Conclusion

• Author: Kenneth Hall/Denis Benn
• Profession: Pro Vice Chancellor and Principal, University of the West Indies, Mona/Michael Manley Professor of Public Affairs and Public Policy, University of the West Indies, Mona
• Pages: 323-326

Conclusion 323

The analyses contained in this volume present a number of invaluable

insights into the nature of the Caribbean Community, the options for regional

governance, with special reference to the exercise of sovereignty, the

possibilities for production integration, the role of the Community in an

international system that is undergoing a process of fundamental change

as well as the implications of the changes taking place in that system for the

practice of multilateralism.

In terms of the conception of the Community, CARICOM is currently

defined in the relevant documents as a ‘community of sovereign states’,

which is in fact an extremely conservative definition of the Community

which tends to emphasise the individual exercise of sovereignty.

Commentators such as Havelock Brewster1 have been rightly critical of the

failure to move beyond the current restrictive definition and have advocated

instead a more radical conception of the Community.

Indeed, it would be preferable to define CARICOM as ‘a community of

states and territories exercising sovereignty individually and collectively’.2

This definition which was in fact advanced in the document entitled

CARICOM Beyond Thirty: Charting the Future presented by Prime Minister

P.J. Patterson of Jamaica to the twenty-fourth Conference of CARICOM

Heads of Government held in Montego Bay in July 2003, recognizes that

the exercise of sovereignty in the context of regional integration needs to be

interpreted flexibly and creatively. The reality is that even now within

CARICOM, sovereignty can be exercised at different levels, namely,

nationally, that is at the level of individual member states; and collectively,

as governments seek to strengthen their bargaining position by adopting a

common negotiating stance in relation to the various international trade

and economic negotiations. However, beyond this, it is possible to conceive

of the cession of sovereignty in terms of supranationality in specific areas or

policy domains. This concept is in fact implicit in the Caribbean Court of

Justice (CCJ), whose decisions will be binding on member states and which

therefore implies the exercise of a supranational authority. It is important

to distinguish between the ‘selective’ and ‘absolute’ cession of sovereignty.

It is evident, of course, that the exercise of these different levels of sovereignty

can coexist without implying any contradiction. It would seem therefore

that there is urgent need to revisit the current restrictive definition of the

Caribbean Community in order to arrive at a more expansive conception of

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