The Question of Political Integration

• Author: Anthony J. Payne
• Profession: Professor of Politics, University of Sheffield, UK. He is the author of several books on Caribbean politics and international relations
• Pages: 221-249

The Question of Political Integration | 221

We should also say something in this part of the book about the

question of political integration. Although it has not been a major theme

of our story, the subject has raised its head on a number of occasions

and, in a sense, as a result of the Federation experience, it has been in the

background throughout. It has also caused a good deal of misunderstanding

in respect of its relationship with the Caribbean Community and with

the idea of regional economic integration in general. In the concluding

section of the last chapter we began the job of trying to explain just

where the issue of political integration does, and does not, fit into the

modern history of intra-regional relations in the Commonwealth

Caribbean, and it is upon this task that we now focus.

We must establish immediately what meaning is to be attached to

the concept of political integration in the discussion that follows. There

are, after all, a bewildering number of definitions to be found in the

literature of integration theory. By and large, however, West Indians

have a very clear idea of what is meant by the term, and we shall follow

their understanding of the problem. Political integration, in this view,

is a process leading to the formation of a political community or union

between a group of states, in which some or all of their authority is

formally transferred to a new supranational body. In this usage, the

term ‘authority’ denotes the constitutional rights and competences

possessed by a state. It is conceptually distinct in meaning from the

capacity of the state to exercise those rights effectively in the real world,

which may in practice be very limited. Authority is seen as an absolute,

not a relative, concept: a state either possesses the authority to act in

CHAPTER nine

The Question of Political

Integration

222 | The Political History of CARICOM

certain governmental areas or it does not. Thus authority cannot be

eroded, only extinguished, although a government can, of course, opt

to exercise its rights in conjunction with other governments by co-

ordinating the actual use of the instruments of government that derive

from the formal authority of the state. In such a view, the formation of

a political community is seen to depend upon a direct confrontation

with a state’s authority in a given area, its withdrawal and formal transfer

to a new body. In a federal state, for example, the various competences

of the state are divided between the centre and the units in a precisely

demarcated way, so that each possesses, in Wheare’s phrase, ‘co-ordinate

but independent’ powers; in a unitary state all authority is placed at the

centre and only devolved powers are granted to the units.1 In either

case, political integration is envisaged as the change from inter-state

society to the domestic political system of the new union. The

transformation occurs, archetypically but not necessarily, at a

constitutional conference where the constituent states strike a bargain

on the form of the union and the power to be yielded to it. It is expected

too that, in time, elections will be held at the level of the new union. In

short, the whole concept of political integration is interpreted in the

Caribbean in a very formal and legalistic way.

The Prospect of Automatic Political Integration

The next stage in the argument takes us back for a moment to the

development of economic integration in the region. We know from our

earlier account of the origins of that movement that in the mid-1960s,

when CARIFTA was launched, no Caribbean government was prepared

to risk reawakening the hostilities and bitter memories of the federal

period by openly expressing its support for another experiment in

regional political integration in the near future; and we know too, from

our discussion in the last chapter, that the economic integration

movement which the governments did see fit to initiate was structured

very differently from a political integration system. Indeed, it is not too

much to say that the construction of the whole of the integration

apparatus of CARICOM has been predicated upon the assumption that

there exists an explicit distinction between the concepts of economic