Conclusion

Abstract

Fortune has smiled upon small islands and frequently given them, because of their distinct and convenient geography, correspondingly distinct juridical personality. Often established out of positional or strategic concerns, and fuelled by a clear sense of locality and identity, such accidents of geopolitical evolution have spawned a multitude of sovereignty mutations in the twentieth century, microstates being the most dramatic but certainly not the only forms. Once constituted as subjects with the power to act and enact, however, some of these Lilliputs have learned more quickly how they might use their policy freedom to counteract hazards of smallness or peripherality; they have grasped the connection between policy and prosperity, between sovereignty and survival. On the other hand, many for a variety of reasons have effectively squandered the gift of jurisdiction by failing to apply the proper ‘governing wits’ to the exercise and deployment of their powers. Conversely, communities without powers, who are not in any sense subjects of their own fate, living on accidental fragments of geography whether of land or sea, may not even realize that their economic development could be thwarted, not because of the absence, mismanagement, flight or otherwise of material ‘factors of production’ — capital, labour, entrepreneurship — but because they cannot harness jurisdictional leverage.