First Generation Institutional Change

• 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: 119-145

 6

First Generation

Institutional Change

In spite of the initial adjustments in institutional capacity for

participatory governance in the preceding period, CARICOM’s core

weakness – its limited capacity for implementation of the CARICOM

       

between 1997 and 2002, CARICOM underwent a period of fundamental

institutional change marked by experimentation with new institutional

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

         

making and administrative framework which emerged from a revised

Treaty of Chaguaramas. Secondly, it discusses, against the background

of intergovernmental and academic discourses on governance, the

evolution of three models of executive governance – the Head of

Government model used in the creation of the Bureau and Quasi-

Cabinet; the Project model used in the creation of the Caribbean

Regional Negotiating Machinery (CRNM); and the Supranational model

used in creation of the Caribbean Court of Justice (CCJ). The chapter

concludes with a discussion of further alternatives proposed by Heads

and by an institutional review completed in 2002, and offers an analysis

of the lessons emerging from the institution-building exercise.

Revising the Treaty of Chaguaramas

The decision to implement the CSME called for the revision of the

  

space and new institutional arrangements for its regulation. The

Intergovernmental Task Force, which had been established in 1992,

drafted a series of nine legal protocols outlining the elements of the

CSME which were later incorporated into a Revised Treaty.1 The most

important of these protocols, in respect of this account of regional

governance, was the Protocol Amending the Treaty Establishing the

Caribbean Community (referred to as Protocol I) which outlined new

institutional arrangements for CARICOM. It was approved in January

The Politics of Integration



120

1997 by the Standing Committee of Ministers responsible for Legal Affairs

           2 The

following month the CHOG signed Protocol I and the Charter during the

eighth Intersessional Meeting, as a sign of its commitment to ‘structures

of unity and governance’ (different interpretations of the WIC vision) which



arrangements of CARICOM.3      

structural changes contained in the Protocol and, secondly, the new

consultative arrangements outlined in the Protocol and the Charter.

Protocol I fundamentally altered CARICOM’s decision-making processes

and administrative arrangements.4 While the 1973 organisation had been

explicitly bifurcated, under the new dispensation, the single market and

economy was integrated within CARICOM as a development instrument

of the Community. Thus, the new arrangement referred to the Caribbean

Community including the Caribbean Single Market and Economy (CSME)

(Article I of Protocol).5 Duke Pollard, a member of the Task Force, who

had been involved in the drafting of the original 1973 treaty, has drawn

a metaphoric allusion to the difference between a woman and child –

referring to the 1973 Community and the Common Market; and a woman

with child – referring to the Community from 1997 onwards.6 The most

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

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

Federation. That process of integration pointed to further implications for

the participation of special members in the decision-making process and

for the overall voting procedures.

The amalgamation of the political and economic aspects of integration

implied the need for a special legislative arrangement to accommodate

parties not intending to join the CSME. The Bahamas had signed Protocol

I in 1997, but maintained its reservation about participation in the CSME

         

of its participation in fora in which matters pertaining to the CSME

were discussed. In practice, under the 1973 treaty, The Bahamas had

participated in meetings of the Community without entering a vote or

statement on matters related to the Common Market. It contributed to

the CARICOM budget and maintained macroeconomic policies which were

    

was viewed by other member states as a valuable partner and therefore

retained its status as a full member of the Community.7 However, The

Bahamas did not sign the Revised Treaty in 2001 once all nine protocols