New Conceptions of Governance in Small States

• Author: Ralph Gonsalves
• Pages: 3-13

New Conceptions of Governance in Small States 3

The 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.

New CoNCepTioNs of GoverNaNCe

iN small sTaTes

RALPH GONSALVES

CHAPTER One