The Caribbean Community (CARICOM) as a Sovereignty Safeguard
| 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 | 65-91 |
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The Caribbean Community (CARICOM)
as a Sovereignty Safeguard
The sovereignty paradox became more pronounced during the
politically and economically turbulent decades of the 1970s and 1980s.
Even though Commonwealth Caribbean countries were being gradually
integrated into the international community of states, their prospects
for achieving effective sovereignty were steadily declining, in spite of
the CARIFTA facility. Given the failure of that free trade framework to
deliver on key development goals, the deepening of regional cooperation
emerged in 1972 as an urgent imperative of Heads of Government in
an effort to liberate their fragile countries from economic dependence.
Against the background of that particular agenda, this chapter examines
the establishment of the Caribbean Community and Common Market
(CARICOM) as an alternative institution for safeguarding national
sovereignty. Firstly, the chapter introduces the elements of an emergent
philosophy of integration which sought to reconcile the desirability
of West Indian nationalism with imperatives of achieving economic
independence – a key dimension of effective sovereignty. Secondly,
highlights the embeddedness of national sovereignty in the institutional
framework, while the fourth section highlights the weaknesses in the
and effectiveness of regional governance. The chapter concludes with a
summary of four sets of governance challenges faced by CARICOM in
that period.
Towards a Philosophy of Caribbean Integration
Even after four years of its existence, most of the proposals
contained in the 1967 Heads of Government resolution on deepening
the CARIFTA framework for regional integration had not been realised.
The Secretariat was still in the process of studying the feasibility of
The Politics of Integration
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proposals for, inter alia, integrated production and investment. The
Secretariat staff, led by William Demas, recognised that those objectives
could only be practically achieved if the existing framework for regional
cooperation was upgraded to a more advanced framework for regional
the development of some consensus among the political directorate on
the role regionalism should play in the national development process. In
1971, differences in opinion still abounded among leaders as to whether
the movement should be viewed as either an ‘end’ in its expression of West
of sovereignty to an independent authority within a deeply integrated
governance framework, given the presumption of a West Indian identity
capable of representing all national interests. Conversely, the ‘means’
rationale, which had been the dominant rationale of CARIFTA, was less
state control over domestic economic affairs and it proposed instead the
widening of the existing arena for free trade to include other Caribbean
countries.
However, a third rationale emerged from an interchange of ideas among
four concurrent discussions on the foundations of Caribbean development
and came to challenge the false dichotomy presented by the debate among
the politicians. That third rationale proposed the reconciliation of the
political and economic dimensions of regionalism through a focus on the
ultimate goal of effective sovereignty. The ideas emerging from four sets
of discussions and their contribution to the development of that third
rationale – an ideology of regional integration and effective sovereignty –
are the focus of this section of the chapter.
spearheaded by Guyana, to create a unitary West Indian state among six
territories.1
Figure 4.1: Philosophies of Integration
D O Philosophy of Regionalism G I
West Indian Unity P E D I
N E
Development
Economic Means W C
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