The possibilities for a successful achievement of the objectives of the Treaty of Basseterre and its aspirations for its people will depend on the political arrangements which can expand the range of choices and options that can be derived from such arrangements. Given the current challenges and the success of the institutional arrangements in place, it would not be surprising if the possibilities for good governance and development cannot be attained without the advent of new political forms. These will require three things which are the embodiment of governance, namely; political will, societal consensus and technical capacity in both the public and private sectors.

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N I N E

RegIOnAl CO-OpeRATIOn And eCOnOMIC gOveRnAnCe: The CASe OF The ASSOCIATIOn OF CARIbbeAn STATeS (ACS) NORMAN GIRVAN

INTRODUCTION

R

egional cooperation is being promoted as a form of economic governance for developing countries to assist them in coping with the challenges of globalisation (UNDP, 1999).The Association of Caribbean States (ACS) was launched in 1994 as one response to globalisation by the countries of the Greater Caribbean region. Within this perspective, this paper discusses the ACS experience as a case of regional economic governance and the prospects for the organisation.

REGI ONALIS M, GL OBALISA TI ON AND THE ACS REGIO NALISM, GLO ALISATI TIO Economic regionalism as a response to globalisation Regional organisations come in a wide variety of shapes and forms: the 1999/2000 Yearbook of International Organisations lists a total of 4,427 including 180 governmental bodies (U I A, 2000). We propose a differentiation of regional organisations according to the range of subject areas covered, the scope of intraregional cooperation and extra-regional coordination, and the intensity of market integration as well as of extra-market functional cooperation and institutional integration. Figure 1 depicts this method of differentiation, locating particular types of regional organisations within a three-dimensional framework.

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Figure 1 Character and Strength of Regionalism INTENSITY

Institutional Integration

RANGE

EU

Functional Cooperation

EC

CZ

Multi-functional CM CU

Market Integration

FTA

Uni-functional PTA

SCOPE Intra-regional

Extra-regional

Notes: PTA = Preferential Trading Area CM = Common Market

FTA = Free Trade Area CU = Customs Union EC = Economic Community EU = Economic Union CZ = Cooperation Zone

Source: author

In the context of globalisation greatest interest has fallen on institutional expressions of economic regionalism particularly preferential trading areas, free trade areas such as the North American Free Trade Area (NAFTA) and economic unions such as the European Union (EU) and the Caribbean Community (Caricom). Lawrence (1999:30) argues that “The current moves toward regionalisation are, by and large…efforts to fill the functional needs of international trade and investment and the requirements of international governance and cooperation to which globalisation gives rise.” Economic regionalism is considered to be consistent with globalisation insofar as they provide for accelerated intra-regional trade and investment liberalisation along the lines of “open regionalism” (ECLAC, 1994). However they may also be a means by which groups of countries seek to shape the direction and content of globalisation by strengthening their bargaining power and negotiating capacities in extra-regional relations. Both the intra-regional and the extra-regional aspects of regionalism are relevant to developing countries. Intra-regional economic integration, it is argued, will widen the market space for trade, investment and labour flows, stimulate improvements in static and dynamic allocative efficiency, and increase the competitiveness of domestic enterprises and their preparedness for global trade and investment liberalisation. In external relations, regional functional

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cooperation is argued as a strategy of resource pooling in areas such as international negotiations, higher education and science and technology; where economies of scale and critical mass requirements are significant (UNDP 1999: 29). A plausible hypothesis is that small countries stand to derive greater benefits from the extra-regional/functional cooperation aspects of regionalism vis-à-vis the intra-regional/economic integration aspects, compared to larger countries. Small economies have a higher trade/GDP ratio and greater export specialisation, hence the scope for intra-regional trade expansion is restricted. Small countries also experience a higher threshold for successful entry to scale-intensive and critical mass-intensive activities relative to their economic size; so that the potential gains from resource pooling in such activities are relatively more significant. This is suggested by the experience of CARICOM, which has been markedly more successful in functional cooperation in areas such as higher education and external negotiations than in the growth of intra-regional trade, which remains modest. Other factors affecting the strength of economic regionalism are the extent of complementarity or competitiveness of participating economies, the degree of political and policy consensus among member states and the strength of the “sense of community”. A recent development has been the adoption of regionalism as a conditionality element in trade negotiations between developed and developing countries, notably in the EU’s relations with the AfricanCaribbean-Pacific Group and with Latin America and the USA’s relations with Central America1.

The ACS as a regional organisation One of the issues involved in characterising the ACS is the fact that the organisation does not conform readily to any of the well-recognised types of economic regionalism. A close analysis of its nature and work programme leads to the conclusion that it is in essence a system of functional cooperation containing both intra-regional and extra-regional elements and addressing both economic and non-economic subject areas. Its defining characteristic as a regional organisation is the shared geographic space of the Caribbean Sea (hereinafter the region of the “Greater Caribbean”). Hence we argue that the proper characterisation of the ACS is a Zone of Cooperation—meaning a group of countries sharing a common geographic space that agree to develop cooperation in the pursuit of common interests. The potential benefits of the Zone of Cooperation are synergistic: they are derived to the extent that functional cooperation complements and facilitates existing integration processes. An example of this is the improvement of transport facilities and cooperation in tourism that facilitates and provides opportunities for expanded trade within

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the framework of trade liberalisation agreements negotiated among and between sub-groups in the region.

ORIGINS OF THE ACS The birth of the ACS in 1994 can be attributed to a specific historical conjuncture that produced a perceived coincidence of interest in its establishment among key state-players in the Greater Caribbean region. While it is customary to refer to the originating role of CARICOM, this initiative could hardly have succeeded without the strategic support of the countries of the Group of 3 (Colombia, Mexico and Venezuela) as well as of others including Cuba and the Dominican Republic. A brief discussion of the motives and perceptions of the principal players in the historical context is useful in analysing the subsequent course taken by the organisation. In 1992-1994 the Cold War had recently come to an end and the world was rushing into globalisation. Major economic blocs, notably the EU and NAFTA, were being constituted within the framework of the global economy. The EU had also signalled its intention to bring the Dominican Republic, Haiti and possibly Cuba into the Caribbean Group under the Lome Accord with the ACP. The Group of 3 had come into existence to foster cooperation among themselves and dialogue with Central America, where the civil conflicts were coming to an end. CARICOM was debating its future and the relative merits of “deepening” (strengthening) vs “widening” (extending the membership of) the Community. Environmental issues were also given prominence as a result of the Rio Earth Summit in 1992 and the SIDS Conference in Barbados of 1994. Hence, among the chief objectives set for the ACS in its Convention were the consolidation of an economic space within the Caribbean region through the liberalisation of trade and investment relations, and the protection of the environmental integrity of the Caribbean Sea. For an organisation such as the ACS to be established it was necessary to transcend the historical rooted differences and mutual isolation of countries and groups of countries within the Greater Caribbean region. The ACS structure recognises four sub-groups among the membership: CARICOM, the Group of 3, Central America and the non-grouped countries2; with the Associate Members (Dutch and French territories) comprising a fifth category. Anglophones had traditionally centred their conception of the Caribbean on CARICOM, which up to the early 1990s was an exclusively English-speaking club. During the 1970s-1980s the CARICOM Caribbean-view was undergoing a process of gradual expansion to embrace the other major states and territories in the Caribbean Sea3. Hispanic conceptions of the Caribbean region, on the other hand, have usually embraced either all the islands or the entire basin. The former, El Caribe Insular (Insular or Island Caribbean) was traditionally dominant in the Spanish

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speaking islands while the latter El Gran Caribe (Greater Caribbean) has predominated in the large mainland states of the Group of 3. Central America for its part has tended to consider itself as being a distinct sub-region, though recognising its eastern shore as part of the Caribbean basin. The CARICOM proposal to set up the ACS, therefore, broke new ground in terms of the scope of regional cooperation that it envisaged. A key recommendation of the Independent West Indian Commission, reporting in 1992, it was advanced as a solution to the issue of the “deepening” vs “widening” of CARICOM (West Indian Commission, 1992). The strategy advocated was to deepen CARICOM by forging the Single Market and Economy among its existing membership, while widening relations of functional cooperation with the rest of the Caribbean through a new Association of Caribbean States. The adoption of the proposal by the Group of 3 proved decisive, given their substantial economic and geo-political weight in the region4. For them, the new association would provide an institutional framework for the development of trade and investment liberalisation and functional cooperation relations in a region of great geo-strategic importance to each of the three. For the non-grouped countries, participation in the ACS would represent a strategic opportunity to end their traditional isolation from the greater part of the Caribbean region and to address the de facto exclusion arising from their non-membership in any of the existing regional economic groupings. Similar considerations would have applied in the cases of the Dutch and the French affiliated countries, which joined the ACS as Associate Members5 at the outset. Given the commitment of the other countries Central America would have found it convenient to join the association, especially in the light of the support of the G3 countries and their special relationship with them.

EVOLUTION OF THE ACS 1994-2001 Apart from the initial tasks of establishing itself as a legal and administrative entity with an efficiently functioning Secretariat, the ACS in its 7-year history has faced major challenges in securing political consensus on specifics among its members, in gaining public acceptance of its legitimacy and in defining a clearly demarcated role vis-à-vis other regional organisations. Underlying most of these challenges, we believe, were two inter-related factors: first, the existence of differing conceptions of the role and character of the ACS as an integration vs a cooperation organisation or grouping; and second, the existence of wide structural differences in the size and external trading relationships among the countries forming the ACS membership.

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1999

41566 97367 23707 3993 6154 11090 6316 4939 68 303 269 235 71 94 865 8205 2561 41 150 116 418 1291 11159 8364 2812 153 444 393

207

(Km2)

1.142 1.967 916 51 21 109 112 131 0.44 14 0.43 23 0.75 0.34 216 28 11 0.27 0.62 0.39 164 0.44 115 48 76 91000 1705 1060 188 783

(000's)

Area

3.2 16 7.9

5.9 1.4

1.9 48.5 13.8

1.3 1.9

4.1 25.1 45.8 24.4 32.9

6.8 9.1 6.6

2000

> 15 years

Prop. Illiteracy

GDP

GDP per

GDP

1729 (a) 2373 (a)

3601(a) 1556(a) 4530(a)

19830 9956

622(a) 3939(a) 2317(a) 630(a) 257(a) 241(a) 814 3523(a) 7282 288(a) 570(a) 316(a) 903(a) 6873

15784 12916 19068 5932 2396

82856 573937 120484

18706(a) 11595 (a)

10301(a) 8184 (a) 11625 (a)

2371 3541

9147 13000(b) 8613 2681 3620 2564 941 429 2843 7024 3800 2724 2160 5324

4013 2099 1719 939 485

1993 5895 5082

0.22 0.36

0.24 0.56 0.71

-1.4 6.3 4.4

1.4 4.1 2.1 3.5 5.3 -1 0.1 4.1 2.2 3.2 1.7 3

3.3

5 4.6 4.1 3.1 3.3

2.6 3.5 2

Mns of $ Inhabitant Av. Growth (%) 2000 2000 1991-2000

14.4 8.6

6.4 12.5 7.2 6.4 15.8 7.4 15.7 10 7.9 7.4 15.1 17.4

2.3

19 23.1 11.3 18.1 15.3

14 21.1 15.8

Industry (Over PIB) 1998

Particip'n of

201,335 169,362 10,659 145,150 13,553 18,026 5,969 3,128 4,554 2,652 1,723 10,432 … 1,620(b) 1,067 366 133 202 … … 3,113(b) 147(b) 355 201 486 2,742 3,515 … … 3,515 4142 597 (a) 1833 (a) 1712 (a) 3148 1515 (a) 1633 (a)

189,714 167,760 11,555 136,144 20,061 11,135 6,277 1,164 2,458 758 478 5,378 … 102(b) 197 159 53 33 … 61(b) 1,354(b) 36(b) 52 45 481(a) 2,806 5,441 … 4,736(b) 705 1821 804 (a) 274 (a) 743(a) 14155 12674 (a) 1481 (a)

Imports (Mns $) Current 1999

Exports (mns $) Current 1999 -11,622 -1,602 896 -9,006 6,508 -6,891 308 -1,964 -2,096 -1,894 -1,245 -5,054 … -1,518 -870 -207 -80 -169 … … -1,759 -112 -303 -156 -5 64 1,926 … … -2,810 -2321 207 -1559 -969 11007 11159 -152

1999

Goods

Balance

Notes: (a) corresponds to the year 1998; (b) corresponds to the year 1997.

Sources: ECLAC, based on official figures Johannes Heirman, The Main Trends in Trade, Trade Policy and Integration Agreements in the Countries of the Association Of Caribbean States (ACS). Santiago, Chile: ECLAC, Division of International Trade and Integration, November 2001. Association of Caribbean States (ACS): ACS Trade Database: http:www.acs-aec.org/Trade/Dbase/Dbase-eng/dbaseindex_eng.htm

ACS Members/ Sub-Groups ACS Group of Three Colombia Mexico Venezuela CACM Costa Rica El Salvador Guatemala Honduras Nicaragua CARICOM Antigua/Barbuda Bahamas Barbados Belize Dominica Grenada Guyana Haiti Jamaica St.Kitts/Nevis St. Lucia St. Vincent/Grenadines Suriname Trinidad/Tobago Non-Grouped Cuba Dominican Rep Panama French Territories Fr. Guiana Guadeloupe Martinique Dutch Territories Aruba Netherland Ant

Population

Surface

540 REGIONAL GOVERNANCE

Table 1: Main Ind f the Size o f Eco nomies, Eco nomi c Indiicators o of of Econ Econ mic and Social Development of ACS Countries.

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Integration vs cooperation The ambiguity concerning integration vs cooperation as the primary mission of the ACS may have been present in differing perceptions of the role of the organisation among its principal stakeholders. This is reflected in the wording of the ACS Convention, which declares the Association to be an organisation of “consultation, cooperation and concerted action” (ACS: 1994; Art. 3, Para. 1) while listing among the stated objectives “integration, including economic integration” (ACS: 1994; Art.3, para. 2(a)). Initial reports in the media also appear to have suggested that the ACS would establish a free trade area or an economic bloc (Financial Times: 1994). Two difficulties for the role of the ACS as an “economic bloc in the making” were to become manifest. One was structural: in 1994 20 of the 25 ACS member states already belonged to four existing economic integration groupings: NAFTA, CARICOM, the Central American Economic Integration System (SIECA) and the Andean Community (CAN). Since then Suriname and Haiti have acceded to CARICOM and Panama has joined the Central American Integration System (SICA). This means that the primary integration commitment for the majority of ACS members lies with integration groupings rather than with the ACS itself. In the case of the countries of the Group of 3, with nearly three-quarters of the foreign trade of the ACS, the majority of the membership of the integration groupings to which they belong lies outside of the ACS. This structural characteristic effectively ruled out a path of “convergence” of existing integration groupings of ACS membership into an ACS integration grouping of its own. Second, the launch of Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA) negotiations soon after the ACS was formed effectively trumped the possibility of an ACS FTA. The FTAA counts with the participation of 24 of the 25 ACS member states, as well as with the United States and Canada, which are two of the region’s most important trading partners [REF. TABLE 3]. As Insanally (1998:12) observed, “The reality of the situation is that the liberalisation of trade in the ACS has been placed on the back burner as ACS Member States have become embroiled in FTAA negotiations.” The onerous demands of the FTAA negotiating process and the strong political and institutional support provided to it by powerful ACS and non-ACS members meant that the majority of ACS membership were to opt to pursue the objective of trade and investment liberalisation among themselves within this wider hemispheric context. The integration/cooperation issue was expressed in various other forms in the discussions among member states in the first 6 years of the ACS. The 1st ACS Summit in August 1995 set trade, transport and tourism (the “3 T’s”) as the ACS focal areas. However by December 1999 the number of Special Committees established by the ACS Ministerial Council had reached a total of seven. In addition to those dealing with the “3 T’s” Committees also existed for Natural

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Table 2: INTEGRATION AND TRADE AGREEMENTS OF ACS MEMBER STATES, CIRCA 2001* *Includes agreements under negotiation ACS Member states

Partners/Participating countries

Colombia, Mexico & Venezuela (Group of 3) Colombia Mexico

type of agreement

Group of 3

Free Trade

Venezuela

CARICOM USA and Canada European Union. Chile CARICOM

Preferential Trade Free Trade (NAFTA) Free Trade Free Trade Preferential Trade

5 Central American countries

5 Central American countries Chile

Customs Union (CACM) Free Trade

Costa Rica

Canada Mexico Mexico Mexico

Free Trade Free Trade

Nicaragua El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras (Northern Triangle) Panama CARICOM

CACM CARICOM Canada

Suriname Haiti

CARICOM CARICOM

Cuba

ALADI CARICOM Andean Community CACM CARICOM

Dominican Republic

Several Caribbean and Central American countries

Mexico and Venezuela USA

CARICOM, Dominican Republic & Haiti

EU

Colombia, Venezuela

Andean Community USA EU 34 Countries in North America & Latin America & the Caribbean

24 ACS members

Free Trade Free Trade

Customs Union Preferential Trade (CARIBCAN) Customs Union Customs Uniond Preferential Trade Preferential Trade Preferential Trade Free Trade Free Trade San José Agreemente Preferential Trade (CBI, 24 countries) Preferential Trade (CBTPA, 24 countries) Preferential Trade (Lomé Convention,) Free Trade (REPA) Customs Union Preferential Tradei Preferential Trade,FC j Free Trade (FTAA)

Notes: Fc: functional co-operation in non-economic areas. a Became a Free Trade Agreement on 1/8/1999. b Protocol to the General Treaty on Central American Economic Integration, Guatemala City. c Still pending the negotiation of some bilateral lists for the removal of tariffs d The timetable for joining the customs union is being studied. e Supply of oil with preferential financing. f Caribbean Basin Trade Partnership Act (CBTPA) granting to these countries treatment comparable to that granted by the US to Mexico. This is in addition to the CBI. g Lomé IV Convention h Protocol Modifying the Andean Sub-regional Integration Agreement, Trujillo, Perú I Andean Trade Preference Act (ATPA) granted in support of efforts by these countries to fight the illegal production and trafficking in drugs j The Andean countries are beneficiaries of the European Union’s Generalised System of Preferences. granted in support of efforts by these countries to fight the illegal production and trafficking in drugs Source: based on Johannes Heirman, The Main Trends In Trade, Trade Policy And Integration Agreements In The Countries Of The Association Of Caribbean States (Acs). Santiago de Chile: United Nations, Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC), Division of International Trade and Integration, November 2001; Table 10.

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TABLE 3 ACS E XPO RTS B Y SUBGR OUP S AND M AIN D ESTINA TI ONS, EXPO XPOR BY SUBGROUP OUPS MAIN DESTINA ESTINATI TIO 1994,1999 Destination

Total Origin Exports $M ACS 1994 8,895 1999 11,775 G-3 1994 6,363 1999 7,142 MCCA 1994 1,616 1999 3,050 CARICOM 1994 781 1999 1,342 Others a 1994 134 1999 241 By Subgroups (%) ACS 1994 100.0 1999 100.0 G3 1994 71.5 1999 60.7 CACM 1994 18.2 1999 25.9 CARICOM 1994 8.8 1999 11.4 Others 1994 1.5 1999 2.1 By destination (%) ACS 1994 9.1 1999 6.2 G3 1994 7.4 1999 4.3 CACM 1994 29.4 1999 27.3 CARICOM 1994 18.9 1999 26.3 Others 1994 5.3 1999 4.1

A C S Group of Three Total Mex

Col

Others

Rest Of the

European Union

Ven MCCA CARICOM ACS

USA

World

World

2,966 3,378

533 1,574 859 2,451 726 1,218 1,435 4,506

1,990 1,511 1,834 2,168

9,354 68,592 11,146 97,986 10,743 144,750 22,819 190,087

2,629 2,880

360 1,494 774 1,122 374 1,156 1,350 1,987

1,340 1,277 706 1,617

6,834 63,012 9,597 85,806 7,689 136,631 16,443 167,905

192 336

123 270

19 31

50 1,228 35 2,289

124 116

38 57

54 20

32 39

21 46

11 25

6 12

3 10

100.0 100.0

100.0 100.0 100.0 100.0

43 98

161 348

1,325 1,951

2,111 4,976

448 1,199

5,501 11,175

19 108

585 981

55 146

838 906

1,550 2,161

963 688

4,132 5,097

82 122

21 48

19 58

356 198

1,919 982

138 4,490

2,548 5,911

100.0 100.0 100.0 100.0

100.0 100.0

100.0 100.0

100.0 100.0

100.0 100.0

100.0 100.0 100.0 100.0

88.6 67.7 85.2 51.5

94.9 94.9

90.1 94.1

45.8 44.1

67.3 38.5

84.5 74.6

73.1 71.6

91.9 94.4

86.1 72.1

87.6 88.3

6.5 23.2 9.9 37.2

1.2 2.5

5.8 2.4

50.1 50.8

2.2 5.4

10.6 16.0

14.2 18.2

3.1 3.4

4.0 5.3

5.6 5.9

4.2 3.4

7.1 7.9

3.4 1.6

3.8 2.8

0.8 2.4

29.4 53.5

3.6 6.7

9.0 8.4

2.3 1.5

8.6 3.0

4.2 2.7

0.7 1.4

2.1 3.4

0.4 1.0

0.4 0.7

3.4 2.7

1.1 2.6

1.3 2.7

3.8 1.8

2.8 0.7

1.2 19.7

2.6 3.1

3.0 1.8

0.5 0.4

1.6 0.6

0.9 0.8

2.5 2.4

2.0 1.0

1.5 1.1

9.5 5.7

70.0 76.1

11.4 12.0

100.0 100.0

3.1 1.7

0.4 0.2

1.7 0.7

0.9 0.8

1.3 1.2

1.6 0.4

1.5 1.0

8.0 4.6

73.4 81.4

11.2 9.8

100.0 100.0

3.5 3.0

2.2 2.4

0.3 0.3

0.9 0.3

22.3 20.5

0.8 0.9

2.9 3.1

24.1 17.5

38.4 44.5

8.1 10.7

100.0 100.0

3.0 2.3

0.9 1.1

1.3 0.4

0.8 0.8

0.4 2.1

14.2 19.3

1.3 2.9

20.3 17.8

37.5 42.4

23.3 13.5

100.0 100.0

0.8 0.8

0.4 0.4

0.3 0.2

0.1 0.2

3.2 2.1

0.8 0.8

0.7 1.0

14.0 3.3

75.3 16.6

5.4 76.0

100.0 100.0

Johannes Heirman, The Main Trends In Trade, Trade Policy And Integration Agreements In The Countries Of The Association Of Caribbean States (Acs). Santiago de Chile: United Nations, Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC), Division of International Trade and Integration, November 2001.

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Resources; for the Environment; for Science, Technology, Education, Health and Culture; and for Natural Disasters. Chart 1 ACS Exports by ACS subgroups, 1999.

11%

2%

Others

CARICOM

1 2 26%

3

CACM

61%

4

G-3

Notes: Others-includes the Non-Grouped countries (Cuba, the Dominican Republic and Panama), and the Associate Member countries (France, Aruba and the Netherlands Antilles).

Chart 2 xpo rts b yd estina ti on, 1999. Total ACS e estinati tio expo xpor by destina 12%

6%

6%

1 2 3 4

76%

Notes: Others- exports to the rest of the world.

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This led to concerns among member states about diffusion of effort and resource insufficiency – a sense that the ACS was severely short of the money and manpower required to effectively service its rapidly expanding work programme. Related to this was the duplication issue; expressed as a perception that the ACS might be seeking to duplicate, or compete with, the work of existing regional organisations. There was also an issue of uneven participation due to the indifference of many of the ACS’s smaller members to its activities. This was reflected in the relatively low rate of attendance at ACS meetings of the majority of CARICOM countries, particularly the members of the OECS countries, and of Central American countries; compared to attendance by the members of the Group of 3, the non-grouped countries and the larger CARICOM states. Table 4 Attendan ce a tM ain ACS Meetin gs, 1998-2001. ttendance at Main Meetings, 1998

1999

2000

2001

Meetings (no.)1

9

11

13

13

Attendance (%)2

64

54

52

50

CARICOM 3 countries

60

53

39

33

- OECS 4 countries

20

15

12

12

CACM5 countries

42

38

38

45

G-36 countries

100

85

90

85

Non-grouped countries 7

93

82

79

79

Associate Members8

67

52

51

46

Source: ACS records

The ACS as a Zone of Cooperation By 2000 the ACS was engaged in a process of self-evaluation facilitated by the appointment of an independent review group of high-level experts. Discussions on its future course crystallised into two schools. One assumed that the ACS would continue on a path of embracing all or most of the programme developed by the seven special committees, in line with the original expectations. The other was that the ACS would re-affirm a focus on the three cooperation areas set out in the inaugural Summit, with the addition of natural disasters, which had become a major concern to Central America. In this view the ACS would also seek consciously to collaborate with, and complement, the activities of existing regional organisations. We characterise these as the maximalist vs the niche or value added conception of the ACS role. The proponents of the maximalist role came mainly from the non-grouped countries. This was logical since they do not belong to any existing regional

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economic integration grouping and perceived a need to develop a comprehensive system of cooperation bearing resemblance to an integration system. On the other hand the majority of the ACS membership lined up behind the niche or value added conception. This became the basis of a consensus that was reflected in the decisions on rationalisation and prioritisation of the work programme taken in December 2000. The number of Special Committees was reduced from seven to four – the “3 T’s” and Natural Disasters – and priorities were set in each of the four focal areas. The refined strategy received political endorsement at the 3rd ACS Summit in December 2001 (ACS:2001a). This reaffirmed consultation, cooperation and concerted action as the defining character of the ACS as a regional organisation; and adopted establishment of the Greater Caribbean Zone of Cooperation as its principal mission. By these decisions, the ACS accepted a self-definition as an organisation of functional cooperation rather than as an economic integration grouping per se.

STRUCTURAL CHARACTERISTICS AND POLITICAL CONSENSUS The structural differences among ACS members also created difficulties in securing political consensus on cooperation on a number of issues. On the other hand, the areas of achieved consensus provide valuable indications on the potential for functional cooperation within the ACS system. We characterise these as the processes of contradiction, competition, and complementarity in ACS agenda setting. Contradiction refers to instances of directly opposing interests of different members or sub-groups of members another due to structural divergence in their external trade relations. Competition occurs where immediate priorities differ even if long-term interests are convergent. Complementarity occurs when perceived priorities and long-term interests converge and is a necessary precondition for effective cooperative action by the organisation.

Contradiction The effects of contradiction are, at best, failure to cooperate in a particular subject area of interest to the membership and at worst, distrust and the undermining of confidence among members and a loss of credibility in the organisation. The most notable example of contradiction was the issue of the preferential banana import regime granted by the European Union to the African Caribbean Pacific Group of countries under the Lome and Cotonou accords, from which CARICOM members of the ACS benefit. Central and South American banana exporters supported the United States in opposing the EU banana regime, leading to a protracted dispute with the EU. The issue emerged soon after the establishment of the ACS in 1994 and, although informal efforts were made for

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the ACS to be used as a forum to resolve the dispute these did not come to fruition as both sub-groups preferred to utilise existing traditional diplomatic channels to press their respective cases. The issue was only finally resolved at the level of the WTO, at the Ministerial Meeting at Doha which granted a waiver to the EU to allow a modified banana regime to come into effect. Another potential area of contradiction that is now under discussion is the issue of special treatment of small economies in trade agreements. ACS declarations routinely contain pledges to take account of differences in the size and levels of development of member states particularly of the smallest members. How this is put into practice involves questions of definition and interpretation with respect to the scope, extent and degree of permanence of special treatment. Within the ACS there is as yet no politically agreed definition of “small” or “smaller”. From one perspective 22 of the 25 member states fall into these categories, ranging in population size from 11 million (Cuba) to 45,000 (St. Kitts). Thirteen (ACS, 2001) of these are under 1.5 million in population, the definition of small economies employed by the Commonwealth/World Bank task force. All of these are members of CARICOM and they constitute the majority of CARICOM ACS members. Within CARICOM the Treaty of Chaguaramas distinguishes between “Less Developed Countries” (LDCs) and “More Developed Countries (MDCs) with LDCs having special and permanent derogations in trade and tariffs under the Treaty. CARICOM countries have therefore been the most vigorous in pressing for SDT, both on account of the group as a whole and in order to respect the terms of the Treaty. In 2001 the ACS Special Committee on Trade reached consensus on a statement of Principles and Guidelines on Special and Differential Treatment for Small Economies and this was endorsed by ACS Heads of State and Government at the 3rd ACS Summit in December 2001 (ACS 2001b). However the interpretation of and degree of support for SDT varies according to the perceived interests of other sub-groups within the ACS and its impact on their external trade negotiations policy. The other smaller economies in the ACS from Central America and the non-grouped countries are in a different situation from CARICOM in certain significant respects. First, historically they have not been important beneficiaries of across the board trade preferences of the type received by CARICOM members under the ACP arrangements. One-way preferences on the US market have been on a commodity-by-commodity basis and through CBI and CBTPA provisions that also contain restrictions on the degree of coverage. They also derive modest benefits from the limited Generalised System of Preferences (GSP). For these reasons the CARICOM demand for SDT may be perceived as part of strategy to maintain historical trading privileges that are not consistent with current thrust towards global trade liberalisation and that have afforded levels of per capita income that are in some instances considerably higher than those of nonCARICOM countries.

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Secondly, these countries are on average considerably larger than CARICOM countries and they have no equivalent to the OECS mini-states. Third, they are not bound by Treaty obligations to grant SDT similar to those that exist under the CARICOM’s Treaty. And fourth, by early 2002 Central America was preparing for free trade agreement negotiations with its main trading partners, the United States and the EU. This diminishes the scope for negotiations on a special regime for small economies as a whole within a hemispheric (FTAA) or global (WTO) framework. Positions also vary within the Group of Three. Venezuela and Colombia are members of the Andean Community and, while not opposed to SDT in principle they tend to emphasise the aspect that relates to “levels of development” as much as that relating to “size”. Mexico is likely to view the issue from its perspective as a participant in NAFTA, which does not incorporate the principle of SDT and is based on the philosophy of the “level playing field”. In this perspective special treatment for smaller countries focuses on technical assistance and capacity building measures for governments and the private sector, with consideration of temporary derogation on a case-by-case basis.

Competition The subject area of external trade negotiations also shows instances of competing priorities (as distinct from contradictory interests). Failure to proceed with negotiations for an ACS FTA in deference to the FTAA process was itself one such instance. Another was the failed attempt to secure agreement on a Caribbean Preferential Tariff (CPT) within the framework of the ACS as the alternative to an ACS FTA. The CPT would be compatible with existing and proposed trade agreements and would respect differences in the levels of development of ACS members, with a special regime for the CARICOM LDCs. Under Article XX of the ACS Convention (1994), the CPT could be implemented by those ACS countries willing to participate in the absence of unanimous agreement among the ACS membership. Technical meetings on the CPT went on over a 2-year period resulting in agreed draft approved by the ACS Trade Committee. But at the end of 2000 the CPT proposal was abandoned in the face of lack of interest from the majority of the ACS membership. Mexico had always indicated it would not be part of the CPT, preferring to give priority to the FTAA process, its negotiations with the EU, and a series of bilateral negotiations with Central American countries. Central America failed to confirm its participation in the CPT because of the demands of the FTAA negotiations and of a number of bilateral negotiations as well of its own integration process. In the face of the non-participation of Mexico and Central America Caricom decided that the value added from the CPT would not be worth the effort. CARICOM already had trade agreements with Venezuela,

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Colombia, the Dominican Republic and Cuba, the principal CPT protagonists; and was also preoccupied with negotiations with the EU, the FTAA, bilateral negotiations and the requirements of the CARICOM Single Market and Economy (CSME). In effect, the majority of ACS countries indicated that there were more pressing and urgent priorities on their trade negotiating agenda than the ACS CPT. Another case of competing short-term priorities was the response to the fall-out of tourism traffic to the Greater Caribbean following September 11, 2001. ACS countries had agreed from 1995 that tourism would be one of the focal areas of cooperation and in 1999 a Memorandum of Understanding on establishing the Sustainable Tourism Zone of the Caribbean (STZC) was signed at the 2nd ACS Summit, which was to lead to the signing of the STZC Convention at the 3rd Summit in December 2001. However the immediate responses to the crisis affecting tourism after 9/11 were along national and traditional sub-regional lines. CARICOM convened two emergency tourism summits with the collaboration of the Caribbean Tourism Organisation (CTO), which developed a short-term marketing programme. In 2001 Mexico withdrew from the CTO and the involvement of the other Spanish-speaking CTO members (Cuba, the Dominican Republic and Venezuela) in the CTO-engineered response programme was not significant. At the same time Central American was developing a response programme of its own to promote its own through that sub-region’s Committee of Tourism Ministers.

Complementarity Against these occurrences of contradiction and competition in ACS agenda setting there are several instances of complementarity in the areas of trade, sustainable tourism, transport, natural resources and the environment. These point to the potential for developing functional cooperation in the medium and long-term in areas of common interest to the community of Greater Caribbean States. In the area of trade, the ACS has identified “value added” activities that complement existing trade liberalisation processes. For instance, work has started on developing an agreed common definition of rum to be proposed for the FTAA negotiations. This would ensure greater market access for the region’s rum industries when the FTAA comes into effect while ensuring recognition of rum as a sugar cane based spirit and possibly extending to its a “geographical indication” as a specifically Caribbean spirit (ACS, June 2002). Another significant value added activity is the organisation of the annual ACS Business Forum of the Greater Caribbean, an event that attracts hundreds of exporting and importing companies with the aim of stimulating trade transactions and encouraging policy dialogue between the private sector and public officials.

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Other agreed activities are the launching of an association of trade and investment agencies of the Greater Caribbean, a study of obstacles to trade and efforts to develop a project for an Integrated Information System of the Greater Caribbean. A study of the scope for Special and Differential Treatment for Small Economies in the FTAA has also been commissioned. The negotiation and signature of the Convention on the Sustainable Tourism Zone of the Caribbean (STZC), which was signed at the 3rd Summit in December 2001, is a signal achievement in functional cooperation for the ACS. Tourism is an activity of considerable common interest, being the largest single foreign exchange earner for 18 of the ACS’s 25 member states as well as the three Associate Members. The STZC Convention calls for 12 broad strategies aimed at ensuring the economic, social, cultural and environmental sustainability of the industry as a single recognisable zone in the global tourism marketplace, as well as for the categorisation of destinations according to sustainability standards and practices. Considerable effort will be necessary in order to effect ratification and implementation of the STZC. In transport, ACS members have agreed on an ambitious programme to “Unite the Caribbean by Air and Sea” (ACS, 2001). Central to this is the negotiation of an Agreement on a Common Air Transport Policy among the majority of member states that will provide expanded rights to the servicing of intra-ACS routes for regional carriers.6 And on-going activity is the convening of meetings of CEOs of regional airlines to determine the scope for inter-airline functional cooperation and the development of multi-destination tourism packages. In maritime transport, a project on a Port and Data Base Centre has been developed in collaboration with the Caribbean Shipping Association, a major private sector body, to facilitate greater utilization of the port facilities of the Greater Caribbean by shippers and brokers. Since the formation of the ACS a series of major natural disasters affecting different countries in the region has highlighted the need for functional cooperation in this subject area. This was reflected in negotiation and signature of the ACS Agreement on Natural Disasters at 2nd ACS Summit in 1999 and the elevation of the Working Group on Natural Disasters to the status of a Special Committee in December 1999. Cooperation is being developed on: (i) the formulation and implementation of standards, policies and laws for the management and prevention of natural disasters; (ii) the establishment of joint programmes designed to manage natural disasters with the assistance of specialised natural disaster organizations throughout the region; and (iii) cooperation in the formulation, funding and aid programmes for ACS Member States that request such services, particularly with respect to seeking the assistance of international and regional organisations. In ACS member states adopted the Caribbean Environment Plan, providing for cooperation across a wide range around the common patrimony of the

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Caribbean Sea. Central to the strategy is the proposal to have the United Nations General Assembly declare the Caribbean Sea to be a Special Area in the Context of Sustainable Development, which would empower the nations sharing the Caribbean basin to engage in joint actions to protect and jointly manage the Caribbean Marine Environment (CARICOM, 1997). This initiative resulted in adoption of General Assembly Resolution calling for the “integrated management” of the Caribbean Sea (UN, 2000). ACS member states are agreed on the need to continue the Special Area initiative and efforts are continuing through 2002, with the likelihood that this topic will be the subject of the political dialogue by the ACS Ministerial Council at its meeting in November 2002.

CONCLUSIONS This paper sets out the proposition that the effectiveness of regionalism as a strategy for responding to globalisation will be a function of the degree of its multi-functional cooperation in intra-regional and extra-regional relations. The ACS experience shows that regionalism can be a relevant strategy in the absence of market liberalisation and integration, although these are the principal elements in the best-known integration schemes. In the economic sphere regionalism can complement bilateral and sub-regional arrangements for market liberalisation by sector-specific functional cooperation based on geographical propinquity. Sustainable tourism and transport are two critical areas in the region of the Greater Caribbean with the potential to facilitate expanded intraregional trade and support the re-positioning of the regional economies in international markets for services. Shared geographic space also underlies a cooperation imperative in the environment and natural disasters, subjects that have assumed importance due to degradation of the regional coastal and marine environment and the effects of global climate change. It would be a mistake, therefore, to think of regionalism as a purely or mainly economic strategy since globalisation has important noneconomic dimensions including the environment, health and culture in which regional cooperation is relevant, especially for small developing countries. It is fairly self-evident that a critical success factor for a regional organisation is the perceived coincidence of interests among all or most of the membership and shared conceptions of the character and principal objectives of the organisation. In the case of the ACS these factors operated first, through divergent conceptions of the organisation’s primary purpose as being integration vis-à-vis cooperation. We have argued that this divergence was implicit in an initial ambiguity in the specification of the role of the organisation but only became explicitly articulated in the context of operationalisation, the pressures of resource scarcity and the need to justify its existence.

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Second, the critical success factors were mediated by a number of structural and conjunctural characteristics of the membership in the form of wide disparities in their size, economic structure and external trading relationships. These characteristics underlay the differences in conception referred to above and conditioned the interplay of contradiction, competition and complementarity in agenda setting that has been one of the notable features of the ACS’s relatively short history. To the extent that there is now consensus on the purpose and role of the ACS, the organisation appears to have set in place one of its critical success factors. Its future sustainability and effectiveness will turn on the ability of its membership to maximise complementarity and minimise contradiction and competition in its agenda setting and work programme. Presently this is expressed as agreement on consultation, cooperation and concerted action on trade, sustainable tourism, transport and natural disasters as the chief elements in the work programme – ”the 3 C’s for the 3 T’s plus ND” – and summarised in the form of the Greater Caribbean Zone of Cooperation as the guiding mission of the ACS. We can expect continued pressure on the cohesiveness of the ACS due to contradictory and competing short-term interests arising out of the dynamics of globalisation and hemispheric market liberalisation, such as in trade relations policy regarding the WTO, the FTAA, and the EU. Maintaining and enlarging this cohesiveness requires continuing emphasis on shared geographic space as the principal raison d’etre of the existence of the organisation and the basis of the coincidence of long-term strategic interest of its membership.

Notes 1. Viz. the EU negotiations for Regional Economic Partnership Agreements (REPAs) with the ACP under the Cotonou Accord; and the impending negotiations between the United States and Central America for a Free Trade Agreement. 2. Cuba, the Dominican Republic, Haiti and Panama. Haiti has since acceded to membership of CARICOM. 3. Key factors in this were the active Caribbean policy of Cuba throughout the period and of Puerto Rico during the 1980s; and the diminishing isolation of the Dominican Republic and Haiti due to political changes in both countries. 4. The G3 decision was taken at their Summit meeting in October 1993. 5. Aruba and the Netherlands Antilles, and France on behalf of French Guiana, Guadeloupe and Martinique. 6. Negotiation of the agreement is now well advanced and signature is expected in 2003.

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References. Association of Caribbean States (ACS) (1994), Convention Establishing the Association of Caribbean States. Port-of-Spain, Trinidad. Internet: http://www.acs-aec.org/convention.htm Association of Caribbean States (ACS) Trade Database (2001), Population Sizes for ACS Member and Associate Member States. Sourced from the ACS Website: http://www.acsaec.org/Trade/Dbase/Dbase_eng/dbaseindex_eng.htm Association of Caribbean States (ACS) (2001), “Special and Differential Treatment of Small Economies in the Context of the Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA)”. Document adopted during the 3rd ACS Summit. Sourced from the ACS Website: http://www.acs-aec.org/III_summit/English/small_economies_eng.htm Association of Caribbean States (1999), Agreement Between Member States and Associate Members of the Association of Caribbean States for Regional Cooperation on Natural Disasters. Second Summit of Heads of State and/ or Government. Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic. Sourced from the ACS Website: http://www.acs-aec.org/Summit/ English/ArgmntNatDesas_eng.htm Association of Caribbean States (ACS) Trade Database (2001), Population Sizes for ACS Member and Associate Member States. Sourced from the ACS Website: http://www.acsaec.org/Trade/Dbase/Dbase_eng/dbaseindex_eng.htm Association of Caribbean States (ACS) (2001a), Declaration of Margarita: The Consolidation of the Greater Caribbean. Third Summit of Heads of State and/or Government. Margarita Island: Venezuela. Sourced from the ACS Website: http://www.acs-aec.org/ III_summit/English/Declaration_eng.htm Association of Caribbean States (ACS) (2001b), “Special and Differential Treatment of Small Economies in the Context of the Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA)”. Document adopted during the 3rd ACS Summit. Sourced from the ACS Website: http://www.acs-aec.org/III_summit/English/small_economies_eng.htm ACS News Release (2002), Rum Talks End in Agreement. Sourced from the Website: http:/ /www.acs-aec.org/nr Bryan, Anthony T. and Roget V. Bryan (1999), The New Face of Regionalism in the Caribbean: The Western Hemisphere Dynamic. North-South Centre: University of Miami, Number 35 CARICOM (1997), CARICOM’s Proposal for the International Recognition of the Caribbean Sea as a Special Area in the Context of Sustainable Development. ECLAC (1994), Open Regionalism in Latin America and the Caribbean: Economic Integration as a Contribution to Changing Production Patterns with Social Equity. Santiago, Chile: ECLAC. Financial Times, July 24-25, 1994. Mendoza, Miguel Rodriguez et al (eds.) (1999), Trade Rules in the Making: Challenges in Regional and Multilateral Negotiations. Washington, D.C: Brookings Institution Press, 1999.

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Girvan, Norman (2002), Rum Talk, The Greater Caribbean This Week. Sourced from the Website: http://www.acs-aec.org/column Insanally, Riyad (1998), “The FTAA Challenge”. Pensamiento Propio: October/ December; Lawrence, Robert Z. (1999), “Regionalism, Multilateralism and Deeper Integration: Changing Paradigms for Developing Countries” in Trade Rules in the Making: Challenges in Regional and Multilateral Negotiations; Mendoza, Miguel Rodriguez et al (eds.). Washington, D.C: Brookings Institution Press. UNDP Human Development Report (1999), Globalisation with a Human Face. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Union of International Associations (UIA)) (2000), Yearbook of International Organisations: 1999/2000 Edition. Sourced from the Website: http://www.uia.org/uiastats/ytb199.htm. United Nations (2000), United Nation General Assembly Resolution 54/225, Promoting an Integrated Management Approach to the Caribbean Sea Area in the Context of Sustainable Development. West Indian Commission (1992), Time for Action: Report of the West Indian Commission. Black Rock, Barbados: The West Indian Commission.

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T H I R T Y

The CARIbbeAn COuRT OF JuSTICe In RegIOnAl eCOnOMIC develOpMenT DUKE POLLARD

Role of Law in National Economic Development “ . . . justice sectors in the Caribbean have been seen historically as users of resources, rather than as contributors to economic and social development. “ 1

A

n understanding of the role of the proposed Caribbean Court of Justice in regional economic development would be greatly facilitated by adopting as the point of departure an examination of the role of the justice sector, in particular, and that of the law, generally, in the national economic development process. For present purposes, law will be defined as the corpus of societal norms which is established, interpreted, applied and enforced by the central authorities of the state in order to regulate the conduct of persons, both natural and juridical, in their normal interface with one another. The central authorities which are normally involved in the process described are the legislative assemblies, offices of the solicitors-general, offices of the attorneys-general, ministers of justice, the courts, directors of public prosecutions, commissioners of prisons and police, probation officers, legal aid clinics, associations of public and private law practitioners and other relevant legal and administrative institutions. Collectively, this assemblage of organisations and institutions is known as the Justice Sector. A generally acceptable compendium of factors perceived to influence structured national social and economic development will probably include an impressive body of determinants of a psychological, geopolitical, economic, environmental, legal and institutional nature of a varying mix, depending on the peculiar circumstances of the political entities examined. Of the factors identified above, conventional economic wisdom would probably ascribe a very low rating to the legal determinant. This disposition may be explained by

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reference to generally uninformed and misconceived perceptions enjoying wide currency in various professions, including the legal fraternity, about the role of law and the justice sector in the national development process. Similar perceptions of a more deep-seated nature are entertained by the political directorate of various jurisdictions in the Caribbean Community where resources committed to enhancement of the justice sector are not perceived as translating into positive political outcomes at election time. Within recent times, however, the role of law and the justice sector in national economic development has been accorded favourable recognition by multilateral financial institutions which are insisting on improvements in the justice sector as a catalyst for attracting and sustaining investments for the economic development of disadvantaged states. It has been observed in this context that high direct and indirect costs of violence can deter both domestic and foreign investment and stimulate the migration of scarce skills. Similarly, improvements in both the criminal and civil justice systems not only enhance social stability but also impact positively on the domestic investment environment and economic development. Contrary to popular persuasion, the law and legal institutions play a determinative, though oftentimes, unheralded role in national economic development. This is particularly the case in the Caribbean Community where the sole proprietor and family establishments continue to dominate and even impede economic activity. The vast majority of companies in the Community are private companies and most of them comprise family businesses. Indeed even some wholly-owned government companies and subsidiaries of large transnational corporations are registered as private companies entitled not to file accounts with the Registrar of Companies.2 Financial economists like Hayek recognise, on the one hand, the importance of legal institutions for the efficient functioning of financial markets and, on the other hand, the contribution of financial markets to national economic development. In this context, it is worthy of note that the basic unit of any currency, legal tender, is a creature of law and underpins monetary and financial transactions of states in their international economic, monetary and financial transactions.3 The critical importance of the financial sector in national economic development and the contribution of legal norms in establishing the architecture of the sector may be inferred from the submissions of the United States delegation in the FTAA negotiations which read, inter alia, as follows: In the view of the United States, a review of FTAA rules affecting the financial sector and the development of specialised provisions for that sector as appropriate should be pursued in a distinct FTAA forum. The sensitivity of financial markets and institutions and the complexity of financial regulations warrant establishing one forum to ensure the development of clear coherent rules for this section . . . 4

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In one submission it was noted that: (c)onsistent enforcement of understandable laws helps provide a stable environment where the long-term consequences of economic decisions can be reasonably predicted and assessed. An effective and efficient judiciary has the added benefit of making the legal system affordable and accessible for relatively small-sized enterprises and less privileged citizens, thereby achieving poverty and equity objectives as well as an increase in overall economic activity.5 In point of fact, the most critical actors in national economic activity are creatures of the law - juridical entities, like the corporation, the limited liability company and the firm. These legal creations are, in large measure, responsible for much of the economic activity in the so-called developed societies. In this connection, the innovative, defining and expansionist role of the joint stock/ limited liability company in industrial and economic development in Britain and Europe during the nineteenth century must be accorded historical recognition, especially after the landmark decision of the House of Lords in Salomon & Salomon (1893) which definitively established the company as a legal entity separate and apart from its members. Prior to this legal fiction, industrial development was apt to be stymied by entrepreneurial exposure to risk, unmitigated bankruptcy and even imprisonment. Indeed, current international economic activity is controlled and determined by megacorporations resulting from transborder mergers of transnational corporations whose global reach is at best disconcerting and whose individual resources, natural, human, technological and financial, more often than not, dwarf the national resources of most developing nations. The role of the state as the primary determinant of national economic policy and as an important actor in international economic activity has been considerably undermined by the emergence of globalisation; similarly, transnational corporate power has been largely responsible for trade liberalisation as evidenced in the establishment of the World Trade Organisation.1 Fortunately, though perhaps, belatedly, recognition of the importance of these legal entities by regional experts has come from no less a source than the Governor of the Eastern Caribbean Central Bank who, in attempting to establish a vision for the Caribbean Community in the new millennium, perceptively submitted, inter alia: The vehicle for the production of both goods and services is the firm (read company). In this region we have tended to put the major emphasis on creating the conditions for production instead on the actual unit of production. The dominant firm in the region has been the multinational

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corporation which has traditionally controlled the export sectors in both agriculture and mining. The predominant domestic enterprises have been in the distribution, wholesale and retail sectors. The very size and structure of our economies dictate that for us to achieve sustainable growth, our activities must be export-oriented and flexible enough to adapt to a dynamic and competitive environment. The Caribbean private sector and governments must meet the challenge of developing and supporting the kind of firm structures which are appropriate to our circumstances and which give us the capacity to insert ourselves into the global commodity chains which now have come to represent the locus of international production, distribution and consumption. One would want to suggest that the import/export firm so prevalent in East Asia could be an appropriate vehicle for mobilising enterprise and production across the region and forming the link between the international economy and the region, and between small firms and the export economy. The strategy will have to concentrate on the institutional and incentive arrangements we put in place to capture international business. The legal and financial infrastructure are critical to the success of this enterprise; in these two areas, cutting edge legislation and financial products have to be important factors . . . 6 Such cutting edge legislation must address issues in the areas of companies, banking, financial institutions, incentives, intellectual property, commerce, investment, bankruptcy, securities, environment, international trade, competition, subsidies, dumping, economic integration to mention a few. Although it is not readily admitted by conventional economists, the law is the basic and essential catalyst for social and economic activity. In the modern state, itself a creature of law, nearly all regulated social and economic activities are conducted within parameters established by law. However, because the role of law in national economic and social development is not readily appreciated by competent decision-makers or, if it is, it is not accorded due prominence in the national political agenda, resources normally allocated to the establishment and maintenance of legal infrastructure are exiguous compared to resources allocated to other sectors like health and education, which continue to command relatively high political and electoral profiles. Significantly, too, the role of law in the achievement and maintenance of macro-economic stability and, ipso facto, in national economic development is not readily understood by conventional economic gurus. An interesting example in this context is to be found in the area of currency values. Although it is reasonable to assume that economists worthy of the designation discern the importance of stable currency values in contributing to business efficiency and

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a healthy macro-economic environment in the modern state, it is not always the subject of a reasonable assumption, however, that economists recognise that the required stability and predictability are necessarily a function of legal certainty and the ability of the law to adapt to the dynamics of the economic environment. 7 Such a lack of appreciation is often compounded by the omission of some economists to distinguish between depreciation of a national currency - erosion of its purchasing power - and devaluation, which is a conscious governmental act established by law to lower the par value of the currency. Similarly, the law plays a determinative role in the establishment of interest rates, the independence of central banks, prudential management of financial institutions and markets, the control of money supply, access by governments to central banks’ financial resources, permissibility and extent of budgetary deficits, the borrowing powers of national administrations and so on ad nauseum. All of the factors identified may contribute in varying degrees to macro-economic stability and, by the same token, the stability of investor expectations, in the absence of which the investment climate is unlikely to be favourable. In short, unless the prudent investor finds himself in a position to predict outcomes with reasonable accuracy and certainty, he is normally disinclined to commit his investment. And in this context, outcome predictability is, more often than not, a function of legal certainty. Furthermore, the organisation of monetary systems, both internationally and nationally, including the establishment of par values, exchange rates and even legal tender, is a function of legislative enactments. Indeed, money is less an economic than a legal concept and may be defined as a chattel, issued under the authority of law, denominated with reference to a specific unit of account and endowed with the status of legal tender for the complete satisfaction of a debt or other monetary obligation. And it needs no arguing that monetary systems are indispensable for the organisation of modern economies.8 At the international level, it is impossible to ignore the role of the law in determining developments in trade, finance, technology transfers, transportation, shipping, exploitation of the resources of ocean space and outer space, telecommunications, technological innovation and such like. Indeed, the extensive system of multilateralism established during and after the second world war dictates, in large measure, state interaction in the international community at present. This system was the outcome of various multilateral conferences designed to legislate conduct in the post-war years in virtually every spatial dimension, with a view to restoring and promoting international trade. Beginning with the Bretton Woods Agreements in 1943, these multilateral instruments comprehended the Chicago Convention (1944), the aborted Havana Charter (1948), the Washington Agreement (1955), the International

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Telecommunications Convention (1961), the Washington Convention (1947), the United Nations Convention (1948), the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (1947), the Geneva Conventions on the Law of the Sea (1958 and 1960), the International Convention for the Protection of Industrial Property (1958), the General Assembly Declaration of Legal Principles Governing Activities of States in the Exploration and Use of Outer Space (1963), the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (1982) and culminated in the Marrakesh Agreement (1994) establishing the World Trade Organisation. 9 These multilateral regimes impact decisively on national decision-making and sometimes critically determine the direction and scope of national economic development.

The Role of the Justice Sector in National Economic Development Although law and the justice sector enjoy a symbiotic relationship, they are, nevertheless, discrete sociological phenomena. Law, as a centrally determined normative body of prescriptions, speaks to the regulation of human intercourse; the justice sector addresses the institutional and organisational arrangements which give tangible expression to the establishment, interpretation, application and enforcement of legal norms. And, if, as demonstrated in the previous section, the role of law in national economic development is perceived as critical, the justice sector must be seen to play an equally seminal role in the process. Efficiently functioning institutions of the justice sector, by complementing and facilitating various legislative initiatives which, collectively, define conventional morality and the prevailing social ethos of a people, operate to institutionalise good governance, which is being posited by the international donor community as a conditionality of financial assistance in the form of grants, concessional loans and even preferential trading arrangements. Consider in this context the EU/ACP Cotonou Agreement and the unfolding FTAA Agreement. Institutions of the justice sector, particularly, judicial institutions, by enhancing the delivery of services both in terms of swiftly and decisively punishing socially deviant behaviour, ensuring that contractual obligations are performed and protecting and enforcing property rights through the expeditious, fair and transparent settlement of disputes, contribute to a healthy business and investment climate. In short, an efficient and effective justice sector instils confidence in the general populace and engenders conditions of stability conducive to predicting the consequences of critical decision-making, particularly in the area of investments. More importantly, many functions of institutions operating in the justice sector contribute in large measure to a reduction in the transaction costs of

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conducting business with probable beneficial impact on the national investment climate. Addressing the issue of the investment climate, Prime Minister Owen Arthur of Barbados observed: “The environment must therefore be created within which the Region’s enterprises can be adequately capitalised and acquire the critical mass to compete at home and to compete internationally. Widespread encumbrances and the high cost of doing business in the Region must be systematically reduced.” 10 Much of this cost is due to inefficiencies in the operation of the justice sector. In this context, mention must be made of affordable access to justice and expeditious, efficacious disputes settlement procedures, especially in the area of commercial disputes. Similarly, by effectively protecting property rights from various forms of fraud and brigandry, the justice system relieves property owners of expenditure on protective services thereby reducing the costs of business transactions. Lower transaction costs impact positively on production costs resulting in an enhanced competitive position for businesses. Furthermore, stability in the social and macro-economic environment issuing from an efficient justice sector lowers the incidence of investment risks and the price of capital to borrowers and entrepreneurs. In this context, too, it must be observed that social stability in the national environment coupled with plausible assurances of protection for life and limb of individuals, impacts favourably on the tourism industry which is the largest generator of foreign exchange in the economies of most member states of the Caribbean Community. On the basis of the foregoing, it appears to be the subject of a reasonable inference that much underdevelopment in countries of the Caribbean Community can be traced to inadequate legal infrastructure and inefficiencies in the functioning of national justice sectors and underscores the need for reforms in the justice sector. “By raising the cost of conducting business, a poorly performing justice sector makes a nation’s goods and services less competitive on international markets. At the extreme, inoperative justice sectors cannot prevent or control violence, thus diminishing existing physical capital and deterring new investment.” 11 Reforms in the justice sector, however, must go hand in hand with reforms dictated by developments associated with globalisation and liberalisation. In one submission it is asserted that: “(g)lobalisation and technological advancements have the potential to free most developing countries from the restrictions imposed by a small domestic market, low savings and limited access to world technology and credit .... The creation and development of mechanisms to support more market-oriented economic policies - such as regulatory agencies in support of private sector led growth and anti-trust, anti-dumping and fair trading commissions are urgently needed in most developing countries. Globalisation has also intensified the link between justice sector services and development, and it has raised the costs associated with an ineffective and inefficient justice sector.”12

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The Role of the Caribbean Court of Justice in Regional Economic Development A credible evaluation of the role of the Caribbean Court of Justice in regional economic development must bear in mind two important factors. Firstly, the proposed Caribbean Court is intended to be a unique institution in international institutional relations. For not only is the Court designed to replace the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council (JCPC) as the highest appellate municipal court for the member states of the Caribbean Community, but it is also structured to be an international tribunal employing rules of international law in interpreting and applying the Revised Treaty of Chaguaramas Establishing the Caribbean Community including the CARICOM Single market and economy. In the exercise of its appellate jurisdiction, the Court will be the tribunal of last resort for participating Member States of the Community. As an international tribunal, however, the Court will exercise an original but exclusive jurisdiction in respect of the interpretation and application of the Treaty. In the exercise of both jurisdictions, the Court is expected to play a critical role in ensuring legal certainty in the Community and CSME, in the absence of which there is unlikely to be the stability of expectations which investors require as a basis for predicting outcomes in respect of economic decisions, especially those relating to investments in one or another economic activity. One or two policymakers in the Community at an earlier stage of the process, had wondered whether retention of the JCPC in respect of civil suits might not inspire greater investor confidence with probable positive impact on the regional investment climate. In the present submission, three observations may be tendered for consideration in this context. Firstly, the JCPC rarely overturns decisions of regional courts on civil matters, thereby attesting to the generally high quality of regional judicial pronouncements. Secondly, foreign investors proposing to commit substantial investments in developing regions normally provide for disputes settlement procedures in the relevant investment instrument. Such procedures usually provide for the settlement of disputes by the International Centre for the Settlement of Investment Disputes (ICSID), an instrumentality of the World Bank (IBRD). Thirdly, the Agreement Establishing the Caribbean Court of Justice expressly provided for the promotion and establishment of alternative disputes settlement modes and this should provide a vehicle for the expeditious and satisfactory resolution of a wide range of commercial disputes. Of no less importance is the fact that despite its misleading nomenclature, the Caribbean Community remains, and was always intended to be, an association of sovereign states. Indeed, the principle of sovereign equality of states finds cogent legal expression in the unanimity rule prescribed for determinations on substantive issues in the highest decision-making organ of

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the Community - The Conference of Heads of Government. 13 The legal status of the Caribbean Community has important consequences for the functioning of its organs and the benefits intended to inure to nationals of member states. And in all of this, it is worthwhile to remember that the express intention of competent decision-makers is the creation of a single economic space in the Community. However, given that the Community consists of several sovereign jurisdictions, establishment of a single economic space would require the superimposition of collective economic decision-making on discrete national administrations, which, in the ultimate analysis, retain autonomous decisionmaking powers in areas of national economic development. Furthermore, the relevant integrating instruments setting out the rights and obligations of nationals of member states have to be enacted into law by the national assemblies concerned before such rights and obligations can be enforced in national jurisdictions. One important consequence of this is that, in the absence of constraining legislation to this effect, national courts would be competent to interpret and apply the relevant enabling legislation. The rights inuring to nationals of member states consist, in the first instance, of the right of establishment, the right to provide services and the right to move capital within the Community.14 The right of establishment has been expressed to include the right to engage in any non-wage-earning activities of a commercial, industrial, agricultural, professional or artisanal nature, as well as the right to create and manage economic enterprises within the contemplation of the revised Treaty. In this connection, it is important to note that non-wage-earning activities means activities of an economic nature undertaken by self-employed persons or independent contractors. In order to facilitate the right of establishment, member states will be required to eliminate all legislative prescriptions and administrative practices which impede the exercise of the right of establishment. Such constraining prescriptions and practices relate to the employment of managerial, technical and supervisory personnel in economic enterprises, the establishment by qualifying companies of agencies, branches or subsidiaries and conditions for entry of relevant personnel, their spouses and dependants. One intractable outstanding issue relates to the question of other rights contingent on the right of establishment as defined and agreed. These so-called contingent rights relate to the terms of access by beneficiaries to social infrastructure of host states. Are the children of persons exercising the right of establishment entitled as of right to be accorded places in schools of their choice, assuming the satisfaction of non-discriminatory conditions? And if so, are such students entitled to be admitted on the same conditions as nationals in accordance with relevant provisions of the revised Treaty proscribing discrimination on the grounds of nationality? Similar considerations apply to access to health services and other social services. All such issues are to be addressed in a separate

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Protocol to be elaborated for the purpose.15 Similar problems may be expected to arise in relation to the provision of services by professionals and approved categories of skilled workers. In this connection, however, member states are expected to put in place “appropriate mechanisms to establish common standards to determine equivalency or to accord accreditation to diplomas, certificates and other evidence of qualification secured by nationals of other member states.”16 Both with respect to establishment and provision of services, member states are prohibited from introducing new restrictions. In all the situations contemplated for the removal of restrictions, competent Organs of the Community are required to establish agreed programmes for the removal of such restrictions. At the end of the time frames established for the removal of restrictions on the right of establishment, the provision of services and the movement of capital, it is envisaged that the most important factors of production would be free to move to any area of the Community where they can be most productively and efficiently employed. The axiomatic assumption in all this is that skills will only be inclined to move with opportunities for beneficial employment and that persons entitled would not willingly become a charge on the exchequer of the host country. And in any event, member states reserve the right to employ safeguard mechanisms in support of their balance of payments positions.17 Moreover, disadvantaged countries, regions and sectors are allowed special derogations and concessions as appropriate to facilitate their participation in the CSME. In terms of capital, member states undertook to remove discriminatory restrictions on banking, insurance and other financial services. Similarly, member states undertook not to introduce new restrictions on the movement of capital and payments connected therewith and on current payments and transfers. 18 In this context, the Council for Finance and Planning (COFAP) was tasked with establishing, in collaboration with the Committee of Central Bank Governors, a programme for the removal of the restrictions mentioned above. member states also undertook to co-ordinate their foreign exchange policies in respect of the movement of capital between them and third states. However, given the position currently existing in the Community in the area of foreign exchange policies, with Barbados, Belize, The Bahamas and the OECS States maintaining fixed exchange rates and the rest floating currencies, it is difficult to understand the commitment to co-ordinated foreign exchange policies in the absence of an obligation to redirect national policies. In the long term it is proposed to move to a single currency for the Community based on voluntary compliance with agreed convergence criteria. Given, however, the temptation to break ranks especially where political imperatives prescribe such a course of action, it is submitted that nothing less than a legal obligation, backed by credible sanctions, to comply with the agreed convergence criteria, will facilitate the achievement of the stated objectives.

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The rights identified above are some of the more important rights nationals of the Community will expect to enjoy in order to be persuaded that integration is indeed working. And for this to happen, there must exist somewhere in the Community credible mechanisms for authoritative and definitive identification and protection of such rights. And this is where the Caribbean Court of Justice must be seen to play an important role. As mentioned above, the municipal courts of all member states, in the absence of legislative constraints, will be competent to interpret and apply the revised Treaty as enacted into local law. This would be no less than a prescription for legal uncertainty issuing from a variety of judicial pronouncements not required to be consonant with one another. Legal uncertainty in this context is likely to engender instability by frustrating the predictability of economic decisions and their consequences. Such an environment is likely to impact negatively on macro-economic stability and the investment climate in general. This will not augur well for the Caribbean Community comprising in large measure capital-importing countries. Viewed from this perspective, it would be possible to grasp the critical role of the proposed Caribbean Court of Justice in the CARICOM Single Market and Economy. As mentioned above, the status of the Community as an association of sovereign states, coupled with the requirement for every member state to enact the revised Treaty into local law, subjects this instrument to as many interpretations as there are national jurisdictions, thereby constituting a builtin prescription for legal uncertainty. In order to avoid this eventuality, the political directorate of the Community determined to invest the Caribbean Court of Justice with compulsory and exclusive jurisdiction in respect of issues relating to the interpretation and application of the revised Treaty. 19 Consequently, where a municipal court in any national jurisdiction of a member state party to the Agreement Establishing the Caribbean Court of Justice is seized of an issue concerning the interpretation and application of the revised Treaty, it will be required to stay proceedings on such an issue pending a pronouncement thereon by the Caribbean Court of Justice.20 In point of fact, Article 177 of the Rome Treaty prescribes a similar requirement for municipal courts of member states of the European Community from which there is no appeal. In this way, uniformity of applicable norms is ensured with positive effects on legal certainty and the stability of the investment climate. It is also important to bear in mind that the law to be applied by the Court in the exercise of its original jurisdiction is international law which is common to both civil law and common law jurisdictions. 21 This requirement, however, does not preclude the Court from reaching determinations ex aequo et bono where the parties to a dispute before the Court so agree.22 Consequently, both Suriname and Haiti will have no problems in submitting to the jurisdiction of the Court in the exercise of its original jurisdiction. The fact that the jurisdiction of the Court in respect of those submitting thereto is both compulsory and

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exclusive contributes to uniformity in the applicable rules. This is enhanced by the binding nature of the Court’s decisions for third parties. Thus Article 221 of the revised Treaty provides that decisions of the Caribbean Court of Justice constitute stare decisis. Consistently with traditional international law, only subjects of international law are normally accorded locus standi in proceedings before the Caribbean Court of Justice. In the premises, private entities or individuals aggrieved by a denial of rights to be accorded under the revised Treaty are required to have their claims espoused by their states of nationality in proceedings before the Court. However, this requirement could result in a denial of access to justice when one party to a dispute is a member state which declines to espouse the claim of its national. To pre-empt this eventuality, Article 222 of the revised Treaty provides for private entities to be accorded locus standi in proceedings before the Court with leave of the Court where the requirements of justice so prescribe. Based on the foregoing, the role of the CCJ in ensuring the efficient operation of the CSME cannot be denied. In the absence of this institution to pronounce authoritatively and definitively on the rights and obligations of member states of the Community and their nationals, rights may tend to become illusory and obligations vacuous commitments. An integration regime comprising an association of sovereign states requires an institution like the Caribbean Court of Justice to assist the justice sector in the delivery of services expected of the sector in any progressive, stable national environment. Indeed, despite its status as a supranational collectivity, the European Union still requires the European Court of Justice to inject legal certainty and provide social and economic cohesion in the operational environment. In the Caribbean Community, the Caribbean Court of Justice is expected to contribute no less.

NOTES 1

Challenges of Capacity Development : Towards Sustainable Reforms of Caribbean Justice Sectors - Volume I : Policy Document. IDB/CGCED, May 2000 at p.4.

2

Report of the Working Party on the Harmonisation of Company Law in the Caribbean Community, p.11.

3

For the nature and impact of legal institutions on monetary policy and financial transactions, see generally, F. A. Mann, “The Legal Aspect of Money”, Clarendon Press, 1963.

4 5

Non-paper circulated by the US Delegation during the FTAA negotiations on services. Challenges of Capacity Development: Towards Sustainable Reforms of Caribbean Justice Sectors – Volume II: A Diagnostic Assessment – IDB/CGCED, May 2000 at p.1.

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Dwight Venner, “The Challenges of Economic Policy and Circumstances in the 21st Century” in the Caribbean Community : Beyond Survival, edited by Kenneth O. Hall; Ian Randle Publishers, Kingston, 2000 at p.695.

7

See generally, David Johnston et al, Cyber Law, Stoddart Publishing Co. Ltd., Toronto, 1997.

8

For a comprehensive analysis of these issues, see F. A. Mann, The Legal Aspect of Money, Clarendon Press, 2nd Edition, 1963, Chapters I and II.

9

For the impact of this system of multilateralism on the economies of developing countries, see Duke E. E. Pollard, Law and Policy of Producers’ Associations, Clarendon Press, 1982, p.18. et seq.

10 “The Future of the Caribbean Community and Common Market”: The Caribbean Community - Beyond Survival. Edited by Kenneth O. Hall, Ian Randle Publishers, at p.622. 11 Challenges of Capacity Development : Towards Sustainable Reforms of Caribbean Justice Sectors, Volume II. A Diagnostic Assessment, IDB/CGCED, May 2000 at p.2. 12 Challenges of Capacity Development : Towards Sustainable Reforms of Caribbean Justice Sectors, Volume 1 : Policy Document, IDB/CGCED, May 2000 at p.2. 13 See Article 29(1) of the Revised Treaty of Chaguaramas. 14 See, for example, Articles 32, 38 and 40 of the Revised Treaty of Chaguaramas signed in Nassau, The Bahamas on 5 July 2001. 15 See Article 239 of the Revised Treaty of Chaguaramas, op.cit. 16 See Article 35(2) of the Revised Treaty 17 See Articles 39 and 40 of the Revised Treaty. 18 See Article 43(2), 47 and 48 of the Revised Treaty. 19 See Article 211 of the Revised Treaty 20 See Article 214 of the Revised Treaty. 21 See Article 217 of the Revised Treaty. 22 See paragraph 3 of Article 212 of the Revised Treaty.

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C H A P T E R

T H I R T Y

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o n e

The CARIbbeAn COuRT OF JuSTICe: The need FOR COnFIdenCe buIldIng MeASuReS STEPHEN VASCIANNIE

T

he Judicial Committee of the Privy Council is rarely used by citizens of the Caribbean.1 In terms of distance, it is far removed from the Caribbean, and its judges, for the most part, are largely unexposed to Caribbean social and economic realities. Moreover, the original premises that constituted the rationale for the Privy Council are highly questionable, if not simply offensive to many Caribbean nationals in an era of self-determination and principled anticolonialism. Caribbean States are sovereign, independent entities, and even casual observation confirms that one of the main appurtenances of sovereignty is the right to have your own judges making final decisions on appellate matters arising within your national jurisdiction.2 This is particularly true when, as is the case in the Caribbean, reputable judges, advocates and academics, with extensive experience in the law, are in no short supply. Add to this the fact that in both the Pratt and Morgan3 and Neville Lewis4 decisions the Privy Council appeared to move unjustifiably down the slippery slope of judicial legislation, and the prima facie case for abolitions of appeals to London appears almost insurmountable. And yet, despite these rather obvious propositions in favour of the abolition of appeals to the Privy Council, the debate on abolition remains inconclusive in some parts of the region, especially, but not exclusively, in Jamaica. What can account for this? And, in view of the resistance to the Caribbean Court of Justice that remains evident in some member states of CARICOM, is the process of ratification of the Caribbean Court of Justice to be regarded as politically premature? As a starting-point, it may be fair to suggest that some of the opposition to the abolition of Privy Council appeals is based on Caribbean self-doubt. This factor was highlighted by the Caribbean Commission in A Time for Action in

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1992. First, the Commission pointed out that, as of the time of writing, the debate on the proposed Caribbean Court had proceeded for over 20 years, and that in 1988, the CARICOM Heads of Government Conference had taken a decision to establish the Court.5 For the Commission, therefore, it was unnecessary “to recapitulate the long discussion that occupied CARICOM at the level of Attorneys-General, Law Ministers and Heads of Government in this matter”;6 the time for action had been reached. Thus, the Commission added: We do not wish to minimise the issues which have characterised the discussion; indeed, we shall address some of them; but we are strongly of the view that we cannot, like the characters in a Chekhov play, go on sitting around tables forever discussing the pros and cons of action and in the process forever deferring it.7 Then, after expressing support for a Caribbean Court with final appellate jurisdiction and original jurisdiction for regional questions, the Commission asserted: We suspect that there is sometimes an unspoken question. Can the West Indies produce a Court that will function with the independence and erudition of the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council? We have not the slightest hesitation in answering that question in the affirmative.8 The unspoken question – can we do it by ourselves? – may have affected some of the debate. But, on this point we need to exercise caution. For, it is one thing to assert that CARICOM countries can, indeed establish a final appellate court of distinction; but it is quite another to conclude that the Caribbean Court of Justice in its current form will reflect the qualities that are traditionally associated with first rate judicial bodies. So then, although we should not ignore the role which self-doubt may have played in the debate, its significance should not be overstated: some policy-makers, writers and citizens generally may be influenced by this psychological remnant of colonialism, but in the main it is entirely possible for forward-looking, self-confident Caribbean nationals to raise serious questions about the way in which the Caribbean Court of Justice is being introduced, and about the current scheme for the court. These questions and a brief discussion of possible responses to them constitute the core of my presentation.

The Referendum Issue As the foregoing quotations from Time for Action indicate, at the levels of CARICOM Heads and law officers, the issue of the Caribbean Court has been

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the subject of extensive analysis, with no Chekhovian chair left unmoved. Time for Action implies that this may be an instance of Caribbean paralysis by analysis: we talk about some issues until, eventually, they simply fall from the agenda. But I would suggest that there is another way at looking at this question. The CARICOM deliberations on the Caribbean Court of Justice have been conducted largely above the heads of the ordinary citizen in the region, and the decision to abolish appeals to the Privy Council has been presented ex cathedra to the region. In implicit realisation of this fact, some CARICOM leaders have probably wished to make haste slowly; they may believe that the establishment of a Caribbean Court is appropriate, but their political instincts tell them that the top-down approach is incongruous and unprincipled in an era during which we all play lip-service to deepening democratic structures. The question whether we should abolish appeals to the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council is one which should be subject to a national referendum in each CARICOM member state. This position is supportable by at least three propositions. In the first place, a referendum on the subject would give full democratic authority and political legitimacy to the court structures that emerge from the plebiscitary process.9 Throughout history there has been no shortage of definitions as to what constitutes democracy,10 but for the present purposes we may conceive democracy to include popular sovereignty, political equality, popular consultation, majority rule and minority protection.11 And, if we start with this conception, there is a strong argument to the effect that a Caribbean Court emerging from national referenda will reflect the main criteria for democracy in modern societies: it will be the product of the popular will, individual decision-makers will have been treated equally, political parties will have been obliged to initiate popular consultation and incorporate minority concerns, and, ultimately, respect will be accorded to majority preferences. Secondly, in some jurisdictions, and certainly in Jamaica, the Caribbean Court debate has demonstrated marked divisions in the populace. It is arguable that this level of division is probably an index of partisan political preferences rather than evidence that Jamaica is actually divided on the Privy Council issue; and so, it may be posited that loyal Jamaica Labour Party supporters are likely to be in favour of retaining appeals to the Privy Council at this time, while adherents of the line taken by the People’s National Party embrace initiatives in favour of the Caribbean Court of Justice. Some of this analysis is still conjectural, but in the end the source of preferences for or against the Privy Council should not be decisive. If A wishes to oppose appeals to the Privy Council simply because the party leader says so, then that is a democratic right held by A. One would wish A to be more reflective, but democracy does not allow the intelligentsia to impose its perceptions on decision-making processes upon other individuals. So then, Jamaica is divided on the Privy Council issue, and in the context of this division, there is a strong case to the effect that a referendum would break the log-jam in

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one way or another: it would provide an unambiguous mandate to our political representatives. Thirdly, a decision concerning the abolition of appeals to the Privy Council is, on one interpretation, precisely the type of issue that is amenable to direct democracy in the form of a referendum. Specifically, there are two competing viewpoints (so “Yes” or “No” options can be presented to the voter), and the matter pertains to an individual right held by each voter. In our current constitutional dispensation, each of us has the right of appeal to the Privy Council on particular criminal and civil matters; it is a right held vis-a-vis the state, and against other individuals. If that right is to be taken away, then there should at least be a presumption that the state should ask the individual rightholder what he or she thinks about the issue. In response to this particular argument, some analysts have pointed out that Section 110 of the Jamaican Constitution does not require a referendum for the abolition of Privy Council appeals, and suggest further that the absence of a referendum requirement indicates that the issue is not one for which a referendum is appropriate. This approach is not entirely logical: Section 110 of the Jamaican Constitution, and analogous provisions in other Commonwealth Constitutions may not require a referendum on the abolition of Privy Council appeals, but, by the same token, they do not prohibit a referendum on the subject. During the negotiations on independence for the respective Caribbean territories, no strong arguments were advanced one way or another for a referendum requirement, and, indeed, the process of constitutional decolonisation took place essentially along topdown lines, largely without direct reference to the people.12 Against this historical background, it is hardly surprising that the referendum requirement was omitted in most, if not all, cases. That fact, however, cannot be decisive in assessing whether, as a matter of policy, a referendum should be held on Privy Council appeals. But are there arguments of policy that undermine the case for holding a referendum on abolition of Privy Council appeals in each territory? It has been suggested that the abolition question requires an assessment of factors that the typical voter cannot readily make, and that holding a referendum on this subject would be too costly for the countries involved. One may also apply generic objections to reliance on direct democracy as a means of governmental decisionmaking: thus, we need to raise the issue whether a referendum on the abolition of appeals to the Privy Council might encourage a flood of referendum questions from the populace, and weaken the prestige or authority of elected representatives. Does the question of abolition raise questions that are too technical for the layperson in Caribbean society? We should not be surprised that this viewpoint, though canvassed quietly by some analysts and policy-makers, has not emerged fully into the public sphere; for, it is difficult to tell the electorate that some

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issues are not really for them. It is a position that shows disdain for the electorate: the Privy Council debate is not really technical at all. It is an important policy question with various political dimensions, but persons can come to rational conclusions without formal training in any particular field, and certainly without formal training in law or public policy. For, what is the core issue? We have had appeals based originally on colonial approaches to authority and the superiority of the British way. Colonialism has ended but the court structure remains in place. In a world of self-determination, this seems singularly inappropriate, especially bearing in mind the need to emancipate ourselves from assumptions of racial superiority. On the other hand, our court system at the local level has serious problems, a new final appeal court will be expensive, and the former colonial court is providing good service without charging for its services. Also, there are fears that a local, final appellate court will be open to the winds of partisan politics in the region. There really is little requiring technical assessment with respect to the core issues in this debate. This is not to say that experts will agree on all aspects of whether, for instance, the Privy Council is providing appropriate answers to questions of social and economic policy for the Caribbean; it is just to point out that the core issues are well within the range of questions that are amenable to public debate and the exercise of popular democracy. As to the question of costs for a referendum, no easy answers may be given. Clearly, a referendum would require expenditure in order to have the issues fully ventilated among the populace, and to put the mechanism for the referendum in place. But such expenditure should be regarded as costs attendant upon the deepening of the democratic process in particular countries. For some, the question of costs is also related to the floodgates argument, with the point being that if a referendum is allowed for Privy Council appeals, then, perhaps, referenda will also need to be contemplated for various questions of constitutional reform and social policy. Here, though, some opponents of the Privy Council referendum are being disingenuous. Generally, there is little empirical evidence to support the view that referenda are, in their nature, “habitforming”, so that it is quite possible to support a referendum on the Privy Council without necessarily opening whatever floodgates there may happen to be in the Caribbean political order.13 Moreover, even if a referendum on Privy Council appeals is the thin edge of the wedge for referenda in the region, that consideration should not be decisive. The decisive issue should be whether the particular question of Privy Council abolition is sufficiently important to justify direct reference to the people. Some politicians may dislike referenda on the basis that each referendum undermines the representative component in the democratic process. And, by extension, one could argue that a referendum on Privy Council appeals, particularly where this is not required by law, might lower the level of esteem in which Caribbean politicians are now held. This would be misguided reasoning.

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In the present instance, the referendum is proposed as a supplement to the process of representative democracy, addressing a specific question, and allowing political representatives full scope to seek to influence the electorate. If political representatives are so fearful of identifying directly the will of the people that they shy away from a referendum on what should be the final court of appeal for Caribbean countries, they open themselves to the view that they are contemptuous of majoritarian perspectives. So then, there really are no convincing policy arguments against a referendum; and yet, one prime minister has told us, without argumentation, to forget the referendum idea and others have pressed ahead with ratifying the Agreement establishing the Caribbean Court of Justice without holding a referendum on the subject. This situation is difficult to justify from a democratic point of view. It may well be that some Caribbean leaders remember the federal experience, in which Norman Manley of Jamaica did the right thing but achieved what many Caribbean intellectuals believe was the wrong result. And, if this is the dominant feeling among Caribbean Heads of Government, then perhaps one can understand why we have been urged to forget the referendum idea. Some analysts may also believe that we can determine the popular will through public opinion polls, and that, therefore, a referendum is ultimately superfluous. But these perspectives too are essentially anti-democratic. The federal experiment may have appeared to collapse on the rock of the referendum; however, that rock actually represented the popular will, and deserved full respect. To the extent that the Caribbean Court of Justice represents the reintroduction of one component of federalism in regional affairs, it ought not to be introduced by the back door, for then, it will constructed on top-down perspectives that run contrary to elementary considerations of national self-determination. At the same time, it must be contrary to principle to rely on public opinion polls as a substitute for a referendum: even assuming, arguendo, that the public opinion polls are accurate, reliance on them for the present purposes would effectively undermine the democratic process, for it would presuppose that someone else’s vote can be taken to represent my own. That cannot be right.

The Caribbean Single Market and Economy In the course of its reflections on what it styled the CARICOM Supreme Court, Time for Action lent its considerable authority to the idea that a regional court is necessary, indeed, “absolutely essential”, to the integration process.14 The reasoning of the West Indian Commission, and also of the CARICOM states that have formulated the Agreement establishing the Caribbean Court of Justice, is that with the development of the Caribbean Single Market and Economy, there will arise disputes among CARICOM states requiring adjudication by a permanent court. This permanent court, it is said, will have the opportunity to

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develop “Community Law”, and to establish a pattern of decisions that will ensure stability and continuity for intra-regional trade and related matters.15 On its own, this is an important and well-taken development; however, when viewed in the context of the wider debate on the Caribbean Court of Justice, there are reasons to regard the Single Market argument with some degree of skepticism. To begin with, in the debate on the Caribbean Court of Justice, the Single Market argument is sometimes used as a trump card for the entire game when, in fact, it can only cover a part of the game. More specifically, prior to the publication of Time for Action, and even thereafter, much of the debate on the Caribbean Court of Justice has concerned itself with the desirability or otherwise of continuing appeals to the Privy Council. It has had little to do with whether the regional court established should have jurisdiction in inter-state disputes. Thus, whenever the argument is proferred that the Caribbean Court of Justice is absolutely essential for the integration process, this has nothing to do with the main part of the debate about the Caribbean Court of Justice versus the Privy Council. This prompts the question as to why the appellate functions of the Caribbean Court of Justice have been combined with the original jurisdiction of the same court for inter-state disputes. At one stage, there was speculation that this combination has been attempted because international sources of funding are probably available for a regional trade court, but little is forthcoming for an appellate court which may possibly provide unequivocal support for the death penalty. This point of speculation has not been fully dispelled,16 especially bearing in mind that the sources of funding for the Caribbean Court of Justice remain open to discussion. Another possible explanation for the combination of appellate and original jurisdiction is perhaps less cynical: it is that the Caribbean Court of Justice is a good idea, and that it may be best, as a matter of convenience, to combine the leading judicial talent of the region in one court covering all types of issues, rather than by establishing two separate courts, one for domestic, appellate matters, and another for inter-state disputes. But, even this less cynical explanation is problematic. Admittedly, the absence of precedence is not necessarily a decisive factor in assessing policy options, but, nevertheless, there may be significance in the fact that traditionally courts dealing with domestic issues are kept as distinct and separate entities from courts handling disputes between states. And there are convincing reasons for keeping such courts separate. The legal expertise required for judgements in civil and criminal cases concerning individuals is often different from that required for disputes that arise essentially under public international law. In the course of an extensive career at the criminal bar, for instance, the typical attorney is not likely to encounter many technical questions on international trade law, and vice versa. Nor is this simply a matter of specialisation that can be broken down with a few nights of extra studying by trained judges: the fields of law in

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question are far apart, and if the Caribbean Court of Justice is to achieve an appropriate level of excellence and reputation, then the conceptual differences between municipal and international law will have to be fully recognised. With this in mind, the Agreement establishing the Caribbean Court of Justice seeks to delineate the original and appellate wings of the court,17 and Article IV(1) thereof, mandates that at least three of the nine judges of the court “shall possess expertise in international law including international trade law”. This, however, opens up other concerns. At least for the early years of the court, it may be difficult to find three Caribbean nationals who properly satisfy the international trade law criterion for membership of the court, and so, the court may need to recruit non-Caribbean nationals, a course of action that could water down the nationalistic component of the arguments in favour of the Caribbean Court of Justice. Perhaps more importantly, the requirement that three members of the court should have international trade qualifications raises the question of how much inter-state work we may realistically expect to come before the Caribbean Court of Justice. With reference to municipal law matters, it is likely that the appellate jurisdiction of the new court will be fully utilised, particularly if the court avails itself of the possibility of operating as an itinerant body.18 On matters concerning international law, and international trade law in particular, it seems far-fetched to assume that there will be a significant flow of cases, especially in the early years. The Treaty of Chaguaramas in its original form has provisions for the resolution of inter-state disputes by judicial means, but one searches almost in vain for a line of cases settled under this heading. This is so partly because CARICOM member states correctly strive to resolve their trade disputes by amicable, political means, but also because CARICOM intra-regional trade has simply not generated a large number of disputes of sufficient gravity and complexity to require inter-state judicial settlement.19 On a harsh view of the situation, one may suggest that the trade component of the Caribbean Court of Justice may well come to represent a court in search of disputes. In response to this viewpoint, some have suggested that the volume of trade disputes will increase as the provisions of the Single Market and Economy become fully effective in individual countries. This position is curious insofar as it suggests that the voluntary removal of trade restrictions and voluntary agreement on cross-border employment, which implies fewer restrictions than hitherto, will actually generate increased litigation.20 In the end, therefore, the Single Market argument in favour of the Caribbean Court of Justice is quite an odd bird. It is used to justify the establishment of the court when, in fact, the main debate about establishing the court has nothing to do with the Single Market; it has prompted the creation of a structure in which municipal and international law judges will sit together within an arrangement that is unfamiliar to most jurisdictions; it will oblige member states to appoint

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international trade judges even though there are few such judges among nationals of the region; and it leads to the establishment of an area of original jurisdiction for the court which may be little used in practice. Persons concerned about regional governance from a practical standpoint are apt to look at this approach with a furrowed brow.

The Matter of Caribbean Jurisprudence In the debate concerning the abolition of Privy Council appeals, much has been made of the idea that the Privy Council is not capable of contributing to the development of Caribbean jurisprudence, given that court’s location, composition and orientation. This, on its face, is a reasonable contention: the overwhelming majority of the members of the Privy Council are members of the House of Lords in Britain, they tend to be drawn from a single social class,21 and, in the main, they are unexposed to Caribbean circumstances. Starting from this premise, it is understandable that the Agreement establishing the Caribbean Court of Justice includes among its opening paragraphs the conviction that “the Caribbean Court of Justice...will have a determinative role in the further development of Caribbean jurisprudence through the judicial process.”22 Thus, it is expected that the Caribbean Court of Justice will be sensitive to concerns of nationals of Caribbean states, will take into account policy considerations germane to the region in making decisions, and its judges will not be burdened by the possibility that they may be overruled by British nationals who sit in ignorance of Caribbean realities. However, when the argument based on Caribbean jurisprudence is examined more closely, it loses some – but not all – of its initial lustre. First, there is the problem of identification: what, exactly, are the principles of Caribbean jurisprudence, and how do they differ from the principles of English jurisprudence or from the jurisprudence of other places? The paragraph from the Agreement establishing the Caribbean Court of Justice quoted immediately above refers to the “further development of Caribbean jurisprudence” thus presupposing the existence of this body of jurisprudence, but it does not help us to identify what principles are under consideration. Without further guidance, I would assume that the existing Caribbean jurisprudence to which reference is made in the Agreement consists of the decisions of Caribbean court at first instance, decisions of individual courts of appeal in Caribbean countries, and decisions of the Eastern Caribbean Court of Appeal. In short, we may take it that the Caribbean Court of Justice is mandated to develop the pre-existing case law in the region. But if this is all that is meant by “developing Caribbean jurisprudence”, then the phrase is tautological; for, by definition, if all decisions concerning matters in the Caribbean are made in the Caribbean, those decisions must develop Caribbean jurisprudence. On this reading, then, the Caribbean

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Court will certainly develop Caribbean jurisprudence, but there is no magic in this formulation: it is essentially another way of saying that the Caribbean Court will promote self-determination of Caribbean people by ensuring that we have our own final court of appeal. This is a major feature of the Caribbean Court, and explains why ultimately many critics of the process by which the Caribbean Court is being established still support the idea of the court — but unless the development of Caribbean jurisprudence has some special meaning it is an assertion of the need for self-determination in judicial matters, not an additional point in favour of establishing the Caribbean Court. My point is not meant to minimise the need to develop Caribbean jurisprudence; it is merely to indicate that, on one interpretation, this need is a mirror image of arguments built on the need to promote Caribbean self-determination. At the same time, however, precisely because there is no clarity as to which principles of Caribbean jurisprudence are contemplated in this area, some analysts view the idea of developing Caribbean jurisprudence with reservation. To a significant extent, the debate on the abolition of Privy Council appeals in the Caribbean has coincided with decisions of the Privy Council concerning the death penalty in the region. True, the death penalty has been carried out in some Caribbean countries in recent years; but, having regard to the Pratt and Morgan and the Neville Lewis decisions in particular, one has the distinct impression that the Privy Council, influenced by developments in Britain and Europe, would prefer not to have capital murder cases resolved by physical execution. Indeed, one interpretation of Lord Hoffman’s stinging dissent in the Neville Lewis case is that Hoffman has actually accused other judges of the Privy Council of allowing their personal predilections to influence their judgment in favour of commuting the death sentences faced by Neville Lewis et al.23 Simultaneously, though, political leaders in Caribbean countries, faced with an alarming murder rate or with an alarming increase in the murder rate, or both, often feel hard-pressed by popular opinion to implement the ultimate sanction. Given that some decisions of the Privy Council may be read as discouraging the death penalty (in result, if not in reasoning), there is therefore genuine tension between the popular will and the Privy Council’s apparent perspective. And, in this context, if it fair to enquire whether the development of Caribbean jurisprudence is intended to have particular consequences in respect of the death penalty. Specifically, on the basis of some pronouncements by political leaders in the region, the idea has taken root that the Caribbean Court of Justice will be relied upon to ensure the implementation of the death penalty for capital murder by removing some of the obstacles constructed by the Privy Council in Pratt and Morgan and Neville Lewis;24 and today, protestations to the effect that the establishment of the Caribbean Court is unrelated to death penalty questions are often regarded as pro forma statements. The upshot is that many people expect the Caribbean Court of Justice to impose the death penalty, and

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perspectives on the new court have come to be influenced in part by individual views on the virtues or otherwise of that form of punishment. This is inauspicious ground for the establishment of a new court not least because it raises the question of why we can be so sure that the Caribbean Court will conform with the will of political leaders on the death penalty issue.

Some Other Issues of Confidence Other issues concerning the abolition of appeals to the Privy Council have raised questions of confidence. For instance, at least two Caribbean Prime Ministers have stated or implied that we should end appeals to the Privy Council because the British authorities have indicated that it is time for us to depart. If this is actually the British position, then it may clinch the argument for many: if those providing the service wish to terminate it, then our pride as citizens of sovereign, independent countries should prompt us to sever the Privy Council link with immediate effect. The question of confidence arises here, however, because following the dissemination of the idea that the British want to terminate appeals to the Privy Council, the British authorities have denied the proposition. At least one Law Lord, Lord Browne-Wilkinson has suggested that “the ultimate court of appeal of a state should be in that state, staffed by citizens of that state and not by outsiders”;25 but this is a personal opinion on the subject. The formal position of the British government, as publicly given, is that Caribbean cases will continue to be heard by the Privy Council until the Caribbean governments decide otherwise. So then, is it that the British authorities have sought to mislead Caribbean leaders by taking one position in private and a different one in public? Or is it that some Caribbean authorities have sought to overcome Chekhovian reluctance to abandon Privy Council appeals by suggesting that the British want us to leave? If the latter is the case, then, understandably, even enthusiastic supporters of the Caribbean Court project will have had their confidence shaken. More generally, confidence in the Caribbean Court project has also been undermined by the prospect of political interference. In its position paper on the Caribbean Court, the Council of the Jamaican Bar Association expressed concerns on this point, noting “(t)he recent termination of a judge’s contract in the Eastern Caribbean because of political disfavour with her decision in a case”, as well as the much-publicised impasse in Trinidad and Tobago between the Prime Minister and the Chief Justice.26 And similarly, Professor Ryan in his recent book The Judiciary and Governance in the Caribbean quotes the Dumas Task Force Report (2000)27 to the effect that the Judicial and Regional Services Commission for the Eastern Caribbean was at one time widely seen as a “legal fiction”, a “rubber stamp”, or a “phantom body” which invariably acted in accordance with the wishes of the Chief Justice and the respective heads of government”.28

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So, the risk of political interference is real, and as a counter-stroke, the Caribbean Court of Justice needs to have in place structures that encourage the selection of judges without regard to partisan political concerns, and insulate appointed judges from political interference by the executive or the legislature in individual Caribbean territories. With this in mind, the Jamaican Bar Council and others raised specific criticisms about the proposed membership of the Regional Judicial Services Commission set out in earlier drafts of the Agreement establishing the Caribbean Court of Justice. The central point of the criticisms was that the proposed membership was unduly skewed in favour of national governments, with the attendant risk that judges would be appointed for their known political leanings rather than for their judicial and legal skills. In the end, the framers of the Agreement establishing the Caribbean Court of Justice took the point, and so, Article V of the Agreement contemplates the appointment of a balance of private and public sector representatives to the Regional Judicial Services Commission. But, the question of confidence still arises because the original proposal was so heavily tipped in favour of appointments by the executive, and because there was some resistance to the changes that eventually moved the balance away from such appointments. Given that at least one political party, the Jamaica Labour Party, has expressly raised concerns about the risk of political interference as one reason for its rejection of the Caribbean Court scheme at this time, and bearing in mind the reality of court-packing in other jurisdictions, those responsible for the Caribbean Court project need to do much more to convince the people of the region that adequate safeguards are now in place to prevent political interference on the bench of our final appellate court. Finally, the debate on the funding of the Caribbean Court of Justice has done little to engender confidence in the permanence of the structures to be put in place for the court. Throughout the debate, various proposals have been advanced, some have been dropped, and one has the feeling that others are to come. So, for example, there is, or was, a proposal to make payments for the court “the first charge on the Consolidated Funds of each State”.29 As I have pointed out elsewhere, the practical significance of this proposal is unclear: does first charge in this context mean that the funding for the court would come from national budgets even before payments for the national debt? Also, how would the court, or non-defaulting state parties to the Agreement establishing the court enforce compliance upon a state party that simply refuses to make payments for the court the first charge on its Consolidated Funds?30 More recently, publicity has been given to a promise by the Japanese government to provide assistance with respect to certain costs involved in setting up the court, while a proposal on the floating of bonds to finance the court has also assumed some prominence. There is a continuing search for funding solutions; but as the search proceeds, skepticism grows, for the prompt funding of regional institutions has not always been a strong feature of governance in the Caribbean.

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Conclusion The idea that people of the Caribbean should have the final say in the determination of the legal issues that arise in the region is readily supportable. The Privy Council, for all its qualities as a final appellate court and its welldeserved international reputation, is not our court — even though legal fiction would suggest otherwise. However, the manner in which the Caribbean Court of Justice is being established raises several questions that tend to undermine confidence in the structure that is on offer. It is, for instance, difficult to justify the abolition of appeals to the Privy Council without a referendum in the countries to be affected by the change. Many Caribbean academics and policymakers may be fully convinced of the need for us to move away from metropolitan structures of governance established during the colonial era when the myth of British superiority was in full bloom. However, the question of abolition raises other important issues, and in particular, Caribbean citizens will need to be convinced that the quality of justice now available at the final appellate stage shall not be compromised following the change to the Caribbean Court. With this in mind, it is entirely appropriate for nationals of the respective countries to be asked whether they are prepared to make the change at this time. It is not enough to suggest that by voting for Party X in General Elections we are agreeing to the abolition of Privy Council appeals, for I may well support Party X and yet oppose the abolition of such appeals. If, for instance, there is no referendum on the Caribbean Court of Justice in Jamaica, this will certainly undermine confidence in the court if and when it is established. Other aspects of the debate concerning the abolition of Privy Council appeals have also worked to undermine public confidence in the proposed Caribbean Court. The arguments put forward pertaining to the Caribbean Single Market and Economy suggest an attempt to shift the focus of the debate away from the central issue, namely, whether people agree with the abolition of Privy Council appeals for criminal and civil matters. The suggestion that we need a Caribbean Court of Justice to further develop Caribbean jurisprudence is quite vague and has not been fully explained by its supporters. And the pattern of argumentation with respect to: (a) whether the British authorities want us to leave the Privy Council, (b) the risk of political interference, and (c) the funding of the proposed court, points to a lack of certainty on the part of Caribbean leaders. As one of the main agencies responsible for the establishment of the new court, CARICOM needs to be far more assertive in putting forward the solutions proposed to the many questions that have arisen about the court. And, again, political leaders, in the spirit of democracy, should abandon their resistance to the idea of a referendum for the court. An important feature of governance, if it means anything at all, must be inclusion.

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Notes 1

For the year 2001, the following appeals to the Privy Council were entered by independent Caribbean countries:

States Number of Appeals Entered Antigua & Barbuda 1 Bahamas 4 Barbados Belize 3 Grenada 2 Jamaica 6 St. Kitts-Nevis 1 St. Lucia 3 St. Vincent & the Grenadines Trinidad & Tobago 19 Source: Lord Chancellor’s Office, Judicial Statistics, 2001, Table 1.1, p. 9. 2

This, though, is not to suggest that having judicial appeals to a final court outside a given state’s jurisdiction is necessarily inconsistent with the sovereignty of the state, for the state may opt to have appeals outside its jurisdiction by a decision pursuant to its sovereignty: see further Vasciannie, The Privy Council Versus the Caribbean Court of Appeal: Some General Observations (1996) (Cultural Studies Initiative, Office of Deputy Vice Chancellor, UWI), pp. 2-6. The power to abolish appeals rests with each independent state: see, e.g., Mitchell v R (1985) 32 WIR 241.

3

Pratt and Morgan v. The Attorney-General of Jamaica 1994 2 A.C. 1

4

Neville Lewis et al v. The Attorney-General of Jamaica 2000 3 W.L.R. 1785

5

Report of the West Indian Commission, Time for Action (2nd ed., 1992), p. 497.

6

Ibid., pp. 497-8.

7

Ibid., p. 498.

8

Ibid.

9

Generally, see, e.g., Butler and Ranney, in Butler and Ranney (eds.), Referendums Around the World: The Growing Use of Direct Democracy (1994), p. 14.

10 For discussion, see, e.g., the entry on “Democracy” in Krieger (ed.), The Oxford Companion to Politics of the World (1993), p. 220. 11 Ibid., pp. 11-13. Surprisingly, Butler and Ranney do not include the protection of minority rights in their list of criteria for democratic government; for a classic statement on the importance of protecting minority rights in a majoritarian system, see Rossiter (ed.), The Federalist Papers, pp. 323-324 (Paper No. 51: Madison). 12 For an enlightening analysis on various aspects of this issue, see McIntosh, Caribbean Constitutional Reform: Rethinking the West Indian Polity (2002), pp. 1-50; see also Kelly, “A Critique of the Drafting and Ratification of the Jamaica Independence Constitution (1962)” in Munroe and Lewis (eds.), Readings in Government and Politics of the West Indies (1971 Edition), p. 90, especially at p. 91. But for the perspective that

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public participation in the formulation of the Jamaican independence constitution was not negligible, see Manley (Norman), “The Independence Constitution”, in Nettleford (ed.), Norman Washington Manley and the New Jamaica: Selected Speeches and Writings 1938-68, p. 296 at pp. 297-8. 13 Here, reference may be made to the suggestion that if there is to be a referendum on Privy Council appeals then there should also be a referendum on the question of hanging for capital murderers. This suggestion, offered primarily in Jamaica, is built on weak foundations. In the first place, hanging is already legal in Commonwealth Caribbean jurisdictions, and there is little to indicate that most people want this to be changed. There would therefore be little point to the exercise. Secondly, to imply that a referendum on hanging is somehow to be viewed as a quid pro quo for a referendum on the Privy Council shows a lack of understanding of the argument in favour of a referendum on the Privy Council: the argument is essentially that individuals will have their constitutional right to appeal to the Privy Council replaced by a constitutional right to appeal to a different court, and that since individuals are directly affected by a matter of considerable importance, their views should be sought. This is not a question for “referendum trading”. 14 Time for Action, loc. cit., note 3, p. 500. 15 Ibid. 16 With respect to European countries, this point is credible. For instance, when Trinidad and Tobago denounced the Optional Protocol to the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and then re-acceded to it with a reservation on communications concerning the death penalty, the Trinidadian approach was publicly opposed at the United Nations by the Netherlands, Germany, Sweden, Ireland, Spain, France and Italy: United Nations, Multilateral Treaties Deposited with the Secretary-General, Status as at 31 December 2000, pp. 19-20. If anything, this highlights the strong aversion of the European countries concerned to the execution of the death penalty. 17 Issues concerning the original jurisdiction of the Caribbean Court of Justice are addressed in Part II of the Agreement establishing the court, while the appellate jurisdiction of the court is addressed in Part III of the Agreement. 18 See Article III (3) of the Agreement Establishing the Caribbean Court of Justice. 19 I am grateful to Mr Carl Dundas for pointing out to me that the CARICOM disputes procedure was activated in the Welding Rods dispute between Jamaica and Guyana in the 1970s. The fact that the dispute settlement mechanism has been activated only once in almost thirty years seems to speak for itself. 20 This conclusion has been challenged on the ground that cases are likely to flow to the Caribbean Court of Justice on matters concerning competition policy within the region. The evidence to support this challenge should be presented for consideration. 21 On this point, see, for instance, Griffith, The Politics of the Judiciary (5th ed., 1997), pp. 18-22, 290-326.

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22 Unnumbered preambular paragraph 2 23 The introductory paragraph of Lord Hoffman’s dissent reads in part: “The Board sits as a supreme court of appeal to enforce (Caribbean) laws and constitutions. It is of course obvious to members of the Board that they must discharge that duty without regard to whether they personally favour the death penalty or not. But the wider public may need to be reminded”: (2000) 3 WLR 1785. The cynic may argue that the “wider public” may need to be reminded precisely because the judgment in the Neville Lewis case appears so strongly to reflect a reluctance to allow the execution of the death penalty. 24 In respect of the Pratt and Morgan decision, for instance, see Prime Minister Patterson in Jamaica Information Service, Jamaica: Appeals to the Privy Council (1994), pp. 4-5. 25 Editorial, the Daily Nation, June 22, 1999 (“Final Court of Appeal”). 26 Position Paper of the Council of the Jamaican Bar Association on the Proposed Caribbean Supreme Court (2000), p. 12. 27 Dumas, Report of Task Force Appointed by the Hon. Chief Justice to Enquire into the Structure and Functioning of the Judicial and Legal Services Commission (February 2000). 28 Ryan, The Judiciary and Governance in the Caribbean (2001), p. 14. Belle Antoine also mentions the possibility of political interference with reference to recent incidents in the Eastern Caribbean: Commonwealth Caribbean Law and Legal Systems (1999), pp. 238-9. 29 Ryan, op. cit., p. 167 30 Vasciannie, “Judges at the Border of Law and Politics: Aspects of the Caribbean Constitutional Order”, Social and Economic Studies, Vol. 51:1 (2002), p. 193 at p. 209.

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Governance in the Contemporary Caribbean

PART 7 GOVERNANCE: THE WAY FORWARD

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C H A P T E R

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Governance in the contemporary caribbean: the Way ForWard – toWards a political culture oF partnership REX NETTLEFORD

The Governance Challenge The word “governance” has assumed emotive power since the last decade of the last century. I have often wondered why this should have been so and came to the view that its universal application throughout the West, of which our Caribbean is a part, may well be an acknowledgement of the flawed workings of government defined in terms of elections, parliamentary debates, constitutional procedures and the rule of law. What happens outside of these formal ritualistic offerings has in many cases left the mass of the population, the ordinary man and woman, out of the process of decision-making that determines the destiny of such people. And the consequences have not always been the best for the human condition, worse still when certain kinds of decisions taken in the name of “the people” have served to diminish their very humanity, which these decisions purport to protect or promote. Nazism, Fascism, and MarxismLeninism have been the “people-creeds” which have resulted in genocide and death camps, in gulags and other political grostesquerie denying to millions some basic freedoms. But before we indulge the triumphalist posture which the West has assumed since the disintegration of the Soviet Empire, let us recall the agony of McCarthyism in what is supposed to be one of the world’s greatest democracies and the acute racism against persons of African ancestry in that same Republic, followed by succeeding apartheid regimes of South Africa. We need to recall, as well, the ethnic cleansing sagas of the Balkans and Rwanda as well as the authoritarian military regimes of Spain, Portugal, Latin America and parts of post-colonial Africa. We in the Caribbean have escaped somewhat, but only somewhat! For there have been the Haitian experience, the miscalculations of Grenada leading up to the tragedy of 1983 complete with assassinations and foreign invasion, the continuing uncertainty of Cuba made no better by the United States embargo

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and the proven attempt at destabilization of the tenacious Castro regime, and the aberrations of government in Santo Domingo and pre-Caricom Suriname.1 All these facts and features of the region’s post-War 20th century history have given cause to take a serious look at how governments function or ought to function and the implications for governance. The Commonwealth Caribbean which is the most recent to enter the Independence mode and therefore to take full responsibility for the administration of transferred power, has had little reason to feel exempt from such reflection. Corruption, the continuing immiseration of the mass of the population, clumsiness in the handling of public affairs, free and frequent, admittedly, but less than fair elections, and doubts about public probity in the conduct of public affairs, are reasons enough for us to look beyond the nicely stated procedures of Westminster governmental operation and to invoke the principles of good and acceptable governance.2 For to those of us who now have in our control the recently transferred power from the Mother country, the term “governance” signifies the dynamics of interaction and interrelationships between the governed and the governor, between the people and the persons they elect/choose to administer their affairs as fiduciaries, and the institutional and operational frameworks that guarantee the perpetual presence of the people who are the proffered beneficiaries of government organised and run in their interest. Government for and by the people is memorable rhetoric. In praxis it is not infrequently memorable anguish for a great many people. Yet in fairness to the Commonwealth Caribbean the pledge to have decency inform its public affairs persists with a vengeance in affirming the democratic traditions of the Caricom Heads of Government in its twelfth intersessional meetings in Barbados in February 2001, declared in its communique: “Heads of Government considered the issue of governance and democracy in the Region. They re-affirmed their commitment to democracy and popular participation as enshrined in the Charter of Civil Society and adopted by the Conference in 1997 as well as the Kingston Declaration on Democracy and Popular Participation adopted in July 1990. They pledged to work together to maintain and strengthen the institution and processes essential to democratic Government and in this regard, enjoined their citizens to pursue all of their just economic, social and political objectives within the framework of the Region’s deeply cherished democratic traditions…They stressed that the Region had a long-standing tradition of respect for the will of the people, as expressed through free and fair elections on a regular basis. They were confident that this tradition would be maintained in the forthcoming processes and called on all concerned to honour this tradition and respect its results. They pledged their continued support to those processes, through the provision of election of observers where requested”.3

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The contemporary Commonwealth Caribbean is now shaping a society, besides building nations, to ensure that a way forward will coincide with the perceived intentions of the system of government we have all inherited. In some instances the inheritance has been safeguarded with an obstinacy that some would regard as a sign of that great need for our liberation from mental slavery. That none but ourselves can free our minds is seemingly hardly understood by many such persons. The monarchy in the form of the House of Windsor along with all its heirs, still receives oaths of allegiance from most of the ministers of government in the Commonwealth Caribbean.4 A Caribbean Court of Justice is a matter for serious controversy since a good many of us are of the view that the idea of a Caribbean jurisprudence is a contradiction in terms or that people of our ilk cannot administer justice, not being fit to rule or fit to govern.5 The new phenomenon of globalisation receives inadequate scrutiny depriving too many of us of the eyes to see that it is much of old wine in a new bottle – and that the hegemony of the rich of the world persists in the concentration of money power and trading options in the North Atlantic where imperial power has resided for the past half a millennium.6

Governance and Public Management Such are some of the manifestations of the crisis in governance. And high on the list of priority-responses is the application of the “management factor” in political leadership.7 In the context of the changes at end of century and the beginning of the new millennium, political leadership in countries of the Caribbean is challenged to find new and appropriate form and purpose for government in the exercise of power, to bring to that exercise the skills of management in ways that can maximise the benefits from the dynamic mobilisation of the creative energies of the human beings on whose loyalty and commitment the generation of the productive resources depend, and to facilitate the shaping of civil society that will experience a quality of life rooted in freedom from hunger, freedom from disease, freedom from ignorance and freedom from fear – freedoms which appropriately describe fundamental issues of governance in terms of policy options for a people’s satisfaction as a result of an administration’s food policy (a hungry man is after all an angry man), medicare and good health-care delivery (an unhealthy population can neither produce nor develop its minds), an education policy as well as provision for free information (an ignorant society is outside the orbit of the knowledge economy which is a clear guarantee of positive development) and a secure and safe society (i.e. one free of violence from the state or from aggressive fellow citizens defiant of law and order). The fervent call for democracy is not always matched by the practice of it. It is as if the inheritance of an authoritarian temper coming out of plantation

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history and colonialism has left an indelible mark. The replacement of planters and Crown officials by autocratic messianic native political leaders and humourless native bureaucrats, respectively, has not always advanced the decolonisation process with the speed anticipated. So political leaders in many ex-colonial territories have been caught less than fully prepared for the new roles and functions demanded of governments and related agencies not just in Independence but in an Independence that must find for itself a discrete form against the background of shifting paradigms and transforming ideologies. The statism that in practice went with socialist ideology in its different stages of expression has given place since the 1990s to a free enterprise ideology elevating the private sector to much greater (if not an exaggerated) eminence in the pursuit of development strategies formerly deemed to be the province largely of governments. Political leadership that fails to heed the pitfalls of swinging indiscriminately with the pendulum from one polarity to the next is not likely to prove effective, however. For as a Jamaican Report on Government Structure averred, “the establishment of market economies and the globalization of production do not imply necessarily less government, but different and better government”.8 The “difference” lies in the concept of government as a hub in a network of social/power partners engaged in the process of continuing interaction for the purpose of policy formulation and implementation. Political leadership in office should now be prepared to find common understanding with all other parties, the business community, trade unions, non-governmental organizations, and other civic bodies on the broad goals of economic and social development as well as on the policy framework through which rules will be established for the management of the economy and the respective roles of each partner in management delineated organisations. Political leadership in this context means strategic “brokering” in the attempt to reconcile divergent interests among the respective partners and to facilitate the effective discharge of their respective responsibilities. All of this implies a different style and substance of public management – a change from the ‘bully-riding’ tactics of the elected-turned-autocratic tin-czars to the co-ordinative transformational leadership about which so-called progressive managers in the private sector now speak. Here there is no monopolistic claim on the part of political leaders as change agents. Rather there obtains a concept of leadership whereby “power bases are linked not as counterweights but as mutual support for a common purpose”.9 The idea that the community and the private sector are “power centres”, other than the Cabinet and parliament, may be a difficult concept to handle but the ability to entertain this is a test of political leadership both at this time and in the foreseeable future as part of the way forward. Leaders in the private sector have themselves had to grapple with a similar concept in dealing with organised workers at the

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shopfloor level whether as trade unionists or as members of staff associations. The core values that political leadership must delineate are the aims and objects not simply of government but of good governance and social soundness in general. The journey back to first principles is mandatory if the fundamental question of what is needed of Caribbean society is to be seriously addressed. Political leaders who are not of a mind to ask such a question, are hardly ready to lead and may well be discouraged from doing so. Artistic predilections drive me to the analogy of political leadership being like the leadership of an orchestra. The conductor may indeed be the acknowledged and authoritative genius at getting out of the ensemble the right and pleasurable sounds, tone and timbre but accepts that he/she cannot play all of the various instruments himself/herself. The spectacle of a one-man band, besides being clumsy looking, is limited in scope, however clever the electronic and mechanical contraptions devised. This is the challenge for Cuba’s ‘maximum leadership’ or even of Mugabe’s Council of War as it is for the “elected dictatorships” which Commonwealth Caribbean Westminster cabinet governments with their allegedly all-powerful prime ministers are cynically said to be. Prime ministers and executive presidents would do well to appreciate this in co-ordinating their management teams and they in turn collectively to do likewise in “leading” the citizenry. Of course there must be room for fully developed technical skills in the mastery of the craft underpinning the art of performance. But there must also be much imagination, creativity and the kind of flexibility that can accommodate within the overall performance dissonance, variation, improvisation and seeming off-beat indulgence by rebel instrumentalists. As good managers, political leaders, in and out of office, should therefore be able to identify and hold on to the distinctive edge of government vis-à-vis all the other players in the game. The jargon of the day is filled with such phrases as “market driven”, “free enterprise” and “laissez-faire”. But these are nothing more than scaffoldings to facilitate access to the edifice of sound governance. “Management” has been added to the equation of political leadership for example in Jamaica since 1980 when an entire election was fought on a choice between “mismanagement” and “better management”.10 Financial wizardry, planning and budgeting prowess, as well as marketing expertise have been invoked as essentials of effective public management by political leaders. It is not enough, goes the argument, for political leadership to be charismatic and inspirational: it needs to be pragmatically effective and action-oriented. Policy options, priorities, investment choices and planning must be managed. It is of course possible to demonstrate managerial prowess without an appreciation of the contextual realities of the body politic’s wider culture. Such contextual realities in much of the contemporary Caribbean may well turn,

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inter alia, on the political culture of a marginalised mass driven by ambitions of good education, upward social mobility, material betterment, individual dignity and racial respect. Caribbean political leadership has long had well-intentioned designs to march different countries of the region into an era of high technology through computer-based scientific management of public affairs. Could these efforts become misguided in the attempt to “make pioneers of the future out of human beings who had not recovered from the memories of a ruined past”, as has been said of survivors of Auschwitz called upon to build a glorious future?11 Enforced labour in chattel slavery and its aftermath of continuing disabilities despite clear signs of some progress, coupled with the experience of abused labour in indentureship constitute for the vast majority of Caribbean people a “ruined past” keenly intuited as part of a cultural memory. From the days of self-government advocacy right into Independence too many among the region’s top political leadership have shown scant regard for the deep social forces affecting the lives of those who constitute the majority of the electorate and who carry with them a psychic inheritance not only of material dispossession but also of social and cultural marginalisation. This has in turn triggered “acts” of assertion of “self” in many forms as in the unprecedented and spontaneous outbursts of widespread enthusiasm extended by the mass of the Jamaican population to such state visitors as Haile Selassie in 1966 and Nelson Mandela in 1991. True, leaders like Alexander Bustamante and Michael Manley were in their own time able to bring politics and political followers to levels of emotional intensity which was the envy of rivals. Fidel Castro of Cuba, Aristide of Haiti, Vere Bird of Antigua and Eric Gairy of Grenada did likewise in their territories as did “Odo” Forbes Burnham of Guyana and Lynden Pindling of the Bahamas. And the very special Dr. Eric Williams did likewise using dulcet tones to seduce his Trinidad & Tobago citizenry around to national unity in the ‘University of Woodford Square’.12 However distasteful such “populism” may be to political leaders of lesser messianic mein, it has done the major Caribbean leader little good when he fails to connect on an emotional level with the mass of the population whose need for such visceral contact with their leaders is an important variable in the equation of the relationship between leader and led. The Tiberius test whereby one prefers to be feared rather than loved is not recommended in the Caribbean where distrust of authority is second-nature and hate is a prime ingredient of resistance to oppression. Charismatic leaders should therefore never yield to the temptation of writing off the popular mass as manipulable dependents. Governments have been rejected at the ballot box despite the alleged handouts of largesse by ruling parties to electorates. Voters are known to accept the leaders’ money at campaign time and still vote against them.

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Governan ce a sP ar tner ship and P ar ti cip ati on Governance as Par artner tnership Par arti ticip cipa tio The way forward for governance in the contemporary Caribbean turns in no small way, then, on government’s and the political leaders’ reconsidered role in a new configuration of partnership and participation involving the major stakeholders – the people - in the enterprise of shaping a new society. Back in 1992, I had the opportunity to share with others the following: There is a clear need for Government to be put in perspective. There is need to ensure that the Government and people regard themselves as different but complementary parts of the same whole; that Government and its supporting bureaucracy are not seen as millstones around the necks of a powerless citizenry; that Government is not encouraged to continue projecting itself as sole Provider and Deliverer in a messianic dispensation that nurtures paroxysms of excess leading to the celebration of a saviour one week and his crucifixion the next; that distrust, disintegrative tension, and cynicism do not continue to inform the relationship between the governors and the governed; that the citizenry does not feel deliberately deprived of information critical to the understanding of economic change in the world at large and to the ability for the individual to cope with the deep social forces operative in a society. The mass of the population has historically suffered economic disabilities and harbours to this day, a particular sense of being deprived and wronged. This in turn leads to an endemic commitment to “beating the system” (presided over by Government) or to making things not work.13 Historical factors, contemporary realities (including the perceptions of the problems relating to the structure, operation and output of government) and the wider issue of governance suggest a response in the way Caribbean governments should function if they are to not only install an economy designed to achieve economic growth, stability and a capacity for on-going development but also attain civil society based on the democratic principles of liberty, equality, social justice, the rule of law and the empowerment of the citizenry. “Privatisation”, “deregulation”, “liberalisation” are indeed mere means to such ends rather than ends in themselves. To have them make sense against the background of the region’s history, political culture and current perceptions of the ends of government, they must serve the ends of “empowerment” of the mass of the population along with all others, whether by way of promoting worker share ownership, broadening the economic base of owners in the society, instituting land reform, or releasing the creative potential of a far larger number of private citizens to have them participate on a “level playing field” once dominated by the state (through state and para-statal monopoly enterprises) and a small elite group of corporate owners in the traditional private sector,

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despite the countervailing force of strong trade unions and other workers organizations advocating workers rights since 1938. The aim should now be the unleashing of entrepreneurial energy for the development of the productive forces, with greater emphasis on facilitating private capital accumulation as a major instrument of economic production instead of having the state as the prime player. The proven inadequacy of the state’s ability to deliver justifies its withdrawal from this sphere of economic development. But the no less proven tendency of a concentration of oligarchic economic power when capital accumulation and production are left unregulated in the hands of private monopolies, advises caution and dictates the forging of appropriate, innovative, flexible and responsive mechanisms to mitigate the excesses of greed and cynicism and to temper unbridled enthusiasms for rapid bottom-line success at any cost.

The New Role of Government What, then, is the role of government in such a dispensation? Apart from the traditional functions of law and order, defence, security, and foreign affairs, we envisage new nuances with respect to the role of government in the economy. The establishment of market economies and the globalisation of production do not, however, imply a shift to a system of laissez-faire. What it does imply is, indeed, not necessarily less government, but different and better government – a clue to the way forward for Caribbean governance.14 First of all, facilitating, regulating and monitoring, sensitively and creatively pursued, become major functions of government in the open economy. An open economic system requires sensitivity in order to allay fears of bureaucratic clumsiness and oppression against the citizen in his/her daily pursuit of practical affairs, and creativity so as to be able to apply flexibility in the implementation of public policy that turns on the facilitative, regulatory and monitoring functions of government. The system however, cannot be so open that it runs amok, negating the very aspiration of empowerment because of the absence of agreed-on well-articulated regulative principles delineating the parameters of action. Secondly, the government should conceive of itself as the hub of a network of social partners engaged in a process of continuing interaction for the purpose of policy formulation and implementation. Efforts should be made to reach a common understanding among political parties, the business community, trade unions, NGOs, and other community-based bodies on the broad goals of economic and social development, and on the policy framework through which rules will be established for the management of the economy, and the respective roles of each partner in management would be delineated.

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Thirdly, the government has yet another catalytic role to play in strengthening the knowledge base of the society by way of improving systems of education and training, and stimulating research and development, including the development of information systems for use by the different actors in the economy. World production and trade are being more and more driven by new and emerging technologies in fields such as biotechnology, telecommunications, civil aviation, new materials sciences, computer hardware and software. These are affecting the competitiveness of industries across all sectors of the economy, and leading to the opening up of new avenues for international trade, especially in the field of services. A large part of technological advances has to be supported directly or indirectly by government funding. In both developed and newly industrialising countries, research and development (R & D) are becoming significant claimants on public resources. It is evident that the region has to follow this pattern, since there is a dire need to improve the technological sophistication of existing lines of production, and to identify possibilities where such sophistication can be applied to new lines of production. Here again, the government and the private sector will have to work very closely together. The science and technology policy adopted by governments in the region sets out a number of clear R & D priorities. These include biotechnology, especially plant tissue culture, marine science, energy, environmental management, disaster control, remote sensing, and mathematical modelling. The execution of such a programme will require considerable resources of trained people and money. Governments should aim to collaborate with the private sector in development of the necessary human resources, in mobilising the financing required, and in encouraging utilisation and commercialisation of the research results. Fourthly, the government has a specially distinct role in encouraging the growth of small business development and diffusion of entrepreneurial skills throughout the economy, and in supporting the participation of as many citizens as possible in the ownership of, and control over, assets. For example, in sectors such as agriculture and tourism, it should be particularly sensitive to the needs of the small operators for finance and technical assistance. Here, again, it should increasingly play the role of a broker and arranger rather than that of a direct provider. Fifthly, in the field of international trade, governments have to work continuously to improve access for their country’s exports of both goods and services, as international competition is intensifying across the globe, and new regional groupings are emerging which could place non-members of those groupings at a disadvantage. Here work must continue in the strengthening of CARICOM, so as to develop trade and economic relations with the non-Englishspeaking Caribbean and Latin America, among others.

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Such catalytic work on the part of governments is not confined to the negotiation of inter-governmental trade agreements though the Regional Negotiating Machinery is arguably the most progressive initiative taken collectively in this regard. Governments need also to work very closely with the private sector in ensuring the fullest possible flow of information on exports, technology transfer, investment and financing opportunities. Differential information capacities is one area which separates developed from developing countries. The catalytic role that Caribbean governments through collective action can play in promoting an adequate flow of economic and financial information is, therefore, of cardinal importance. The private sector will increasingly take over more of the responsibility for that function but it should be noted that even in the most advanced economies – Japan is a case in point – governments continue to act as strategic brokers in identifying international export opportunities, and in supporting improvements in the overall international competitiveness of a given country in trade, economic and financial transactions. Sixthly, given the current situation in the region, and its historical antecedents, Caribbean governments must inevitably pay more direct attention to alleviating the situation of under-privileged groups. Economic development will not achieve its ultimate purpose of improving the human condition, if deliberate measures are not taken to provide a social safety net for disadvantaged citizens in areas such as basic education, health, child nutrition, affordable housing, and social welfare services. Here, the government should increasingly focus on determining policy through the widest possible consultations, and channelling resources in a dynamic partnership with the private sector, and voluntary organisations. Seventhly, it has also to be borne in mind that a whole new range of social problems have emerged which require action by governments nationally, regionally and internationally. These include the spread across national boundaries of environmental degradation, communicable diseases, (the high incidence of HIV-AIDS is particularly disturbing), crime, drug trafficking, illegal migrants, and refugees. In one way or another, these could pose a threat to economic and social stability. All Caribbean governments together and individually must play their part in schemes of, and arrangements for, regional and international cooperation to mitigate the negative impact of these trends. This leads to a related point. Given the transcendental nature of the changes taking place over the globe, and the volatility which tends to accompany them, it would not be advisable for countries to adopt a static view of what the role of government should be. That role should be perceived in a dynamic context, where countries need to respond in an adequate and timely manner to current and emerging problems. This calls for a government which is flexible in both structure and operations, which is well-endowed with technical expertise

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including information systems, and which is working in harmony with the private sector, and the entire community. In other words, government should conceive of itself as constituting the nexus of a new social partnership, in which there is shared responsibility for establishing the goals of the society, for identifying the problems that have to be solved, and for tackling them. Eighthly, by virtue of the overall leadership role which the citizenry has reposed in it, a government has a basic responsibility to help the country reach its full potential, in the process encouraging standards and values that would make everyone proud of their country and its heritage, and would endow them with each other, and with people in the rest of the world. In all of this, the operation of the government should be conducted in an atmosphere of transparency so that the citizenry can be thoroughly informed, and that some of the circumstances that give rise to policy error, nepotism, and corruption could be avoided. A well governed polity must have the elected government (at central and local levels) and its support mechanisms of civil service, local government officers, statutory boards and advisory committees at the hub of or be the nexus of inter-connected activities involving the private sector and community-based organisations as partners. All three partners are to be engaged in a dynamic process of resource management and administration of political decision-making, the exercise of accredited authority in the mobilisation and allocation of resources generated for the growth and development of the entire society as well as the implementation of policies related to all this. It is axiomatic that the defence of the poor, who still form the vast majority, should be perceived as a major task of government in a majority-ruled democratic system and should be high on the list of things to be achieved. It is expected that government should therefore he held accountable to its electors for its actions through such mechanisms as: (a)

(b)

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regular and duly constituted parliamentary meetings offering frank and open debate on all national issues conducted by parliamentarians of integrity, candour and dedication, while making provision for established procedures of accounting for government’s stewardship by those who actually formulate policy (i.e. civil servants, executives of public enterprises, political heads of ministries) and a free press (print and electronic) with each having access to information about the conduct of the nation’s business and unfettered by censorship imposed by a whimsical political directorate or by any self-censorship that comes in the form of silence and/or sycophancy instilled by fear of political victimisation of those who may publicly criticise or comment adversely (but fairly) on the performance of politicians and other public servants.15

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systematic self-regulation and self-monitoring by subjecting self to the rule of law, due process and all that signifies that government is not above the law.

The Priv ate Sec tor a sP ar tner Priva Sect as Par artner The private sector in this partnership of governance should regard itself as no less accountable in the performance of its functions to both people (as consumers and workers) and government (a fellow social contractee representing the citizenry at large). In that partnership-structure the private sector should itself help to broaden its base following on the government’s initiative to empower middle-sized businesses and micro-entrepreneurs without seeking to impoverish the established large entrepreneurs. Not only men but also the large army of women should be encouraged on to the playing field as should West Indians drawn from all ethnic backgrounds. And the workers and their trade unions already in tripartite partnership with employers and government in administering the industrial relations system have a pivotal role to play in the wider partnership but with full understanding of their own role in this parallel partnership. The private sector partner should be capable of entrepreneurial activity that extends beyond traditional commission agency concerns to risk-taking, innovation, and a willingness to face competition in an open market, both regional and international. The sector should exhibit the capacity to participate meaningfully in the defining of strategic objectives for growth and should be able to use technology to help create a competitive advantage in funding new commodities for export distinct from the exploitation of traditional natural resources (such as bauxite, bananas, sugar). The sector should also commit itself to corporate responsibility for social development with a view to getting to a consensus or convergence with government on notions of what is good for the region. The sector will be a better partner in the new structure for showing a willingness to share in governmental responsibilities of social investment for the public good particularly in the inescapable challenge to eliminate unemployment, hunger, ignorance, disease and a fear for one’s personal physical safety as well as for the wider society’s collective security.

The Co mm unit ya sP ar tner Comm mmunit unity as Par artner The Community, as partner, also has responsibilities in the participatory mode. Foremost among these is the commitment the wider society must have to civil society as basis for everyday civilised living rooted in values and maxims of prudence supportive of the dignity, safety and mental health of its members. It must collectively eschew violence as an instrument of conflict-resolution

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whether between individuals or groups such as political parties, trade unions and their employers, and opposing teams in sport and so on. The community as effective partner in the participatory structure must be committed to self-reliance in the building, shaping and maintenance of social institutions necessary for stable, peaceful and sound community life with or without the direct intervention of government (central or local) or the private sector. It must also exhibit a willingness to take the initiative, on however limited a scale, in the delivery to itself of primary health care (through the practice of good personal hygiene, the vigilance over occupational health and safety at the workplace, environmental care, etc.); and of education, with parents and teachers taking an active interest in the education of their children at all levels of the educational system, participating in decisions affecting school life, curriculum development, and cultural orientation in the preparation for employment and the creative exploitation of life and living in adulthood. Sports and the arts have already demonstrated how community interest and private Sector support with government facilitation, can render “community action” effective, leaving the ministers largely as “cheerleaders” rather than as controllers in the operation of these areas of activities. The encouragement of basic physical facilities, such as genuine playing fields, recreational halls (community centre buildings) with performing areas or open spaces for training and rehearsing in the performing arts are naturally recommended. The community should also exhibit the capacity to provide leadership at a community level for the identification of problems specific to a given community, for participatory planning with government (local government in particular and business leaders as collaborators), and for the designing and implementation of plans of action for the community’s growth and development as well as the determination of the nature and extent of the linkages between itself and the private sector and/or government.

Conclusion The quest for economic prosperity for all could easily lead to notions of progress which entail coercion by way of an increase in social control as a ready response to social delinquency manifested in crime and violence. A proper police force too quickly comes to mind as Victorian England would have had it, not to speak of such instruments as the old Masters and Servants Law or the Vagrancy Law which sought to keep post-Emancipation labour under manners. Of course the axiomatic resistance to such control as part of the dynamics of socio-economic and political operations is a clear warning for those who suffer from historical amnesia. Trade Unions have been part of the quest and are likely to continue to represent one phenomenon in these liberated times which tend toward a mix of “boundless horizons with strictly enforced limits.” In other

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words how do we meet what has been described as the “fundamental need to strike a balance between an ordered state and the seething energies – economic, political and artistic – that [threaten] to overturn it.” The governance envisaged for this region certainly cannot be one in which power is tyrannical and the personalities of leaders are murderous. Sanity is here an imperative, however justifiable our disgust may be with capitalist or neo-capitalist economic corruption, with colonialism and its neo-colonialist aftermath, with cultural decadence or the continuing attempted cultural subjugation by the powerful developed world, with poverty and the efforts by the rich seemingly to thwart all efforts at eradication or alleviation, as well as with social and ethnic discrimination if not within our own borders then when our people migrate to the rich countries of the world clustered in the North Atlantic. Such rational, ordered, constructive approach to meet the obsenities of ages must determine the nature of the governance we are after. Governance in the contemporary Caribbean therefore seeks to maximise the benefits of interaction between three major partners in participatory governance – government, private sector and community. The cutting edge of such interaction signifying the dynamics of the inter-relationship is clearly the investment in human resources. All three partners have a vested interest in the qualitiative/quantitative improvement and development of the region’s human resources measurable in terms of such variables as education, productive capacity, health (and its linkage with education and productivity), housing (and its relations to social stability) and cultural certitude with emphasis on the opportunities for release of individual creativity for the building of self-esteem and social confidence among the citizens of the region who are, after all, the main producers of wealth and the real engines of growth.

REFERENCES 1. In September 1991 President Jean Bernard Aristide of Haiti was deposed by the Haitian military. In 1994 the United States invaded Haiti, with support from the United Nations eager to restore the President and end the violence. See Judson Jeffries “United States and Haiti. An Exercise in Intervention,” Caribbean Quarterly, Vol. 47 No. 4, December 2001. For more on the Grenada (1983) Revolution, see CQ, Vol. 41, No. 2. Special Issue “Torn and New – The Grenada Revolution”. In 1982 US President Ronald Reagan placed a ban on travel, and transfer of US funds, to Cuba. See Tom Barry and Beth Wood, & Deb Preusch: The Other Side of Paradise: Foreign Control in the Caribbean, New York, Grove Press Inc. 1984, p. 276.

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The 1996 Helms-Burton Act in trying to super impose US laws on external commercial activities angered countries all over the world. See Martin Schade: “Cuba: My Reflection”, Caribbean Quarterly, Vol. 45 No. 1, March 1999. Rafael Leonidas Trujillo who had appointed himself President of Santo Domingo in 1930 was assassinated in 1961. The first free elections in 1962 voted in Juan Bosch but a military coup overthrew him ten months later. A military mounted and populist revolt to restore the Bosch government in 1965 led to the US invasion on orders of President Lynden Johnson by US Marines under the pretext of saving US citizens’ lives. They stayed for one year until Joaquin Balaguer; a long-time associate of Trujillo was installed as President. See Tom Barry et al: op cit (pp. 289-305). Suriname attained its Independence in 1975. In 1980 there was a relatively bloodless coup when Desi Bouterse took over power. In December 1982 there was another coup reportedly planned by the CIA; see Latin American Regional Report, June 1982, also Tom Barry et al: op cit pp. 360-364. 2. Selwyn Ryan: Winner Takes All: The Westminster Experience in the Caribbean, Trinidad, ISER, UWI, St. Augustine 1999 esp. Chapter 1. 3. See Communiqué of 12th Intersessional Caricom Heads of Government Meeting, February 2001, Barbados. Caricom Secretariat, Georgetown, Guyana. 4. The Oath of Affirmation of Allegiance reads: “I ________________ do solemnly and sincerely affirm and declare that I will be faithful and bear true allegiance to Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth the Second, Her heirs and Successors, according to Law”. Standing Orders for the House of Representatives, Jamaica. Appendix 1: 18th September, 1964, adopted by the House 28th May, 1964. The Law (i.e. the Constitution) does make all Commonwealth Caribbean countries with the exception of Guyana, Trinidad and Tobago and Dominica hereditary monarchies with Britain’s Elizabeth the second as Monarch. Some argue that she should be Elizabeth the first to new independent Caribbean countries. The issue is, however, whether the same monarch who reigned over the colonies should remain the Head of State of the now-independent nations. Others argue that “republicanism” in its pristine “democratic” sense is more appropriate for a modern polity emerging out of colonialism. Still others regard the pledging of allegiance to the “heirs” of the present monarch is a gamble not worth taking since there is no guarantee that the hereditary principle will allow for inclusiveness in choice of spouses for purposes of breeding which is fundamental to hereditary succession. 5. The debate on the Caribbean Court of Justice as court of final resort has been apace for sometime. An excellent article out of the Caribbean News Agency appeared in the Jamaica Gleaner summing up the positions of stakeholders in the debate and drawing on writings by Simeon McIntosh, Professor of Jurisprudence in the UWI Faculty of Law. The debate should not be unaffected by the “important fact that of the 50 countries that were once members of the British Empire, only 17 currently seek final legal redress from the Privy Council, 14 of which are Caribbean nations”. Apart

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from being a “disputes settlement mechanism” the CCJ, some believe, will “also give uniformity and continuity to a distinct Caribbean reality”. See article “Proposed Caribbean Court of Justice meets resistance” – The Gleaner, July 20, 2001, p. B 11. 6. Denis Benn & Kenneth Hall (eds.) Globalisation: A Calculus of Inequality, Perspectives from the South. Kingston, Ian Randle Publishers, 2000. See my Statement at the Opening Session of Symposium, pp. 153-156. See also “Global Revenge of the colonised millions”, by Felipe Fernandez Armesto, the Sunday Times, February 11, 2001, p. 10, (Section 5). 7. See Rex Nettleford Political Leadership in the Commonwealth Caribbean: Responsibilities, Options and Challenges at End of Century, (Caribbean contemporary Affairs No. 1, School of Continuing Studies, UWI 1994) pp. 19-24. 8. Report of Committee of Advisors on Government Structure, Kingston, JIS 1992, p. 6 9. James McGregor Burns: Leadership, New York, Harper & row, 1978, p. 20 10. The Jamaican Labour Party charged the sitting Peoples National Party government with “mismanagement” (the country experienced negative growth for a good part of the Seventies) and presented its own leader as a super manager and a “financial wizard” who could relieve Jamaica of its debt-crisis and the continuing threat of a declining currency. In the 1989 election the PNP was in turn to charge the sitting JLP government with “mismanagement”, since the dollar had further declined, debt was still high and hardships persisted among the poor and the disadvantaged. Expert management, the stuff of private sector existence, had by now become a requirement of good government. The country was in this sense ready for the retreat by the PNP Government after 1989 from leftist statist ideology to the embrace of market-forces ideology. Both parties by the end of the eighties had uttered the dictum that “the private sector is the engine of development”, even if the political directorates sought to retain possession of the driver’s seat. See Rex Nettleford op cit p. 51 (footnote 46) 11. See Lawrence L Langer’s “Zion’s Response to the Holocaust” in New York Times Book Review, April 18, 1993, p. 37 being a review of The Seventh Million; The Israelis and the Holocaust, New York, Hill and Wang, 1993. 12. Eric Williams: Inward Hunger: The Education of a Prime Minister, London, Andre Deutsch, 1969. 13. Report of Committee of Advisors on Government Structure, p. 4 14. Ibid (Chapter 2) 15. See my “Freedom of Expression and the Caribbean Media” in Speaking Freely: Expression and the Law in the Commonwealth, Edited by Robert Martin, Toronto, Irwin Law, 1999, pp. 41-58. 16. [See “A Remarkable Cost” being reviewed by DJ Taylor of A N Wilson’s The Victorians, Hutchinson, 2002 in Sunday Times, Sect. 9, 25/8/02 p. 38]

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he analyses contained in the various contributions in this volume provide a comprehensive assessment of the governance challenge at the national, regional and global level. They also present a number of useful insights into the overall conception of governance, the nature of the environment in which governance systems operate, and the strategies and approaches which could be pursued in order to ensure its optimum application in given political contexts. It is useful therefore to highlight some of the more significant ideas which have emerged from the analysis. There is fairly widespread recognition that the changes which have occurred in the international system in recent years following the collapse of the Soviet Union and the emergence of a triumphal capitalism coupled with the impact of the September 11, 2001 event, have led to the resurgence of a posture of unilateralism on the part of the United States which is combined with an increasing preoccupation with security concerns and military preparedness. These developments, together with the logic of globalisation, have in turn exercised a dominant influence on the environment in which governments function and have complicated the prospects for democratic global governance which is necessarily premised on a commitment to multilateralism. Given current realities, it is also clear that governments on their own cannot deal with the multifaceted and increasingly complex challenges which confront them. Consequently, an optimum system of governance should be premised on the establishment of a creative partnership between the state, the private sector and civil society. However, while the private sector and the market should play an important role in the development process, contrary to the more extreme propositions of neo-liberalism, the state would need to continue to play a strategic role in the process of governance, particularly in the case of the developing countries which in may cases experience a low level of development and have comparatively underdeveloped and undifferentiated production structures. As Joseph Stiglitz has reminded us, positive development outcomes in the developing countries often require strategic actions on the part of the state in such countries. Moreover, as Rex Nettleford has noted, market liberalism does not necessarily imply less government but different and better government. Based on continuing instability and the near breakdown of some political systems in the Caribbean, most notably in Guyana which has experienced increasing levels of violence in recent months, there is an urgent need to identify creative models of governance aimed at political reconciliation. For this reason,

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a concerted effort should be made to determine the merits of a consociational model of governance as opposed to the majoritarian ethic of the Westminster system based on the principle of winner takes all. As Premdas has reminded us, consociational models of governance exist in countries such as Fiji and Mauritius and should therefore be assessed to determine if such systems could be adapted to the circumstances of the Caribbean. An optimal level of governance in the Caribbean would also require the promotion of a ‘culture of inclusion’ in the political system. For this reason, creative and innovative approaches should be identified to ensure the involvement of the opposition parties in the system of governance both at the parliamentary level through an expansion of the number of committees chaired by them as well as at other levels of the system, through for example the appointment of an increased number of opposition members to serve as members of the Boards of statutory bodies. Moreover, an effective system of governance would also require the establishment of a strengthened system of sub-national governance based on the decentralisation of central government functions with the aim of promoting community empowerment. This would require the introduction of creative systems of local governance that would enable local communities to participate effectively in the formulation and implementation of development plans and programmes required for the improvement of such communities. It is recognised, of course, that an adequate level of resources should be provided to local communities in order to enable such communities to fund projects identified as being of central importance to them. At the regional level, the evolution of the integration process within the Caribbean Community has witnessed the proliferation of regional structures which support various aspects of economic integration and functional cooperation. Based on the proposed establishment of the CSME, it would be timely to carry out a thorough review of the existing institutional arrangements as well as the proposed new institutions to be created under the CSME with a view to exploring the possibilities for effecting a rationalisation of the institutional arrangements within the region. Both Brewster and Lewis have in fact advanced a number of useful proposals for rationalising and improving decision-making structures in the region by recommending the adoption, in keeping with the EU model, of community directives which would have the force of the law at the national level. For this approach to be effective, it would, of course require that intensive consultations be carried out at the level of national governments before measures are brought before the Heads of Government for adoption. In addition, a systematic effort should be made to implement a comprehensive system of decentralisation of decision making authority among the various organs of the Community. For example, the Heads of Government should determine the types of decisions to

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be delegated to the Community Council and other Councils which in turn should decide what functions should be delegated to officials and to the Secretariat itself. Since the provision of adequate funding for the activities of the Secretariat is crucial to the functioning of the integration movement, creative funding options should be explored . Brewster’s innovative proposals for funding based on the utilisation of the CET have some merit and should therefore be given careful consideration. It has been noted that the Caribbean Community is essentially an ‘association of sovereign states’. This is due in part to the sensitivity, particularly in the case of Jamaica, concerning political union, based on the experience of the Federation and the peculiar commitment of the member states of the Community to the defence of sovereignty. However, the logic of integration in the context of the establishment of the CSME would require the introduction of creative formulas for regional governance if it is to function optimally and to serve as a vehicle to maximise the development possibilities of the region. What seems to be required at this stage is the introduction of a system of ‘integrated regional governance’ which would sanction supra-national institutional arrangements in selected areas considered to be critical to the advancement of the integration process and which would serve as a mechanism for the promotion of common regional interests. Certainly, the fashioning of a structure of regional governance, which responds to the challenges facing the Community, is not beyond the creative capacity of the region. It is noteworthy that the Community has already formulated a system of rotating chairpersons whereby the chairperson changes on a six-monthly basis, which in fact enables all CARICOM Heads of Government to provide leadership of the integration movement from time to time. This arrangement should serve to instil the necessary confidence in the governments of the region regarding the viability of the proposed system of ‘integrated regional governance’. While seeking to promote a more integrated system of regional governance, the Caribbean integration movement would also need to continue to focus on the strengthening of the links between the wider Community and the OECS which, as was noted previously, function as a clearly identified economic integration grouping with even higher levels of integration and co-operation among its members than has been experienced by the wider Community itself. This would require the development of creative synergies between two entities based on the dual recognition of both the special circumstances and needs of the OECS and, at the same time, the commonality of interests within the wider Community. The Community would also need to explore the most appropriate structure of regional governance to accommodate expanding linkages with other groups, including CARIFORUM and, more importantly the wider Caribbean Basin

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reflected in the membership of the ACS. It would seem that regional governance should be structured so as to enable the CARICOM core to relate to a series of concentric arrangements beginning with the wider Caribbean and radiating outward to embrace, the hemispheric system and, ultimately, the international community as a whole. The strengthening of regional integration structures is also important to enable the Community to promote and defend its interests in the several ongoing negotiations taking place in the context of the ACP-EU Cotonou Agreement, the FTAA and the WTO, all of which are of fundamental importance to the long term economic prosperity of the region. An effective system of governance would also need to be underpinned by arrangements designed to promote higher levels of economic growth and development within the Community with continuing emphasis on poverty reduction. In order to achieve this objective, a renewed effort will need to be made to promote a creative regional development strategy based on the collective utilisation of the resources of the Community. In this regard, a review of the resources of the Caribbean region would suggest that, contrary to the view that is sometimes expressed, few economic entities of comparable size can boast of the level of resources available to the region in the form of bauxite/alumina, petroleum, natural gas, agricultural and forestry resources, tourism infrastructure as well as human capital. In the context of an intensified pattern of regional integration envisaged in the formation of the CSME, special attention would need to be given to the possibility of promoting a strategy of ‘industrial complementarity’ in the region, based on the establishment of production enterprises in strategic areas rather than structuring the regional economy on the basis of carefully insulated national entities, which would in fact defeat the objective of promoting a genuine pattern of regional integration. Such a strategy would of course still envisage the continued functioning of national economies but efforts at the national level would be consciously supplemented by a series of regionally integrated production arrangements based on the combination of capital, technology, entrepreneurship and labour, the benefits of which would be shared equitably among the countries of the region. The development of an optimum level of integration along the lines described above could trigger a level of development that would allow the region to fund new investment projects and at the same time to allocate increased resources under the recently agreed Stabilisation and Transformation Fund to assist member states experiencing economic problems. The small countries of the Caribbean also have a continuing interest in promoting effective global governance structures which promote democratic participation. As was indicated earlier, the increasing tendency towards unilateralism on the part of the US as the dominant actor in the international system makes multilateralism somewhat tenuous. Be that as it may, countries of

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the region, in collaboration with other developing countries, operating within the framework of the Non-Aligned Movement and the Group of 77, together with some like-minded developed countries should continue to press for the strengthening of multilateral institutions, most notably the United Nations which in the main, provides for the democratic participation of all countries regardless of size. In this context, efforts should also continue to promote the democratisation of the UN Security Council through an expansion of the rotating membership of the Council and ultimately the elimination of the veto exercised by the permanent members of the Council. The policy orientation of the international financial institutions which is based on neo-liberal assumptions has come under increasing challenge regarding its suitability to the realities of the developing countries. Efforts should therefore continue to be made to ensure the more effective participation of Caribbean and other developing countries in their decision-making processes in order to be able to change the policy orientation of these institutions. These efforts would of course, need to be supported by substantive theoretical analysis which seek to promote the legitimacy of alternative development paradigms more suited to the needs of the developing countries. Similarly, given the growing importance of the WTO both as a forum for the negotiation of international trade agreements and as a mechanism to enforce the provisions of agreements such as the TRIMs, TRIPs and GATS concluded in the context of the Uruguay Round of Multilateral Trade Negotiations, the Caribbean countries, in collaboration with other developing countries, would need to ensure effective participation in the organisation in order to secure a thorough review of the implementation of the existing agreements with a view to effecting possible adjustments and also to defend their economic interests, and by pursuing issues such as the grant of special and differential treatment as a general principle and also the grant of concessions to small economies in order to promote not only free trade but fair trade. In this context, special attention would also need to be given to changing the decision-making process of the organisation, which by adopting the socalled ‘green room’ process of consultation and negotiation, has produced a culture of exclusion in the organisation which has placed Caribbean and other developing countries at a disadvantage. Of course, the interests of the Caribbean would need to be promoted with similar vigour in the context of the negotiations within the FTAA and the ACP-EU Cotonou Agreement. These efforts are emphasised since the economic viability of the countries of the region is an important precondition for effective governance. Indeed, it would be difficult to maintain political stability in the context of widespread economic and social deprivation. In other words, in the face of the challenge facing the Caribbean and other developing countries, governance and development are closely ‘interlinked and indeed inseparable’.

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Finally, bearing in mind that the defence of the political and economic interests of the Caribbean also depends to a significant extent on the forging of multilateral diplomatic alliances, the countries of the region have a vested interest in the continued viability of the Non-Aligned Movement and the Group of 77 which serve as important mechanisms for promoting the interests of the developing countries. Caribbean countries should therefore play an active role in seeking to strengthen these groupings by contributing analyses designed to redefine and update their objectives and by supporting the implementation of measures aimed at promoting the interests of the developing countries at the international level. These observations suggest that the governance challenges at the national, regional and global levels are not only multifaceted in nature but are closely interrelated in their overall impact and would therefore require a co-ordinated and coherent response on the part of the Caribbean and other developing countries to promote governance arrangements that are guided by a democratic ethos which would allow countries and groups to participate on an equitable basis in decisions which affect their well being. As Sir Shridath Ramphal has reminded us, the Caribbean countries, by virtue of their small size and vulnerability to external events, cannot afford to stand aside from the global debate on issues critical to their long term viability. Hopefully, the contributions in this volume will provide new and valuable insights which would enable policy makers in the region to become more fully engaged in the vital process of constructing governance systems consistent with the quest for higher levels of freedom and human well being in the Caribbean.

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L I S T

O F

C O N T R I B U T O R S

Roy Augier is Professor Emeritus, Department of History, University of the West Indies, Mona. He is a former Pro Vice Chancellor of the University. Professor Augier has collaborated with Sir Phillip Sherlock and others in preparing well-known history texts on the Caribbean. Barbara Bailey is Regional Co-ordinator, Centre for Gender and Development Studies, Regional Co-ordination Unit, University of the West Indies, Mona Campus. She has prepared a number of studies in gender in the Caribbean and is currently assisting the CARICOM Secretariat in the elaboration of a gender strategy for the region. Havelock Brewster is Alternate Executive Director at the Inter-American Development Bank in Washington DC. He served previously as Guyana’s Permanent Representative to the European Union based in Brussels. Prior to that appointment, he held senior positions in UNCTAD Secretariat in Geneva. He also taught at the University of the West Indies. Jessica Byron is Senior Lecturer in the Department of Government, University of the West Indies, Mona. Her interests are international relations theory and feminism, Dr. Byron has written extensively on various aspects of international relations with special reference to the Caribbean. Oliver Clarke is Chairman and Managing Director of the Gleaner Company Ltd. He is also a past President of the Private Sector Organisation of Jamaica. Carolyn Cooper is Professor of Literary and Cultural Studies, Department of Literatures in English, UWI, Mona. She is also Head of the Reggae Studies Unit. Professor Cooper has published a number of books and articles on various aspects of Jamaican popular culture. Neville Duncan is the Director of the Sir Arthur Lewis Institute of Social and Economic Studies, Mona. He has written widely on various aspects of governance including local government issues. Locksley Edmondson is Professor of African and Caribbean Politics and International Relations and former Director at the Africana Studies and Research Centre, Cornell University. He is also a former President of the Caribbean Studies Association and former Dean of the Faculty of Social Sciences of the University of the West Indies (Mona). Ralph Gonsalves is Prime Minister of St. Vincent and the Grenadines. Norman Girvan is the Secretary General of the Association of Caribbean States (ACS) located in Port of Spain, Trinidad and Tobago. Prior to taking up his appointment, Dr. Girvan served as Professor of Development Studies and Director of the Sir Arthur Lewis Institute of Social and Economic Studies, UWI, Mona. He is a well-known

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economist and author of a number of books on various aspects of the Caribbean economy. Cedric Grant is Professor of International and Caribbean Affairs, Department of International Affairs and Development at Clark Atlanta University, Atlanta, Georgia. He previously served as Guyana’s Ambassador to the United States based in Washington D.C. Ivelaw Griffith is Professor of Political Science and Dean of the Honors College, Florida International University. He is the author of several books and articles on various aspects of security in the Caribbean. He is a former President of the Caribbean Studies Association. Edwin Jones is Professor of Public Administration, University of the West Indies, Mona. He is a well known authority on public administration and has written extensively on the subject. Professor Jones has also served as a member of several boards and commissions dealing with public sector reform. Elsa Leo-Rhynie is Pro Vice Chancellor and Chairperson of the Board of Undergraduate Studies, University of the West Indies, Mona. Professor Leo-Rhynie is a well known authority on gender and has written widely on the subject. Vaughan Lewis is Professor of International Relations, University of the West Indies, St. Augustine, Trinidad and Tobago. He is a well known authority on international relations and previously served as Director General of the Organisation of Eastern Caribbean States (OECS). He is also a former Prime Minister of St. Lucia. John Maxwell is a well known journalist and part-time lecturer at CARIMAC, University of the West Indies, Mona. He is a regular contributor to the Sunday Observer newspaper. Trevor Munroe is Professor of Government in the Department of Government, UWI, Mona. He is also a government senator in Jamaica. Professor Munroe is an authority on Caribbean politics and has published several books on various aspects of governance. Rex Nettleford is the Vice Chancellor of the University of the West Indies, based in Mona, Jamaica. He is a prolific writer and author of a number of books, including Rastafarianism in Jamaica (with F.R. Augier and M.G. Smith); Manley and the New Jamaica; Dance Jamaica: Self Definition and Artistic Discovery; and The University of the West Indies: A Caribbean Response to the Challenge of Change. He is also the founder, artistic director and principal choreographer of the National Dance Theatre Company of Jamaica. Maurice Odle is Special Adviser to the Secretary General of CARICOM. He formerly served in a senior position in the UNCTAD Secretariat in Geneva. Dr. Odle has written extensively on financial issues in the Caribbean. Anthony Payne is Professor of Politics, University of Sheffield, UK. He is a well known authority on Caribbean politics and has written extensively on the subject. Duke Pollard is Legal Consultant to the CARICOM Secretariat in Georgetown, Guyana. He is a well known lawyer who previously served as Head of the Legal Division of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Guyana. Mr. Pollard is the author of several

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articles on legal issues in the Caribbean and has drafted a number of legal instruments for the Caribbean Community. Ralph Premdas is Professor of Public Policy, Department of Behavioural Sciences, University of the West Indies, St. Augustine, Trinidad and Tobago. He has written extensively on social issues in the Caribbean and has received a number of awards for his contributions in this area. Shridath Ramphal is the Chancellor of the University of the West Indies. Until recently, he served as the Chief Negotiator of the Regional Negotiating Machinery (RNM). He was also the Chairman of the West Indian Commission. He is a former SecretaryGeneral of the Commonwealth Secretariat and was the Co-Chairman of the Commission on Global Governance. Selwyn Ryan is Director of the Sir Arthur Lewis Institute of Social and Economic Studies (SALISES), University of the West Indies, St. Augustine, Trinidad and Tobago. He is a prolific writer and has published several books on various aspects of governance, economics and race relations in Trinidad and Tobago and the wider Caribbean. Naresh Singh is Director General, Social Policies, Social Policies Division, Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA), Quebec, Canada. He previously served in the Policy Division of the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) in New York. Dr. Singh has a special interest in social development issues and the environment. Taimoon Stewart is a Senior Research Fellow at the Sir Arthur Lewis Institute of Social and Economic Studies, St. Augustine, Trinidad and Tobago. Paul Sutton is Reader, Department of Politics and Asian Studies, University of Hull, U.K. He is a well known authority on public administration and has written extensively on Caribbean issues. Dr. Sutton has also served as a consultant to the UK Department for International Development (DFID). Clive Thomas is the Director of the Institute of Development Studies, University of Guyana. He previously served as the George Beckford Professor of Caribbean Economy, University of the West Indies, Mona, Jamaica. He is a well known and highly respected economist who has written several books on economic theory and development. He has also served as a consultant to a number of international organisations, including the United Nations. Oriville Taylor is a Lecturer in the Department of Sociology and Social Work, University of the West Indies. He specialises in Labour Studies and has written several articles on the subject. Stephen Vasciannie is Professor of International Law, University of the West Indies, Mona. He has written extensively on issues relating to the Law of the Sea and other subjects in the field of international relations. He is also a regular contributor to the Gleaner newspaper in Jamaica. Dwight Venner is the Governor of the Eastern Caribbean Central Bank based in St. Kitts-Nevis. He previously taught economics at the University of the West Indies.

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Hilbourne Watson is Professor of International Relations, Bucknell University, Lewisburg, Pennsylvania. He served previously as Professor and Chairman of the Department of Political Science, Howard University. His speciality is international political economy and political philosophy. Professor Watson has written extensively on various aspect of Caribbean politics and economics. He is a former President of the Caribbean Studies Association.

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I N D E X

ABM Treaty, 72 ACP-EU, 501, 510, 516, 537, 560, 605, 606;

Parliament of, 10 Barber, Benjamin, 171

New trading arrangement, 501 ACP Group, 537

Barrow, Errol Walton, 10 Beijing Platform for Action, 197

Afghanistan, 30, 36, 51, 72 Africa,

Belize, 14, 518 Bennett-Coverley, Louise, 251, 253, 267

Africa Growth and Opportunity Act, 46 Africa, Caribbean and the Pacific (see ACP-EU)

Bernal, Richard, xxiii, 273, 279 Best, Lloyd, 3, 178

Age of Terror; Caribbean Security in the, 53

Bilateral Investment Treaties, 89, 92 Bin Laden, Osama, 30

Agenda 21, 473 Albright, Madeleine;

Bird, Lester, 300

Views on Iraq, 35 Al-Quaida, 74

Black Death, 468 Blatt, Daniel, 164, 168

Alma Alta Goals, 122 Andean Community, 548

Bratton, Michael, 349 Bretton Woods Agreements, 359 Brett, Teddy, 234

Antigua and Barbuda, 167, 377 Aristide, Jean-Bertrand, 280, 281, 591

Brewster, Havelock, xxvi, 603 CARICOM Single Market and Economy, 499

Aristotle, 3

Britain, 31

Arthur Anderson, xv, 90

Brundtland Commission Environment and

Arthur, Owen, 88, 301, 383 Asian Crisis (1997), 67

Development, 472-508 Buchanan, James

Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC), 153, 154, 159

Public Choice Theory, xx Burke, Edmund, 177

Association of Caribbean American Elected Officials and Leaders, 278, 282

Burnham, Forbes, 166, 326, 331, 591

Association of Caribbean States (ACS), 535-554, 605

Buzan, Barry, 409

Bird, Vere, 591

Amin, Samir, 31, 36, 68

Association of South East Asian Nations (ASEAN), 155 Atlanta Journal Constitution, 457 Augier, Roy, xxii Caribbean governance systems, The historical legacy, 213-228; Crown colony system, xxii, 222 Bahamas, 88 Bailey, Barbara, xx, 195 Engendering governance, 195-212 Balkans, 17 Bangura, Yusuf, 350 Barbados, 88, 111, 120, 129, 136, 167, 224, 501;

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Bustamante, Alexander, 591 Byron, Jessica, xviii; Changing paradigms in international relations theory, 63-82; Huntington’s thesis, 72; Realist approach to international relations, xix Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA), 471, 476, 491 Capital, 51; Social, 238, 239, 482 Capitalism, 28 Cargo cults, 464 Caribbean, ix, xvi, xxix, 53, 54, 55, 57, 71, 74, 75, 156, 171, 178, 179, 201, 215, 384, 605, 607; Civilisation, xviii, 5, 9, 10, 11, 13

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Index Diaspora, xxii, xxiii, 3, 75; Political crisis, xvi; Political systems, 5, 10

Single Market and Economy, xxvi, 114, 294, 434, 435, 445, 499, 501, 505, 507, 509, 562, 564, 566, 573, 580, 603, 604, 605;

Caribbean American Chamber of Commerce, 274

Task Force on Crime and Security, xxiv CARIFORUM, 518, 524, 604

Caribbean American Elected Officials and Leaders, 274

Carlson, Ingvar, 14 Carnegie Commission on

Caribbean American Leadership Summit, 274

Deadly Conflict, 365 Carrington, Edwin, 277, 282

Caribbean Basin, 74, 76, 518, 547 Caribbean Centre for

Cartels, xx, 101, 113; Global Lysine Cartel, 104, 105;

Development Administration, 422 Caribbean Community, 268, 563, 566

Global Vitamin Cartel, 105, 115; Graphite Electrodes Cartel, 103, 104, 105;

Caribbean Community Secretariat, 208, 434, 438, 501, 508

Hardcore Cartels, 102, 107, 108; Heavy Electrical Equipment, 103, 105, 112, 113;

Caribbean Congress of Labour (CCL), xxv, 451 Caribbean Court of Justice (CCJ), xxvii, 294, 435,

Seemless Steel Tube Case, 112; Soda Ash Case, 106;

440, 500, 506, 513, 523, 562, 565, 568, 570, 573, 579, 580, 588

Steel Beam Cartel, 103; Caspian Sea, 36;

Caribbean Development Bank, ix, xxvii, 418, 506, 523

Oil resources, xvii, 31; Castro, Fidel, 18, 265, 271, 591;

Caribbean Epedemological Centre (CAREC), 400 Caribbean Examinations Council (CXC), 203

Cedras, General Raul, 462; Central American Economic Integration System

Caribbean Free Trade Agreement (CARIFTA), 445 Caribbean Group for Cooperation

(SIECA), 541 Central American Integration System (SICA), 541

in Economic Development, 418 Caribbean Media Association, 274

Central European Free Trade Area (CEFTA), 154 Césaire, Aimé, 70

Caribbean Organisation for Standards and Quality, 501

Chaguaramas Treaty (see Treaty of Chaguaramas)

Caribbean Policy Development Centre, 429 Caribbean Preferential Tariff, 548

Chambers, George, 165 Chambers, Robert, 473

Caribbean Secondary Education Certificate, 203

Charles, Eugenia, 294 Chavez, Hugo, 52

Caribbean Single Market and Economy (CSME) (see CARICOM)

Cheney, Dick, 31 Chiapas, 52

CARICOM, xxiii, xxiv, 75, 76, 77, 114, 121, 140, 165, 196, 282, 378, 538, 539, 541, 569, 594;

Chief Executive Officers, 92, 550 China, xvi, 44, 47, 52, 90

Charter of civil society, 292, 293, 295, 369, 587;

Chin Lee, Howard, 397 Chiquita, 464

Common External Tariff (CET), xxvi, 499, 508,

Chisholm, Clinton, 249, 250, 252 Churchill, Winston, 36

604; Council for Finance and Planning (COFAP), 503, 504; Council for Trade and Economic Development (COTED), 520; Heads of Government Conference, xxvii, 420, 513, 523, 528, 604 Prime Ministerial Sub-Committee on External Relations, 520;

Civilisations Clash of, 72 Civil society, xv, xxiii, xxiv, 69, 77, 169, 233, 291, 303, 354 Civil war, 327 Clarke, Oliver, xxv, 434, 457; Entrenchment of freedom of press in constitution, 458, 459; Limits on libel awards, 437

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Clarke, Rev. Henry, 460

Diaspora, xxii, 260, 395;

Clinton administration, 21, 72, 85 Clinton boom, 149

Caribbean, xxii, xxiii, 3, 75, 260, 263, 265, 267, 270, 272, 275;

Cockburn, Cynthia, 204, 207 Cohen, Robin, 261, 262

Locational, xxii; Transactional, xxii

Cold War, 45, 51, 53, 54, 63, 66, 67, 68, 72, 73, 86, 156, 384

Diasporic Community, xxii Diasporic Identity, 263

Collapsed State, 47 Commonwealth Association for Public

Diasporic Studies, 262, 264 Dollar Wall Street Regime (DWSR), 31, 33, 34, 39,

Administration and Management (CAPAM), 423-425 Commonwealth Secretariat, 206, 510 Commission on Global Governance, 14, 17

Donne, John, 16 Douglas, Denzil, 299

Community, 244; Empowerment, xvi

Douglas, Rosie, 520 Draper, Gordon, 424

Competition Policy, 101, 500 Comprehensive Development Framework, 119

Drugs, 57 Dumas

Condoreet, Marquis de, 175, 178 Conference on Financing for Development, 88

Task Force Report (2000), 578 Duncan, Neville, xx, 232, 303;

Conway, Gordon, 473 Consociationalism

Governance in Small Societies, 164 - 174 Dunlap, Al, 465

Consociational model, xxi Cooperative Socialism, 541

Dupuy, Alex, 281 Earth Summit (see UNCED), 21

Cooper, Carolyn, xxiii Attitude to political participation reflected in

Eastern Caribbean Central Bank (ECCB), 297, 531, 557

popular music, xxi, 249-259 Copenhagen Summit on Social Development, 119

Eastern Caribbean Court, xxviii, 576 Eastern Caribbean Telecommunications Authority,

(see World Summit on Social Development) Corruption, 468;

531 Ecological Theory, 69

Annual Corruption Perception Index, 370, 380; Global Corruption Report, 370;

Economic Commission For Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC),

The Bribe Payers Index, 374; Transparency International, 372, 374;

195, 196, 197, 536 Economic Security Council (see United Nations)

Cox, Robert, 69, 148, 161 Critical Theory, 69

Edmonson, Locksley, xxii, 280; Caribbean Diaspora, 260-288

Cuba, 53, 74, 521, 586 Curzon, Lord, 18

Education for All, 203 Electoral System

Daily Gleaner, 370, 424, 457, 458 Darby, John, 317

First past the post, 182; Proportional representation, 358, 359;

Davies, Susana, 473 de Caires, David, 181

Ellis, Clarence, 190 Empire of Liberty, 43, 48, 521

Decentralisation, xviii, 246, 359-361, 483 Democracy, 350, 476, 588;

Engels, 38 ENRON, xv, xxiv, 92, 374, 455;

Weak, 165; Strong, 170, 171

Financial collapse, xv Epicures, 4

Democratic Socialism, 54 Department of Homeland Security, 51 de Sade, Marquis, 5 Development Balanced development, 514

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40, 43, 45, 47, 54, 55 Dominica, 167

614

Epistemic Communities, 66, 75 Europe, 45 European Union, 52, 53, 65, 76, 102, 110, 112, 115, 154, 159, 442, 464, 512, 519, 521, 552, 566; Banana Regime, 546

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Index Europol, 76

Transformationalists, 150, 151

Exceptionalism, 48 Failed States (see state)

Globalism, 38, 147, 148, 150, 161 Global taxation (see taxation)

Fairclough, O.T., 454, 460 Fanon, Frantz, 70

Global Tax Forums, 87, 88 Goldblatt, David, 150

Federalism, 361 WI Federation, 439, 463

Gonsalves, Ralph, xviii, 297, 301, 302, 307; Insufficiency of virtue, xviii;

Federalist Papers, 408 Fiji, xxiv, 77, 348, 352, 358, 487

Laziness of thought, xviii; Learned helpnessness, xviii;

Financial Action Task Force (FATF), xx, 87, 123 Financial Stability Forum (FSF), 87

New conceptions of governance, 3-13; Goodwin, William, 175;

Financial Times, 464 First Past the Post (FPTP), 182

Gough, I, 127; Governance, xiv, 64, 68, 170, 471, 485, 486, 586;

(see also Electoral System) Foner, Eric, 47, 48

(see also government); Caribbean, xxv;

Forde, Henry, 296 Foreign Direct Investment, 125, 132

commandist, 3;

Fourth World Conference on Women (FWCW), Beijing, 196, 205, 291

corporate, 92; definition, xiv, 64-66, 147, 195, 230, 365, 403;

Freedom of the Press, 457-459 Freedom of Information, 436

439, 474, 531; effectiveness, 489;

Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA), 90, 100, 110, 154, 501, 520, 548, 549, 552, 556, 560,

engendering, 195-210; global governance, xvii, xix, 21, 65, 71, 83;

605 Consultative Group on Smaller Economies, 90 Friedman, Thomas, 36 Fukuyama, Francis, 3

consociational, xxi;

good governance, xiv, xv, 3, 11, 12, 171, 429, 476, 492; integrated governance, 604; multi-level, xxi, 159; new conception of, xxi;

End of history, 63 Gaebler, T, xv

small size and, xxi; sub-national, xxii, 229-248;

Gairy, Eric, 591 Garvey, Marcus, 223 GATT/WTO negotiations, 88 Gender Gender equality, xxi, 198, 202 Gender Management System (GMS), 206 General Agreement on Trade in Services (GATS), 90, 455, 465 General Assembly, 40 Geneva Convention, 73

supra-national, 159; Government, 64; entrepreneurial, xv; Gramsci, Antonio, 41, 148; Grand Anse Declaration, 509, 512, 513; Grant, Cedric, xxiii, 291; civil society, governance and conflict resolution, 291-316; Greater Caribbean Zone of Cooperation, 552; Greenspan, Alan, 380

Geonarcotics, 388 Gidden, Anthony, 4

Greider, W., 151 Grenada, 167, 299, 528, 586

Gilead Balm of, 6

Griffith, Ivelaw Caribbean Security in the Age of Terror, 383-415

Gilligan, Carol, 204 Gilroy, Paul, 265 Girvan, Norman, 232, 266 Globalisation, ix, xv, xviii, xix, xx, xxv, xxvi, xxix, 16, 17, 49, 56, 65, 66, 68, 74, 83, 84, 123, 124, 132, 147, 150, 151, 161, 463, 464 Hyperglobalisers, 151,

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Group of 3, 539 Group of 7, 149, 153 Group of 77, 22 Group of 8, 489, 490, 492 Gulf War, 17, 19, 45, 149 Gurr, Ted, 364

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Guyana, xxi, xxiii, 54, 56, 166, 169, 178, 179,

International Tax Organisation, 88

Bar Association, 186, 311; Ethnic conflict xxiii, 353, 338;

Iraq, 19, 51 Israel, 271

490, 534

Haiti, 48, 54, 56, 296, 462; Utilities d’, 273

Jagan, Cheddi, 294, 326, 328 Jagdeo, Bharrat, 300

Hall, Stuart hybridity, 266

Jamaica, 54, 56, 167, 197, 241, 371, 457, 501, 511 Employers Federation, 199

Hamilton, Alexander, 176, 177 Hartstock, Nancy, 204

Employment (Equal Pay for Men Women) Act, 447

Havana Charter (1948), 559 Hedonism, 415

Labour Relations and Industrial Disputes Act (LRIDA), 450

Hegemony US, 74

Progressive League, 273 Women’s Political Caucus, 199, 205

Herdmanston Accord, 296, 308, 309 Hewison, M., 65

Jamaica Labour Party (JLP), 193, 570 Jessop, David, 517

Heywood, A., 64 Hinds, David, 191

Jewell, Richard, 457 Jones, Edwin, xxii

HIV/ AIDS, xxiv, 76, 85, 126, 132, 295, 386, 387, 400, 463, 595

Kaldor, Mary, 50 Karam, Azza, 199

Hobbes, Thomas, 176 Hoffman, Lord, 577

Karp, Walter, 463 Kennan, George, 18, 307

Holsbawn, Eric, 15, 16 Holloway, John, 31, 39, 40, 44, 52

King, Martin Luther, 354 King, Maurice, 299, 310 Kissinger, Henry, 19

Homeland Security, 45, 51 Hoogvelt, Ankie, 38, 68 Hoyte, Desmond, 166, 294 Human Development Index, 140 Human Development Report, 94 Huntington, Samuel, 56, 72, 408 Clash of civilisations, 61 Hybridity, 189 Imperialism, xviii, 18, 28, 36, 39, 54 Indonesia, 30 Integrated Governance (see also governance) Systems, 604 Inter-American Development Bank, 466, 516, 524 Inter-American Press Association, 459 Inter-American Treaty of Reciprocal Mutual Assistance (1947), 46 International Bank for Reconstruction and Development (IBRD) (see World Bank)

Klare, Michael, 36 Kyoto Protocol (1997), 21, 72, 85 Labour Standards, 442 LAC (Latin America and the Caribbean), 46, 57, 67, 71 Lara, Brian, 464 Laziness, 5 of thought, 7 Leadbeater, Charles, 6 Leadership, 193, 204 League of Nations, 66 Learned helplessness, 7 Leo-Rhynie, Elsa, xx Engendering governance, 195-210 Lewis, Arthur (Sir), 12, 179, 528 Neville Lewis case, 568 Lewis, Vaughan, xxvii, 278, 603 CARICOM Regional Institutional Arrangements, 509-526

International Criminal Court (ICJ), 21, 72, 372 International Financial Architecture, xvii International Labour Organisation, 441, 442, 443 International Monetary Fund (IMF), xiv, xvii, xxv,

index.pmd

20, 31, 57, 86, 92, 98, 149, 153, 372, 468,

185, 189, 224, 331, 354; Anti-model, xxiv, 333, 341-346;

616

Liberalism, 29, 51 Liebling, AJ, 456, 463 Lijphart, Arend, 178, 179, 362 Liliendaal Statement, 77, 292, 303 Lincoln, Abraham, 455

5/21/2003, 3:35 PM

Index Lindh, John Walker, 467

Nassau Understanding, 512

Litwak, Robert, 39 Local Initiative Faculty for Urban Development

National Coalition on Caribbean Affairs, 275, 280, 282

(LIFE), 481, 482, 483 Lomé Convention, 524

National Commercial Bank (NCB), 465 National Consultative Council (St Vincent and

Macaulay, Lord, 455 Madison, James, 176, 177, 408

the Grenadines), 299 National Democratic Party, 297, 298

Mais, Roger, 455, 460 Mandela, Nelson, 591

Nationalism, 63 National Minimum Wage, 467

Manifest Destiny, 36, 49 Manley, Beverly, 487

NATO, 45, 53, 227 Neo-liberalism, xiv, xv, xix, 27, 51, 56, 63, 66, 68,

Manley, Michael, 454, 468 Manley, Norman, 465

602 Neo-Mercantilism, 27, 46, 48

Market, xv, xix, 37, 641 Malaysia, 354-356

Neo-Realism, 42, 66, 68 Nettleford, Rex, xxviii, 245, 420, 586, 602

Marti, José, 387 Marx, Gary, 159

Establishment of creative partnership, 592 Need for different and better government, 593

Marx, Karl, 29, 38, 223 Marxism-Leninism, 586

New Economic Programme for African Development (NEPAD), 492

Mauritius, xxiv, 350, 354 Maxwell, John, xxv

New International Economic Order, 107 New Political Economy, 37

Mazar Al Sharif, 466 McCarthyism, 20, 586

New Public Management, 416-433 New World Group, 3, 7

McDonald, Ian, 464 McIntyre, Alister, 296, 302

Non-Aligned Movement, 23, 606 Non-governmental organisations, xv, 133, 169,

Mearsheimer, John, 67 Medgar Evers College

291, 524 Non-State actors, 169

Caribbean Research Centre, 266, 274 MERCOSUR, 154

Northern Ireland, 348 Nye, Joseph, 3, 33, 64

Middle East, 19 Millennium Development Goals (MDG), 95, 119,

Odle, Maurice, xix; Global Governance in the context of

461, 490 Mills Report, 512

globalisation, 83-99; OECD attack on Caribbean offshore financial

Milosevic, 467 Minogue, Martin, 230, 426, 427, 430

sector, 87-88; Iniquities of existing global economic order, 83

Mirabeau, Compte de, 178 Misir, Prem, 191, 192

Offshore financial operations, xx, 87 Organisation for Cooperation in Economic

Mitchell, Sir James, 294, 300 Mitchell, Keith, 300, 301, 303 Monsanto, 464 Monterrey Conference, 88, 95, 98 (see also Conference on Financing for Development)

index.pmd

617

Development (OECD), xx, xxvi, 23, 31, 92, 101, 107, 112, 113, 127, 454, 461, 469, 490, 510; Global Tax Forum, 87- 88; Principles of Corporate Governance, 92 Organisation in Defence of Democracy, 298, 305

Montserrat, 521 Moser, Caroline, 200

Organisation of American States (OAS), 14, 46, 57, 282, 293, 516

Multilateral Agreement on Investment (MAI), 92 Multilateralism, xvii, xxviii, 71

Organisation of Eastern Caribbean States (OECS), xxvii, 3, 119, 143, 297, 501, 529, 604

Munroe, Gillian, 467 Munroe, Trevor, xxiv, 280

O’Neill, Michael, 188 Oquist, P., 197

NAFTA, 90, 153, 154, 510, 515, 520, 536, 538

Osborne, D., xv

617

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618

GOVERNANCE IN THE AGE OF GLOBALISATION

Ostrom, Elinor, 238, 239

Private Sector, xvi, 434

Paine, Thomas, 171, 455 Palast, Greg, 468

Public Accounts Committee, xvi Public Choice Theory, xv

Palestinians, 36 Palme, Olof, 14

Public Eye, 467 Public Opinion, 459

Panday, Basdeo, 178, 179, 189, 299, 301 Partners for Development, 484

Public Sector Management Caricom Ministerial Round Table on Public

Patriotic Coalition for Democracy (PCD), 309 Patriot Act, Anti Terrorism Bill, 278 Patterson, Orlando, xxiii, 270, 271 Pax Americana, 21, 22

Public Sector Modernisation Project, 421 NPM Paradigm, 416-433

Pax Britannica, 18, 148 Pax Romana, 18

Putnam, R., 238 Quad, The, 20

Payne, Anthony, xx; Increasing complexity of global governance,

Ramphal, Shridath, xviii, 296, 301, 383, 607 The new imperialism, 14-24

147 Paz, Octavo, 4

Rastafari, 223, 249, 265 Reaganism, 7

People’s National Congress (PNC), 180, 296, 326, 327, 331

Realism, xix, 27, 38, 66, 67, 72, 73, 74, 385 Regional Economic Partnership Agreement (REPA),

People’s National Movement (PNM), 180 People’s National Party, 570

518, 536 Regional Integration, xvii, 65, 434

People’s Progressive Party, 296, 309, 326, 327 Petras, James, 28, 31, 37, 38, 46, 50, 52, 53

Regionalism, 46, 57, 71, 147, 152, 161, 509, 512 Regional Judicial Services Commission, xxviii

Pilger, John, 20, 30, 36, 39 Pinding, Lynden, 591 Plato

Regional Negotiating Machinery (RNM), xvii, 270, 295, 434, 519, 524, 595

The Republic, 3 Platteau, Jean-Philippe, 238, 239 Polis, 3 Polity, xiv, 11 Pollard, Duke, xxviii, 556, Economic contribution of justice sector, 556, 562 Jurisdiction of CCJ, 562-566 Post Beijing Regional Plan of Action, 205 Poverty Reduction Strategy Paper (PRSP), 493 Powell, Colin, 31 Power, 192 As domination, 201 Power sharing, 178, 186, 188, 354-357, 362 Pratt and Morgan, 568, 577 Premdas, Ralph, xxiii, 266, 317, 603 Bipolar demographic structure, xxiii Governance and ethnic conflict, 317- 347, 348368 Press Freedom, 457-459

Rights based approach, xx Robinson, ANR, 301 Rogue states, 39, 47, 54 Rosenau, James, 49, 147, 151, 160, 383, 404, 407 Rosenberg, Justin, 30, 38, 40, 43 Rousseau, Jean Jacques, 175, 383, 404 Royal West Indian Commission (1930s), 129 Russia, 52, 67 Ryan, Selwyn, xxi, 166, 175-194, 429; Consociational model of governance, xxi; Governance in multi-ethnic societies, xxi, 178182; Winner takes all, xxi, 182 Schaef, H.W., 201 Scholte, Jan Aart, 158, 160 Sector Wide Approach (SWAP), 199, 125, 126 Security in the Caribbean, 383-416 Security Council (see United Nations) Sen, Amartya, 137 September 11, xvii, xix, 18, 19, 27, 30, 44, 46, 63, 64, 69, 72, 88, 383, 493, 602

Prime Minister Power of, 11 Principle of ‘direct effect’, 513

index.pmd

Management in the Caribbean, 419 Public Sector Reform, 419

618

Serbin, Andres, 55 Serewicz, Lawrence, 49, 50

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Index Sexual Division of Labour, 201, 203

Sustainable Tourism Zone of the Caribbean (STZC),

Shaw, Martin, 49 Shiprider Agreement, 46, 57

549, 550 Sutton, Paul, xxiv;

Simpson, O.J., 461 Sinclair, T., 65

New Public Management philosophy, xxiv, 416 Tagore, Rabindranath, 22

Singapore, 87, 511 Singh, Naresh, xxv;

Taliban, 30, 74 Task Force on Crime and Security (Caribbean), xxiv,

Governance and Sustainable Development, 471497;

394, 399 Taxation

Sustainable livelihood, xxv, 472-494 Single Market

Global, 87, 88 Taylor, Charles, 351

Europe, 512 Size, 3, 548

Taylor, Orville, xxv, 439 Protecting the rights of labour, xxv

Small, 3, 75 Small Island Developing States (SIDS), 538

Technology, 4, 28 Terrorism, xix, 88, 276, 383, 398

Smith, Adam, 175 Social Capital

War on, xvii, 45 Thatcherism, 7

(see capital) Social Development Summit (see World Summit

Third Wave, 291 Third Way, 158

on Social Development) Social Science Research Council (US), 260

Third World, 52, 349, 362 Thomas, C.Y., xx, 181

Social Welfare Regimes, xx, 127 South Africa, xxiv, 352, 485

Holistic policy framework, xx, 119-146 Design of social policies, xx

Sovereignty, xv, xvi, xviii, 16, 27, 44, 49, 57, 514, 604

Typology of social welfare regimes, xx Thompson, Graham, 152

Soviet Union, 7, 45, 46, 63 Special and differential treatment (SDT), 89, 510,

Three waves, 349 Time for Action

547, 548 Srebrenica, 467

West Indian Commission Report (see West Indian Commission)

State, 27, 49, 55, 75, 158, 333; Failed state, 39, 47; Minimalist conception of, xiv; Rogue state, 39, 47, 54

Titi, Vangile, 473 Trade Related Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPs), 85, 90, 91, 500, 606 Trade Related Investment Measures (TRIMs), 84,

Stavenhagen, Rodolfo, 361 Stewart, Taimoon, xviii

85, 90, 606 Trade Union Congress (Guyana), 186, 310

Transnational corporations, 100-116 Steiner, George, 35

Transnational Corporations (TNCs), xx, xxvi, 92, 100, 101, 103, 141, 455, 469

Stiglitz, Joseph Limitations of the market, xv;

Draft UNCTC Code of Conduct, 92 Treaty of Basseterre, 528

The role of the state, 602 St Kitts and Nevis, 296, 377, 547

Treaty of Chaguaramas, xxviii, 114, 295, 445, 504, 513, 562, 574

St Lucia, 167, 377 St Vincent and the Grenadines, xxiii, 7, 119, 120

Trinidad and Tobago, xxvi, 104, 165, 178, 179, 184, 189, 224, 354, 371, 501, 514, 578

Strange, Susan, 159 Structural Adjustment, 33, 54, 101

Triumphalism, 7 Tullock, Gordon, xv

Subsidiarity, xxvi Summit of the Americas, 154, 516

Public choice theory, xv UN Conference on Environment and Development

Suriname, 178, 296 Sustainable Human Development (SHD), 119

(UNCED), 291 UN Conference on Financing for Development,

Sustainable Livelihood (SL) 472-494

index.pmd

619

619

88, 95, 98, 489

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620

GOVERNANCE IN THE AGE OF GLOBALISATION

UN Conference on Trade and Development, 107

Welfare mix, 127, 129, 136;

Unilateralism, xviii, 53, 71 Union Carbide, 101

Welfare outcomes, 127; Welfare regimes, 127, 128;

United Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO)

West Indian Commission (WIC), 268, 276, 277, 292, 369, 389, 512, 515, 539, 568, 569

General History of Africa, 261 United Labour Party (ULP), 298, 307

Westminster/ Whitehall model, xvi, 172, 178, 179, 182, 187, 214, 218, 232

United Kingdom Department for International Development

Wiles Lectures, 15 Wilkes, John, 455

(DFID) 230, 421, 422, 472; Privy Council, xxviii, 331, 562, 568, 570, 572, 579, 580 United Nations, xvii, 17, 66, 95, 98 ; Charter, 529; Economic Security Council, 17;

Williams, Daniel, 7 Williams, Eric, 165, 591 Wiltshire, Rosina, 467 Wire Service Defence, 437, 457 Women’s Development Foundation, 485 Wooding Commission (1974), 189

Security Council, xvii, 22, 31, 53, 606 United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF), 35

World Bank, xiv, xvii, xx, xxv, 31, 57, 86, 88, 98, 153, 230, 350, 372, 466, 490;

United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), 67, 94, 119, 199, 474

World Development Report, xv, 471 World Business Council, 469

United Nations Security Council (see United Nations)

Worldcom, xv, xxiv, 374 World Federalist Movement, 15

United Nations Women Fund (UNFEM), 202, 208 United States, xix, 3, 19, 39, 53, 85, 86, 90, 102,

World Summit on Social Development (WSSD), 124, 473

278; Caribbean relations, 57; Hegemonic dominance, 72, 74 University College of the West Indies (see University of the West Indies) University of the West Indies, 203, 294, 434, 437, 440, 524 Van der Aa, Pauline, 198, 200, 201 Van Trostenburg, Alex, 470 Van de Walle, Nicholas, 349 Vasciannie, Stephen, xxviii; Death penalty, 577; Functions of CCJ, 568-583; UK Privy Council (see UK) Venner Dwight, xxvii, 297; Functions of OECS, 527-534 Vietnam, 47 Waltz, Kenneth, 67 Washington Consensus, xiv, 468, 470, 492 War on Terrorism (see Terrorism)

World Summit on Sustainable Development, 96, 489 World Trade Organisation (WTO), xxv, 20, 22, 31, 53, 57, 76, 84, 89, 90, 98, 103, 110, 111, 115, 123, 153, 372, 440, 454, 465, 469, 501, 552, 572, 605; Committee on subsidies, 85; Doha Ministerial Conference, 89; Working Group on Relationship between Investment and Competition Policy, 90; Working Group on small economies, 89; Working Group on Trade and Competition Policy, 100; Working Group on trade transfer of technology, 90 Young, Crawford, 362 Yugoslavia, 31, 45, 46, 51 Zenger, John Peter, 455 Zimbabwe, 468

Watson, Hilbourne, xviii Globalisation (and the Caribbean), 27-62 Mercantilist imperialism, 27 Neo-liberalism, 37 Terrorism, xix, 57 Web Pomerrine Act (1918), 106 Welfare

index.pmd

620

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