Caribbean Integration Research Articles

Comunidade Caribenha (CARICOM) — Cultura

The role of culture in Caribbean Community’s (CARICOM’s) agenda is claimed to be very important. The CARICOM Secretariat has a culture program, aiming to strengthen the creativity of people. CARICOM annually manages the Caribbean Festival of Arts (CARIFESTA). A huge issue is that of the cultural restitutions. Most CARICOM Member States have become States Parties to International Conventions related to cultural heritage. Sadly, all international Conventions concerning protection of cultural heritage do not have retroactive effect. There is also a CARICOM commission on reparations for slavery and native genocide against the governments of Britain, France and the Netherlands, the transatlantic slave trade, between the 16th to 19th centuries, being much associated with the Caribbean heritage. Languages are important for the cultural identity of people. It may be stated on CARICOM’s site that “Our languages are part of the legacy of the various civilisations from which our ancestors came”, but it is also stated that “[f]or many member states, the English Language is a major unifying factor”. Indigenous languages should be of more concern to CARICOM. The creation of the Caribbean Court of Justice (CCJ) in 2005, is considered very important toward the Caribbean integration and thus, also to the protection of the region’s culture and cultural heritage – important part of their identity. However, only 4 Member States so far have accepted the CCJ as their Highest Court of Appeal. CARICOM should be more active in regard to the protection of culture and cultural heritage of its Member States.

Geography and Caribbean Integration

Abstract Using the Caribbean Community and Common Market (CARICOM) countries as the units of analysis, this article seeks to achieve three goals: 1) explain theoretically the basis for the existence of self-determination or fragmentation agendas; 2) show how geography, exploitation, neglect and historical memory contribute to fragmentation by fostering the emergence of self-determination movements; and 3) argue from a policy perspective that these self-determination agendas must become integral parts of the policy discourse if a region is to achieve meaningful integration and solidarity.

The Challenging Path to Caribbean Integration

[M]ember states have not always been enthusiastic about implementing their obligations to further economic integration.

Is the Whole Greater than the Sum of its Parts? Strengthening Caribbean Regional Integration

Deeper economic integration within the Caribbean has been a regional policy priority since the establishment of the Caribbean Community (CARICOM) and the decision to create the Caribbean Single Market and Economy (CSME). Implementation of integration initiatives has, however, been slow, despite the stated commitment of political leaders. The “implementation deficit” has led to skepticism about completing the CSME and controversy regarding its benefits. This paper analyzes how Caribbean integration has evolved, discusses the obstacles to progress, and explores the potential benefits from greater integration. It argues that further economic integration through liberalization of trade and labor mobility can generate significant macroeconomic benefits, but slow progress in completing the institutional arrangements has hindered implementation of the essential components of the CSME and progress in economic integration. Advancing institutional integration through harmonization and rationalization of key institutions and processes can reduce the fixed costs of institutions, providing the needed scale and boost to regional integration. Greater cooperation in several functional policy areas where the region is facing common challenges can also provide low-hanging fruit, creating momentum toward full integration as the Community continues to address the obstacles to full economic integration.

Is the Whole Greater than the Sum of its Parts? Strengthening Caribbean Regional Integration

Deeper economic integration within the Caribbean has been a regional policy priority since the establishment of the Caribbean Community (CARICOM) and the decision to create the Caribbean Single Market and Economy (CSME). Implementation of integration initiatives has, however, been slow, despite the stated commitment of political leaders. The “implementation deficit” has led to skepticism about completing the CSME and controversy regarding its benefits. This paper analyzes how Caribbean integration has evolved, discusses the obstacles to progress, and explores the potential benefits from greater integration. It argues that further economic integration through liberalization of trade and labor mobility can generate significant macroeconomic benefits, but slow progress in completing the institutional arrangements has hindered implementation of the essential components of the CSME and progress in economic integration. Advancing institutional integration through harmonization and rationalization of key institutions and processes can reduce the fixed costs of institutions, providing the needed scale and boost to regional integration. Greater cooperation in several functional policy areas where the region is facing common challenges can also provide low-hanging fruit, creating momentum toward full integration as the Community continues to address the obstacles to full economic integration.

The Contribution of the Caribbean Court of Justice to the Development of Human and Fundamental Rights

On the 16 April 2005, after a period of gestation of about one hundred years, the Caribbean Court of Justice (CCJ) was inaugurated in Port of Spain, Trinidad and Tobago.1 The establishment of the Court was received by many as one of the most important events in Caribbean legal and political history as it was expected both to end the long lasting post-colonial legal and judicial dependence of the Caribbean on the UK2 and to strengthen Caribbean integration vis-à-vis the challenges posed by globalization at the end of the Cold War.3 In the words of its first President, Mr Michael de la Bastide: The establishment of this Court is certainly a landmark event in the history of the Caribbean. … The Court has the capacity to make an important contribution to the integration movement in the Region, and … to give to the people of the Caribbean ‘the full benefit of what a final Court can do to transform society’.4

‘Mature regionalism’ and the genesis of ‘functional projects’: ‘educational regionalism’ in small (and micro-states)

ABSTRACTThis article advances that the movement towards ‘deeper’ Caribbean integration has generated a shift from ‘immature’ regionalism to a ‘mature’ form of regionalism. Thus, mature regionalism, a new governance mechanism, in regulating the institutional and legal framework of Caribbean Single Market and Economy is drastically altering national education governance within the Caribbean Community. In focusing on the functional aspects integration, this article suggests that mature regionalism in education is built upon collaborative governance and encompasses multipartner governance arrangement – with the state, private sector, civil society, and the community as well as hybrid public–private and private–social partnerships and co-management regimes. It concludes that the instrumentalisation of mature regionalism in education is giving way to ‘educational regionalism’ defined by the movement towards structured institutional mechanisms, to facilitate the deepening of Caribbean integration.

South–South Cooperation and the Geographies of Latin America–Caribbean Integration and Development: A Socio‐Spatial Approach

AbstractStructured around the case of South–South cooperation in the construction of “complementary economic zones” among the member states of the ALBA‐TCP, Petrocaribe, CARICOM and MERCOSUR, this article argues for a socio‐spatial approach to the study of the Latin America–Caribbean integration and development. Two interrelated arguments are developed: first, in contrast to methodologically nationalist approaches, which typically view the regionalisms that are to form the complementary economic zones as ideologically separate, incompatible or conflicting projects, a socio‐spatial approach in conjunction with a South–South cooperation analytical lens explains their commonality and, subsequently, their interrelatedness and convergence. Second, while this South–South cooperation space is not per se non‐capitalist, a socio‐spatial analysis also facilitates “seeing” the production of a socialist “counter‐space” within this South–South cooperation structure.

Fiscal Sustainability and Debt in Small Open Economies: An Application to the Caribbean

The adverse impact of sovereign debt defaults on the international financial system has occasioned intense interest in methodologies for assessing sovereign debt risk. This is manifest in an outpouring of studies, research which has uncovered the fact that the riskiness of sovereign debt is determined in each case by a complex interaction of factors, including government tax, expenditure and financial policies over time, and the state of domestic and international financial markets. There is therefore a need to distinguish between fiscal strategies that are not sustainable - those that will fail or dissolve into crisis if continued - and those which should be altered in the interest of economic and social development. This study provides an objective measure for small open economies, of the risk that fiscal policy may render it impossible for government to fully service its debt obligations. This study is remarkable because it is a model for the future of Caribbean integration; contributors are from across the region, from Suriname in the east to Belize in the west, and from The Bahamas in the north to Trinidad and Tobago in the south.

Caribbean Integration

Caribbean Integration

Between Community Law and Common Law: The Rise of the Caribbean Court of Justice at the Intersection of Regional Integration and Post-Colonial Legacies

This article provides a pioneering empirical analysis of the emergence and transformation of the Caribbean Court of Justice (CCJ). The article analyses both the protracted process of negotiating a common court for the Caribbean and its subsequent institutionalization as the CCJ. The court eventually created in 2005 was uniquely vested with a double jurisdiction: original jurisdiction over Caribbean community law, notably the Revised Treaty of Chaguaramas (RTC) (2001), and appellate jurisdiction over other civil and criminal matters. We argue that this double competence is symptomatic of the complex socio-political context and transformation of which it is part. While the CCJ’s original jurisdiction over the RTC has been the background to a new more legalized process of Caribbean integration under the CARICOM, in its appellate function the Court is now gradually repatriating to the Caribbean the development and control over the common law from the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council (Privy Council/JCPC) in London which until recently remained the last court of appeals for civil and criminal cases from the Caribbean. Using unique data collected on the ground, in both our legal and sociological analysis of the development of the CCJ since 2005, we show how this combination of globalization and latter-day decolonization continued to have a fundamental impact on the Court and its authority in the region. We moreover demonstrate how the Court has changed from initially deploying a sort of Legal Diplomacy (Madsen 2011) to now increasingly seeking to legitimize its practices in providing justice to the Caribbean people. The latter has helped the CCJ expand its group of interlocutors significantly beyond the initially rather narrow set of insiders involved in litigation before the Court as well as expanded its authority.

Caribbean Integration ? Lessons for the Pacific?

The 15 members of the Caribbean Community (CARICOM) are digesting a critical review of the structure and performance of its Secretariat, which describes the overall CARICOM integration initiative as being in crisis. This paper describes elements of the CARICOM integration project, and draws lessons for the Pacific Island Countries. It suggests that the CARICOM experience puts into question elements of the logic and overall approach to integration being pursued in both regions (and being urged by external partners).

Caribbean regionalism and the expectation of increased trade: Insights from a time-series gravity model

CARICOM's expectation that integration in the region promises economic gains by providing an avenue for increased regional and extra-regional trade has been criticized by many scholars. These criticisms receive mixed support from a limited sample of cross-sectional analysis with a general focus on the impact of integration on trade flows. Since much of the data in gravity models are time-dependent, and since CARICOM trade is and has been dominated by three nations, Barbados, Jamaica, and Trinidad/Tobago, I evaluate this expectation using a three dummy gravity model for each nation. The results concur with the descriptive ones; regional integration does not necessarily increase trade flows and may in some cases be associated with a decline. While Caribbean integration has provided numerous non-economic gains, the continued stress on trade is potentially problematic. Trade has had an unfortunate place in policy-making in the region as governments fluctuate between outright rejection to the current state of grudging acceptance of minimally restricted trade. Trade, while positively correlated with growth, is neither inherently good nor bad for developing countries as current debates seem to suggest. Instead, trade offers an opportunity for economic gains that is best realized within an environment that supports skilled resources, sound and credible government institutions, and technological development. Without these fundamentals, the pursuit of economic gains via regional integration will, likely, continue to disappoint.

El nuevo regionalismo caribeño y el proceso de integración en las Américas

El presente artículo analiza hasta qué punto el nuevo regionalismo caribeño es una respuesta a las propuestas estadounidenses de integración hemisférica. Tradicionalmente, la expresión "integración caribeña" ha sido sinónimo de integración hemisférica. Tradicionalmente, la expresión "integración caribeña" ha sido sinónimo de integración del caribe angloparlante, cuya expresión institucional ha sido desde 1973 la Comunidad Caribeña, CARICOM. Sin embrago, un nuevo regionalismo ha aparecido en la región en la década de los noventas, cuando su institucionalización se realizó con la creación de la Asociación de Estados del Caribe en 1994. Aquí se argumenta que la nueva ola de regionalismo en la Cuenca del Caribe, al menos para América Central y la CARICOM, es una respuesta reactiva al TLCAN y al ALCA.

Introduction: Symposium on the Life and Writings of Eric Williams

... to inform of [the] past as an essential guide to ... future action.--Eric Williams, 31 August 1962 Earlier versions of the following three papers were presented at the 87th annual meeting of the Association for the Study of African American Life and History (ASALH), held in Orlando, Florida, in October 2002. session was devoted to The Papers of Williams: Challenges and Opportunities for the 21st Century, and was chaired by Professor Learie Luke of South Carolina State University. In their presentations Professors Selwyn Carrington, Howard University; David Barry Gaspar, Duke University; and Tony Martin, Wellesley College confirm that Williams by his mindset, writings, and activism belongs squarely within the pantheon of African American notables, albeit hailing from the West Indies. Williams was the first prime minister of Trinidad and Tobago, and remained in office for a quarter of a century until his death in 1981. He not only led his country to independence from Great Britain (1962) and to republicanism (1976), but was also deeply involved in the movement for Caribbean integration and cooperation from the early 1940s, and was highly respected internationally, serving as one of the founding members of the Governing Council of the United Nations University headquartered in Japan. He was also at one time president of La Societe Africaine de Culture in Paris, France--otherwise known as Presence Africaine--which was associated with President Leopold Sedar Senghor of Senegal, and although the mission never materialized, Williams was one of only four Commonwealth Prime Ministers selected to visit Vietnam, in hopes of mediating that years-long conflict. A noted historian, Williams by most accounts defined the study and greatly affected the writing of Caribbean history when he published his 1944 classic, & Slavery, an expanded version of his doctoral dissertation. By that time, Williams was Associate Professor of Social and Political Science at Howard University, where he compiled and edited its earliest three-volume social sciences textbook. Professor Martin's well-documented essay Eric Williams and the Anglo-American Caribbean Commission: Trinidad's Future Nationalist Leader as Aspiring Imperial Bureaucrat, 1942-1944 vividly captures the high-powered circles in which Williams traveled in the 1940s and his eventual appointment to this internationally influential commission. Martin paints a picture of Williams both as scholar and activist who remained attached to his Caribbean roots and who used his position on the commission to demonstrate and advance his knowledge, research, and connections to the region in order to articulate the aspirations of his people. They could never have too much of my work was how Williams characterized his relationship in the 1940s with Dr. Carter G. Woodson and the prestigious Journal of Negro History. David Barry Gaspar's essay examines Williams' contributions to Journal of Negro History, the first of which--The Golden Age of the Slave System in Britain--won the $100.00 prize as the best article published in the journal in 1939. Well-prepared and documented, Williams' articles presented forceful arguments in support of his basic proposition that West Indian slavery and the slave trade were responsible for the rise of the British Industrial Revolution. This interpretation was considered revolutionary by many at that time, and thus Williams succeeded in catapulting himself to the attention of his regional and national constituencies as well as the colonial powers whose tug-of-war over the Caribbean would continue unchecked for decades. And the rest, as they say, is history. Indeed, this perspective is even more relevant than perhaps Williams himself would have imagined, given the current controversy igniting passions globally over reparations for enslaved workers and their descendants. Selwyn Carrington's Capitalism & Slavery and Caribbean Historiography: An Evaluation describes how almost sixty years later, the book still informs the ongoing debate on the Atlantic Slave Trade. …

The State of and Prospects for the Deepening and Widening of Caribbean Integration

The State of and Prospects for the Deepening and Widening of Caribbean Integration

Exodus?: Some social and policy implications of return migration from the UK to the commonwealth Caribbean in the 1990s

This paper is concerned with the process of return migration from Britain to the Commonwealth Caribbean in the 1990s. The volume of return shows that the desire of Caribbean immigrants eventually to re‐settle in the lands of their births is being partly realised. But the notion of ‘return’ must be widely understood, because the process includes offspring and spouses who were not bom in the region and are, therefore, first‐time migrants. Moreover, both the migration and return experience have made and are continuing to make a significant contribution to Caribbean integration because the British destination and the different points of return provide opportunities for the people of the region to meet and establish new family relationships and identities. Financial contributions made by returnees, particularly pensioners and early retirees, are of particular relevance to island economies such as that of Jamaica. This paper suggests that the problems and opportunities generated by this dynamic cross‐Atlantic/Caribbean silent movement of people should not be ignored amidst the general media and community celebrations of the fiftieth anniversary of the docking of Empire Windrush, which marked the beginning of sizeable black and brown migration and settlement in post‐imperial Britain.

Trade flows and integration: The case of the CARICOM

Following World War II, a number of developing countries were attracted to the idea of regional economic integration as a means of accelerating individual economic growth. The first attempt at integration in the English-speaking Caribbean began with the formation of the West Indies Federation in 1958. On July 4, 1973, CARICOM was convened through the signing of the Treaty of Chaguaramas. CARICOM has two separate institutions: the Caribbean Community and the Common Market. Caribbean integration is not about trade and production alone. It extends to closer cooperation and common services and to promote the use of currencies of members in settling eligible transactions between the individual countries, thereby economizing on the use of foreign exchange. It is also designed to promote monetary cooperation across all sectors among the members.

Mediaciones de la convergencia en la integración hemisférica

<pre><span>En el presente artículo la autora analiza las posibles configuraciones de los procesos de integración en América Latina y el Caribe a partir de la hipótesis de que a nivel intralatinoamericano este proceso se articula en torno a dos ejes fundamentales: México y el MERCOSUR. Argumenta que la posible convergencia o las tensiones en torno a estos dos ejes de integración, podrían estar caracterizando el futuro de la regionalización en el área, como regionalización en la globalización, y la inserción de América Latina y el Caribe en la economía mundial.</span></pre>

NAFTA: what comes next?

Foreword by Paul A. Volcker Acknowledgments Summary Introduction The Choices Deepening versus Widening Sovereignty Analysis and Opinion Global Trends What Drives U.S. Regionalism? Comparing Regional Groupings Latin American and Caribbean Integration Arrangements Economic Interaction in North America U.S. Trade in North America Investment Relations The Maquiladora Industry Migration The Meaning of Deepening Key Elements of Deepening Nongovernmental Cooperation The Cultural Dimension Sovereignty The Widening of NAFTA The Integration Scene in the Americas The Stakes in Hemispheric Free Trade Getting There Institutional Arrangements Conclusion Conclusion Hope and Pessimism Notes Bibliography Index