Expert Recommendations on Institutional Reform

• 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: 92-118

 5

Expert Recommendations on

Institutional Reform

The governance challenges that had gripped CARICOM by the end

of the 1980s overshadowed the potential implied by the Community’s

status at that time as one of the oldest movements of economic

integration among developing countries. Even the political directorate

seemed aware of the presumption that, relative to other movements,

CARICOM could have advanced beyond the institutional framework of

a common market. In an effort to reverse the effects of the pressures

of the preceding period, the Conference of the Heads of Government

(CHOG) agreed in 1989 to upgrade the Common Market to a single

market and economy, complemented by new mechanisms for more

   

of that decision, this chapter discusses the outcome of the interplay

between expert recommendations on improving governance and the

political deliberations between 1989 and 1996 on the creation of the

CARICOM Single Market and Economy (CSME). The role of the Grande

Anse Declaration in catalysing the governance reform process is analysed

along with the recommendations for institutional reform proposed by

three important expert reviews – the 1985 Pollard report on decision-

making, the 1990 Mills report on institutional functioning and the 1992

report of the West Indian Commission – which recommended a new model

of governance. Finally an explanation is offered as to why the experts

failed to convince Heads of Government to reform the fundamental

ethos of the Community and the way in which Heads responded with

an unyielding defence of the CHOG’s absolute sovereign leadership of

the movement. At the same time, it highlights the contribution made by

some initial adjustments to the institutional framework, with a view to

resolving the governance challenge is highlighted.

Grande Anse as Catalyst for Reform

Certainly, by 1989, the irrelevance of the Common Market model to

    

Expert Recommendations on Institutional Reform 93

In one respect, CARICOM had not enabled its members to participate

effectively in an emerging globalised system of transnational production,

       

production had not been implemented.1 In another respect, the institutions

of the Common Market had ignored the informal patterns of transnational

economic activity in which Caribbean people were engaged. In particular,

the failure to facilitate the movement of people for employment within the

Common Market underscored the irrelevance of the formal institutions to

the aspirations of the people.2 These weaknesses highlighted the urgency

of upgrading the regionalist framework.

During the tenth meeting of the CHOG in July 1989 at Grande Anse

in Grenada, the imperative of transformation was discussed. Trinidad’s

Prime Minister, A.N.R. Robinson, presented a paper entitled ‘The West

Indies Beyond 1992’, which summarised the context of changes in the

global political economy that impinged on the Caribbean development

process. The dissolution of the Soviet Union and end of the Cold War;

the establishment of a US-Canada Free Trade Area and discussions of a

possible wider hemispheric trading arrangement, as well as the imminent

emergence of a Single European Market by 1992, had all diminished the

      

states. Robinson argued that the common market model of integration,

which was associated with a protectionist philosophy of economic

development, was no longer appropriate to a context in which most other

regions were embracing a model of ‘open regionalism’ based on global

  

and regionalisation reinforced the strategic imperative of deepening regional

economic integration for Caribbean survival. Grenada’s Prime Minister and

Chairman of the CHOG, Herbert Blaize made the dramatic observation

that the countries were faced with two options – either collective prosperity

through collaboration or individual destruction through confrontation.3

He also acknowledged that the 1970s political foundations of Caribbean

regionalism, which were embedded in norms of exclusive nationalism,

were no longer appropriate to the contemporary context and therefore

argued that a transformation of the normative and political framework for



In that regard, Guyana’s President, Desmond Hoyte, made an interesting



only economic and political change but also psychological transformation

of the West Indian psyche of individuality into one of community. Perhaps