Caribbean Sovereignty: Legacy and Prospects

• Author: Terri-Ann Gilbert-Roberts
• Profession: Research Fellow of the Sir Arthur Lewis Institute of Social and Economic Studies (SALISES) University of the West Indies Mona
• Pages: 226-250

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Caribbean Sovereignty:

Legacy and Prospects

The process towards establishing a framework for regional governance

in the West Indies began at the 1947 Montego Bay Conference on Closer

Association, and yet, more than six and a half decades later, that goal

of regional governance remains the single most pressing issue on the

Caribbean political and development agendas. Interestingly, the July

2010 meeting of Heads of Government brought leaders back to Montego

Bay to discuss, inter alia, new proposals for reform of the governance

structures of the 37-year-old Caribbean Community (CARICOM). That

meeting was being heralded, by politicians and civic commentators

alike, as another potential watershed in the evolution of CARICOM.1

The issue of leadership was raised as a potential starting point for

renewing governance. However, the meeting did not bring about the

anticipated change and since then, the discourse has deteriorated

to one of ‘CARICOM in crisis’. Although, the Community appointed

a new Secretary-General in 2011, the perpetuation of ‘crisis’ led St

Vincent and the Grenadines Prime Minister Ralph Gonsalves to pen

on open letter to the new Secretary-General in early 2012 describing

his frustrations with the stagnation in the movement. Furthermore,

shortly thereafter, a team of consultants commissioned to review the

functioning of the Secretariat, concluded that without urgent attention

to pressing governance issues, CARICOM would potentially ‘expire

slowly’ by 2017.2

This concluding chapter, therefore, consolidates the principal

themes that have emerged from the review of the experience of regional



the three sections examine the relationship between the dynamics

of the CARICOM case and the theoretical assumptions regarding

regional governance in the context of a conceptual problematic and an



relationship between sovereignty and regionalism, which distinguishes

Caribbean Sovereignty: Legacy and Prospects 227

CARICOM’s mode of governance from other models discussed in the

broader literature. In the second section, the chapter revisits the three-

tiered framework for regional governance analysis elaborated in chapter 2,

by way of highlighting the distinctive characteristics of Caribbean political

culture, CARICOM institutions and elite conceptions of sovereignty,

    

governance systems. Finally, the chapter concludes with a discussion of

the strategic implications of CARICOM’s governance history for future

reform.

CARICOM’s Unorthodox Paradox

From a perspective of traditional regionalist scholarship, there are

three principal themes relating to the emergence of Caribbean regionalism



to the traditional expectations of a chronological progression from the

attainment of sovereignty to the pursuit of regionalism. The conceptual

introduction to regional governance assumed, a priori, the achievement

and consolidation of sovereignty in individual state territories prior to

any agreement to embark on a strategy of regional integration. Indeed,

that was the experience of Europe and Latin America. Conversely,

West Indian regionalism was not a post-sovereignty phenomenon.

The political campaigns for sovereign independence in each territory

were conceptualised within the regionalist framework of West Indian

 

sovereignty arose within the context of the 1958 West Indies Federation.

Sovereignty and regionalism emerged concurrently, further suggesting

that, paradoxically, regionalism was endorsed as an integral component

  

relationship between sovereignty and regionalism, neither the collapse

of the Federation in 1962, nor Jamaica and Trinidad and Tobago’s early

assumption of separate independent statehood, precluded the emergence

of a new regionalism in the post-independence period. In fact, the

Demasian paradox of sovereignty, manifested in the features of small size,



in the empirical discussion, ensured that the strengthening of regionalism

continued to be viewed as an indispensable strategy for the consolidation

of an effective national sovereignty.

The continued pursuit of regionalism after the disintegration of the

Federation, despite the geographical and psychological predispositions to