Caribbean regionalisms in a comparative-historical perspective: the making of four regional systems

ABSTRACT

This article presents a new contribution to the burgeoning body of comparative regionalism scholarship, within which small state regions have mostly been overlooked. It systematically examines four geographically proximate contemporary Caribbean regional systems, drawing on constructivist approaches in International Relations to frame and explore the dynamics of region-making/region-building by state actors and institutionalized, narrative-driven intergovernmentalism therein. Largely understudied in the aforementioned scholarship, the systems’ motif, design and scope are analyzed in a comparative-historical perspective. Emphasis is placed on the Caribbean Community (CARICOM), the cornerstone of Caribbean regionalisms. This contribution contends that the bloc’s modern transformation is best explained by the Community’s “deepening”-cum-“widening”. A key finding of this article is that the dual transformational imperative in question has a profound impact on the three other regionalist projects under consideration, in particular, because CARICOM’s early development created the specific conditions on which the respective integration or cooperation agendas of those projects took shape. More broadly, the cases demonstrate that ideational motivations/forces are important determinants of Caribbean region-making/region-building. Policymaking elites are shown to be the linchpins of the making of the regional systems under study, which the article finds are vitally important for Caribbean states’ strategies to offset limitations associated with their small size and levels of development in the conduct of international affairs. Set in this context, some future research trajectories, which could enrich our understanding of Caribbean regional governance, are sketched. The final section summarizes key themes and takes stock of the article’s contribution to the comparative regionalism research agenda.

RÉSUMÉ

Le présent article se veut une contribution au domaine bourgeonnant de la recherche comparative sur le régionalisme dont les petites régions étatiques ont été pour la plupart du temps négligées. On y examine quatre systèmes régionaux caribéens contemporains géographiquement voisins selon une approche constructiviste des relations internationales afin de mettre en lumière et explorer la dynamique de la création de régions en tant que communautés par les acteurs étatiques et institutionnalisé de la concentration narrative du la intergouvernementalisme. Largement étudier trop peu par la recherche comparative, le motif, la composition et la portée des systèmes sont ici analysés selon une perspective comparatiste historique. L’importance est mis sur la Communauté des Caraïbes (CARICOM) présentée comme la pierre angulaire des régionalismes caribéens. Cet contribution maintenir la transformation moderne de l’Union s’explique ainsi par l’élargissement, voire l’approfondissement des cadres de la Communauté. Une conclusion clé de cet article est que ce l’impératif transformationnel double sous attention exerce une influence majeure sur les trois autres projets régionalistes considérés, en particulier parce que le développement précoce de la CARICOM a créé les conditions spécifiques de la formation des autres projets d’intégration ou de coopération. Plus généralement, les cas présentés démontrent que les motivations et forces idéales sont des déterminants importants dans la construction des Caraïbes en tant que la création de la communauté régionale. Ainsi, les élites politiques sont vues comme les pivots de la création des systèmes régionaux en cours d’étude, ce qui l’article confère une importance vitale dans les stratégies des États caribéens visant à compenser les limites de leur petite taille, les niveaux de développement, et leur comportement dans des affaires internationales. Dans ce contexte, on esquisse certaines trajectoires de recherches futures qui pourraient enrichir notre compréhension de la gouvernance régionale des Caraïbes. La dernière section résume les thèmes clés et fait le point sur la contribution de l’article au programme de recherche comparative sur le régionalisme.

KEYWORDS:

• Caribbeans
• Caribbean regionalisms
• region-making/region-building
• regional systems
• regionalist projects
• “deepening” and “widening” of the community
• ideational motivations/forces
• comparative regionalism

Acknowledgments

The author thanks two anonymous reviewers of CJLACS for helpful and constructive feedback on a draft version of this article. The usual disclaimer applies for any remaining errors and omissions.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1. Regionalism here refers to “a state-led or states-led project designed to reorganize a particular regional space along defined economic and political lines” (Gamble and Payne 1996, 17). Of note, “regionalism is [also] seen as something that is being constructed, and constantly reconstructed, by collective human action” (17).

2. A prominent view of the intellectual history and evolution of regionalism studies and its debates references four phases, as follows: “Classical Regional Integration (1945–1970), Revisions of Classical Regional Integration (1970–1990), The New Regionalism (1990–2000) and Comparative Regionalism (2000–2010)” (De Lombaerde and Söderbaum 2013, xix).

3. For our purposes, conceptually, the term “region” refers to “supranational subsystems of the international system” (Hettne 2005, 544).

4. For example, see Fioramonti (2012b) and Börzel and Risse (2016).

5. There is a vast, cross-disciplinary literature on small states. Not surprisingly, the small states category is a contested one. For instance, the small states literature associated with the study of international politics draws on disciplinary conventions therein to treat with this category of residual states in terms of “power” (Elman 1995, 171). In comparative politics, small states are typically contextualized in terms of “size”. In this regard, an emphasis is placed on population and territory (see Streeten 1993, 197). (Of course, the concepts of “power” and “size” are related.) Establishing relevant thresholds in respect of “size” can be a tricky proposition though, in large part because “smallness” is relative. It is a matter of perspective, and open to interpretation (insofar as the term small states is often poorly defined). Consider that even though the Commonwealth Secretariat, which is widely acknowledged for its longstanding advocacy on behalf of small states, defines small states as countries with a population size of 1.5 million people or less, the organization exercises flexibility in classifying countries. Some countries with a population size that surpasses the aforementioned threshold are accommodated in that category, as they are said to exhibit characteristics typically associated with small states. Against this backdrop, Streeten’s dictum regarding small states is compelling: “We know a small country when we see it” (Streeten 1993, 197). Generally, the countries of the Caribbean qualify. For example, the combined population of the full members of the Organisation of Eastern Caribbean States is around 600,000.

6. Rather than referring to the Caribbean, it is apt to utilize the terminology Caribbeans. In point of fact, a rigorous analytical approach to understanding this space requires of the analyst that s/he reject the determinacy of geography and deploy an interpretative lens. What is revealed is not an ahistorical, uniform construct, but a contested space replete with competing understandings (and/or expansive notions) of Caribbeans, wherein regional identity, which is taken into account further along in the article, looms large.

7. With few exceptions (for example, Shaw 2013; Payne 1999), the interconnection between the Caribbean’s historical development and “regionalisms” has received very little attention from comparative regionalism scholars.

8. The use of the term “regionalisms” complements the conceptualization of Caribbeans in the present article.

9. Rather, coverage of Caribbean regionalist projects in the edited volume is relegated to and given short shrift in an appendix at the end of a chapter contribution entitled “Latin America”. The chapter in question appears in the volume’s second part, which is entitled “Regional Orders Around the World”.

10. The journal issue in question is entitled “Regionalism in a Changing World: Perspectives from Africa, Asia, Europe and South America”.

11. Within the issue in question, Caribbean regionalisms receive passing mention by way of an article that is dedicated to outlining “Latin American attempts at regionalism”.

12. For example, see Lewis (2001) and Payne (1999).

13. For example, see Hall and Chuck-A-Sang (2006, 2007a, 2007b, 2008, 2010, 2012a, 2012b, 2012c, 2012d).

14. For example, see Grenade (2011).

15. In this regard, Briceño-Ruiz (2013) has made an important “conceptual” contribution.

16. This reference to intergovernmentalism alludes to states-led regional integration and/or cooperation processes. The use of the term herein is not associated with its deployment in the context of European integration studies.

17. The author was primarily based in Georgetown, Guyana.

18. Over two-dozen structured and semi-structured elite interviews were conducted, with interviewees drawn from national and regional institutions in the Caribbeans and Europe. A small proportion of interviewees are cited in this article. The anonymity of the majority of the interviewees who are cited herein is preserved.

19. Some of this material (e.g. speeches, communiqués, press releases, reports, as well as briefing, issue, and policy papers, etc.) is publicly available.

20. In an IR context, constructivism is not a theory. It is a meta-theory. There are several strands of constructivism, and scholars therein have varying intellectual commitments/agendas. Depending on those commitments, they stand in opposition to or are epistemologically sympathetic towards the mainstream IR agenda. These nuances notwithstanding, constructivism is intellectually situated within the “fourth debate” in IR. This author is aligned to the variant of constructivism that arose as an intellectual challenge to positivist, mainstream (principally deterministic structural realist or neo-realist) materialist paradigms. In this sense, constructivism is viewed (reflexivity-wise) contra-rational choice-oriented/parsimonious neo-realism. Against this backdrop, constructivism lends itself to sociological analysis of the international sphere. State behavior is analyzed in accordance with what has been characterized as socially constructed “webs of meaning”. Accordingly, in the order of things, material forces do not take precedence, or, for that matter, do notions of utility maximizing, egoist actors feature in the “framework of analysis”. Rather, constructivism is geared towards “understanding” the motivations and outcomes of the social interaction between states in the international system, as well as the effects of state identities, intersubjective understandings, and interests therein. The following scholarly work constitutes some of the foundational, first-generation literature on constructivism: Wendt (1992, 1999), Onuf (1989), Ruggie (1998), Adler (1997, 2002), and Checkel (1997).

21. Consider that small states have been described as “not hav[ing] a foreign policy; they merely have a policy of existence” (Fauriol 1984, cited in Thorburn 2007, 244).

22. See Cox (1981, 128–9).

23. Although there is a large scholarly literature that explains the relationship between deepening and widening in the European integration context (for example, see Schmitter 1996; König and Bräuninger 2004), in the case of the Caribbeans, scholarship on deepening and widening is less defined.

24. The groundbreaking scholarly work of Caribbeanists like the late Professor Gordon K. Lewis provides important insight into the “shaping” of West Indian society and the region at large (Lewis [1968] 2004, 1983).

25. For the metropole, bureaucratic centralization was attractive for at least two related reasons: (1) efficiency/convenience in the administration of colonies; and (2) giving effect to vested imperial interests, against the backdrop of hegemons competing for regional influence and economic resources (for example, in relation to the sugar-producing colonies). While power and domination informed the relationship of the colonizer relative to the colonized, the process of “othering” was integral to establishing and reinforcing binary identities therein (Said 1978).

26. For example, see Mansfield and Milner (1997) and Mattli (1999).

27. The standard way of examining the “conditions” pertaining to regional integration typically frames that process as unfolding sequentially in five stages: free trade area, customs union, common or single market, economic union, and complete economic integration (Balassa 1961). The conventional wisdom envisions political union as the “end game” of regional integration. Generally, early European integration scholars associated regional integration with policymakers’ interests in advancing a strategic bulwark against war in Continental Europe. Indeed, grand theories were developed to theoretically explain European integration. Like Mitranian-oriented functionalism before it, Haasian neofunctionalism builds on the notion that states’ cooperation in functional and technical areas forms the basis for deeper integration. The early European integration scholars understood regional integration as the “process of how and why nation states voluntarily mingle, merge and mix with their neighbors so as to lose the factual attributes of sovereignty while acquiring new techniques for resolving conflicts among themselves” (Haas 1971, 6). Neofunctionalism would later come up for criticism, most famously from European integration intergovernmentalism and even from within its own ranks (Hoffmann 1966; Haas 1975). Notwithstanding, neofunctionalism had an enormous influence on the emergence and development of European integration studies (Verdun 2005).

28. In sharp contrast, there has been a longstanding scholarly tradition within literary and other disciplinary works of formulating regions as cognitive, “sociospatial” sites (Lewis and Wigen 1997, 157).

29. Also see Paasi (1991, 2002, 2009), and Neumann (1994). For an insightful review of the region-building approach, see Browning (2003).

30. The first systematic application of constructivism to the study of European integration is said to have come in 1999, in the form of a special issue of the Journal of European Public Policy (Christiansen, Jorgensen, and Wiener 1999). Although constructivism was recently applied to the study of European integration, scholarship of this kind owes an intellectual debt to Deutsch’s work on “transactionalism”/communication theory (see Deutsch et al. 1957).

31. The New Regionalism Approach (NRA) is an important example of recent scholarly innovations regarding the study of “regionalisms”. For insight into the NRA, see Hettne and Söderbaum (2000).

32. See Wendt (1999, 25).

33. Interview with the late Ambassador Henry Gill, former Director-General, Caribbean Regional Negotiating Machinery (CRNM), Port of Spain, Trinidad and Tobago, 18 May 2012.

34. The framework under development here focuses on “collective state identities” in terms of a development problématique narrative. However, state-based socialization also manifests around any number of shared-cum-intersubjective beliefs/knowledge, drawing on cultural, historical, and other identity references, which are considered further along in the article.

35. See Haas (1992).

36. National- and “regional”-level policymaking elites and technocrats from state and intergovernmental apparatuses, respectively, are in the forefront of such “communities”. Regional integration and cooperation settings tend to socialize functionaries to identify with each other in the wider context of the predictability of their roles and like-minded behavior.

37. The normative commitments and policy preferences undergirding that narrative also take into account and are generally responsive to state–society relations.

38. It is acknowledged that “[i]deas cannot always be linked directly to outcomes” (Tannenwald 2005, 19).

39. See March and Olsen (1998).

40. After all, ideas “provid[e] a framework for the social world” (Tannenwald 2005, 19).

41. The WTO Doha Ministerial Declaration, which was adopted on 14 November 2001, mandated the Work Programme on Small Economies (see Paragraph 35 of the Declaration).

42. Interview with a senior trade diplomat based in a Caribbean state Permanent Delegation to the United Nations and other International Organizations in Geneva, Georgetown, Guyana, 15 July 2012.

43. Interview with the late Ambassador Henry Gill, former Director-General, Caribbean Regional Negotiating Machinery (CRNM), Port of Spain, Trinidad and Tobago, 18 May 2012.

44. See Deutsch et al. (1957).

45. The “traditional tendencies” in the mainstream IR schools of thought to treat with power in material terms, in the sense of “power over” (Baldwin 1979), represent what for Barnett and Duvall (2005) is a scholarly commitment to only one form of power. Barnett and Duvall (2005) devise a taxonomy of power. While it accounts for compulsory power, provision is also made therein for three more forms of power: institutional, structural, and productive. Instructively, these scholars conceive of power as “the production, in and through social relations, of effects that shape the capacities of actors to determine their own circumstances and fate” (3). For this author, power can usefully be framed in ideational terms. (This outlook on power can be likened to these scholars’ conception of both structural and productive power, which they acknowledge overlap each other.) In this regard, “[p]ower is part of constitutive relations and effects” (Guzzini 2013, 6). Indeed, power is understood “as both agential and intersubjective” (Guzzini 2005, 507).

46. The EU, by way of the European Development Fund (EDF), is the principal development partner of the Caribbean regional configuration of the African, Caribbean, and Pacific Group of States (ACP). The EDF is the EU’s principal source of development aid. In this regard, most Caribbean ACP states have access to the National Indicative Programme (NIP), the Caribbean Regional Indicative Programme (CRIP), and the Intra-ACP Programme. The EDF is dispensed in cycles, in keeping with the ACP–EU Partnership Agreement, or the “Cotonou Agreement”. The CRIP, which is subject to pre-programming negotiations between the two sides and joint governance during the implementation phase, is of interest for our purposes. The most recent EDF CRIPs are the 10th and 11th. The 10th EDF CRIP, to which a total of EUR 165 million was committed, on paper covered the period 2008–2013. (The implementation period was extended.) The 11th EDF CRIP covers 2014–2020 (but was actually signed in June 2015). The 11th EDF CRIP is valued at EUR 346 million, and it is broken down into the following areas: Regional Economic Cooperation and Integration, EUR 102 million; Climate Change, Disaster Management, Environment, and Sustainable Energy, EUR 61.5 million; Crime and Security, EUR 44 million; Caribbean Investment Facility, EUR 135 million; Technical Cooperation Facility, EUR 3.5 million (CARICOM Secretariat 2016).

47. Norms can have a “regulative” effect (i.e. setting out expectations or standards of proper actor behavior, according to a given identity narrative) and a “constitutive” effect (i.e. norms that act not unlike rules that actually define an actor’s identity, which is recognizable to others) (Katzenstein 1996, 5).

48. This concentric circle construct is inspired by the concentric circle formulations of the West Indian Commission (an initiative which is discussed later in the article) and some regional leaders; namely, the late Michael Manley, one of four founding fathers of CARICOM.

49. Bottom-up “processes”, à la regionalization, also obtain. Indeed, the new regionalism scholarship draws attention to the significance of non-state actor-based economic and social interactions as underpinning regionalization processes. However, such processes are not drivers of the types of regional groupings/regionalisms under study in this article.

50. The OECS comprises nine Member States, which are all islands and some of the smallest territories in the Caribbeans, as follows: Antigua and Barbuda, Commonwealth of Dominica, Grenada, Montserrat, St. Kitts and Nevis, Saint Lucia, and St. Vincent and the Grenadines. Anguilla and the British Virgin Islands are associate members of the regional grouping. These two territories and Montserrat are British Overseas Territories (BOTs), some of the remnants of the British Empire in the Caribbeans. The French overseas department of Martinique is a newly admitted associate member of the grouping.

51. The WISA Council’s members were the Heads of Government of each member territory. Saint Lucia served as the base for the Council’s Secretariat.

52. In terms of its role, the WISA Council was to advance functional cooperation among its member territories, including through associated institutions. It was also envisioned that, when practicable, the WISA Council would assume responsibility for foreign policy functions.

53. The East Caribbean Common Market (ECCM), which had a secretariat in Antigua and Barbuda, along with the WISA Council thus paved the way for (and were replaced by) a new organization with an expanded mandate: the OECS. Members of the WISA Council signed the Treaty of Basseterre, which established the OECS on 18 June 1981.

54. The West Indies Federation is taken into account further along in the article.

55. Please refer to the Revised Treaty of Chaguaramas Establishing the Caribbean Community including the CARICOM Single Market and Economy, which is available at https://caricom.org/about-caricom/who-we-are/our-governance/the-revised-treaty/ (last accessed 10 July 2016).

56. The Commission (previously Secretariat) is the administrative body of the Organisation. One Commissioner per OECS Member State is represented on the Commission.

57. This was not the first time that these units pursued such an initiative. In the 1970s, they also set upon a path to political union, as outlined in the so-called Grenada Declaration (signed in 1971). However, this attempt at political union was unsuccessful.

58. In the early part of the last decade, policymaking elites set in motion another integration initiative. Trinidad and Tobago and a sub-grouping of Eastern Caribbean islands were involved. The initiative appears to be moribund.

59. Pharmaceutical procurement and the services provided by the Eastern Caribbean Civil Aviation Authority and the Eastern Caribbean Telecommunications Authority are a few notable examples of innovative cooperation arrangements that are in place between members of the regional grouping.

60. As a recent IMF study notes, “[t]he OECS/ECCU is one of four supranational economic and monetary unions in the world” (Nassar, McIntyre, and Schipke 2013, 53).

61. Available at http://www.oecs.org/lsu-resources/revised-treaty-of-basseterre (last accessed 10 July 2016).

62. Notwithstanding, key elements of an economic union (a common currency and monetary policy) have long been in place.

63. Available at http://oecs.org/homepage/strategic-objectives (last accessed 10 July 2016).

64. In terms of the deposit of the instruments of ratification, each OECS Member State did so at different junctures over the period December 2010–January 2011.

65. Interview with a senior official based in the civil service of an OECS country, Georgetown, Guyana, 25 May 2012.

66. In particular, the ongoing technical and policy work to implement the regime for the free circulation of goods within the Union.

67. The following five organs of the OECS Economic Union are in place: The OECS Authority of Heads of Government (the highest policymaking Organ of the regional system), the OECS Council of Ministers, the OECS Economic Affairs Council (EAC), the OECS Assembly, and the OECS Commission.

68. This is an extract from the Revised Treaty of Basseterre Establishing the Organisation of Eastern Caribbean States Economic Union.

69. The OECS also leverages a hedging strategy. At times when members are faced with the millstone of the slowing pace of integration at the CARICOM level, they have recourse to deeper OECS integration. Indeed, it is especially during these moments that the OECS has been showcased as an exemplar of regional integration.

70. The very first territories in the Anglophone Caribbean to achieve independent statehood were Jamaica and Trinidad and Tobago, in 1962. This milestone served to galvanize “regional affective association”, which was further solidified in the two decades that followed. During that period, 13 more British colonies in the Caribbeans attained their independence.

71. In the “sunset” of colonial rule, the Anglophone Caribbean’s independence came to be seen by the metropole as tied to federation-styled regional integration. The West Indies Federation, which comprised of Barbados, Jamaica, Trinidad and Tobago, and the Windward Islands (Dominica, Grenada, Saint Lucia, and St. Vincent and the Grenadines) and the Leeward Islands (Antigua and Barbuda, St. Kitts-Nevis-Anguilla, and Montserrat), was established by way of the British Caribbean Federation Act of 1956. (British Guiana (now Guyana) and British Honduras (now Belize) were not part of the Federation.) Following a referendum in 1961 regarding its continued association with the Federation, Jamaica withdrew from the nascent grouping. Jamaica’s exit from the Federation signaled the beginning of the end for the grouping. Having evaluated the implications of Jamaica’s departure from the Federation, Dr Eric Williams, the then-Premier of Trinidad and Tobago, famously declared that: “one from ten leaves naught”. Shortly following Jamaica’s departure from the Federation, Trinidad and Tobago also withdrew. Thereafter, the remaining members of the Federation were unable to take the regional integration movement forward (Lewis 1965).

72. CARIFTA was administratively anchored by the then-Commonwealth Caribbean Regional Secretariat.

73. Regional states were eager to approach regionalism on their own terms, in the wake of the combined efforts of the imperial powers during the 1940s (through the Caribbean Commission) to yet again shape the terms of regional cooperation in the Caribbeans.

74. These bonds have given rise to shared regional identities. These identities are anchored by shared legacies of colonialism (for example, political and economic systems). Commonalities regarding social norms also play an important role in shared identities, owing to longstanding familial ties that span territorial frontiers.

75. The CARICOM Member States are: Antigua and Barbuda, The Bahamas, Barbados, Belize, Commonwealth of Dominica, Grenada, Guyana, Haiti, Jamaica, Montserrat, Saint Lucia, St. Kitts and Nevis, St. Vincent and the Grenadines, Suriname, and Trinidad and Tobago. The Associate Members are: Anguilla, Bermuda, British Virgin Islands, Cayman Islands, and Turks and Caicos Islands. Three of the CARICOM bloc’s Member States are continental territories. Belize is geographically in Central America, and both Guyana and Suriname are on the northern part of the South American continent.

76. CARICOM’s vision, mission, and core values are available at https://caricom.org/about-caricom/who-we-are/vision-mission-and-core-values (last accessed 10 July 2016).

77. A list of Community Institutions is available at https://caricom.org/community/institutions (last accessed 10 July 2016).

78. Interview with Sir Edwin W. Carrington, former Secretary-General, CARICOM Secretariat, Georgetown, Guyana, 17 November 2011 and 29 March 2012.

79. As a result of the “deepening” process, new governance-related organs were also established and the ground was set for the creation of new institutions, such as the Caribbean Court of Justice (CCJ).

80. In recognition of the growing threats to citizen security and other regional assets and institutions, in 2005 regional leaders moved to establish security cooperation as the fourth pillar of the Community.

81. The CSME is the “showpiece” of the CARICOM integration movement. (At a meeting of regional leaders held in the late 1980s, there was an emerging consensus that the CARICOM integration movement needed to be transformed from a Common Market to a Single Market and Economy.)

82. This reference is expressed as the Revised Treaty, in shorthand. (Heads of Government signed the Revised Treaty in Nassau, The Bahamas, on 5 July 2001. It should be noted that Article 6 of the Revised Treaty identifies the objectives of the Community.) The full text of the Revised Treaty is available at https://caricom.org/about-caricom/who-we-are/our-governance/the-revised-treaty/ (last accessed 10 July 2016).

83. The negotiation of nine Protocols, later consolidated to form the Revised Treaty, took place between 1993 and 2000. These negotiations unfolded under the aegis of the Inter-Governmental Task Force (IGTF), on which all Member States are represented. Since that time, provision has been made for the subsequent inclusion of additional Protocols in respect of the Revised Treaty in such new areas as e-commerce and government procurement, among others.

84. At the time Montserrat did not have the relevant legal instrument in hand and, until recently, had not signaled its intention to participate in the CSME. The United Kingdom only recently sanctioned Montserrat’s accession to the Revised Treaty, including the CSME.

85. The CSME has its conceptual origins in the West Indian Commission. In short, the West Indian Commission recommended a direction for regional integration, while also pronouncing on what it would take to get there, institutionally and policy-wise. The West Indian Commission is discussed, in greater detail, later on in the article.

86. Available at https://caricom.org/our-work/the-caricom-single-market-and-economy-csme (last accessed 15 January 2015).

87. Available at https://caricom.org/establishing-the-caricom-single-market-and-economy-csme/ (last accessed 15 January 2015).

88. Available at https://caricom.org/establishing-the-caricom-single-market-and-economy-csme/ (last accessed 15 January 2015).

89. See Girvan (2007).

90. The Revised Treaty also provides for the Bureau of the Conference, the CARICOM Quasi-cabinet, the Community Council of Ministers, the Organs and Bodies of the Community, and the CARICOM Secretariat.

91. Given its role, the CARICOM Secretariat cannot exercise enforcement powers in relation to decisions of the Conference.

92. The respective commissions were established in 2013.

93. At the 24th Intersessional Meeting of Heads of Government, the Reform Process received a further push. Notably, provision was made for the establishment of Change Drivers at the national level.

94. In short, the CARICOM Secretariat is subject to a restructuring process.

95. The Hon. Bruce Golding was Prime Minister of Jamaica from 2007 to 2011.

96. The CARIFORUM Rules of Procedure make provision, in Revised Rule 7, for Associate Members and Observers.

97. In the late 1990s, CARIFORUM and the ACP, at large, first signaled support for Cuba’s accession to the precursor to the Cotonou Agreement, the Lomé Convention (Byron 2000, 35, 39). For its part, the EU, in 1998, by way of an overture from its “Foreign Ministers agreed to Cuba’s request for observer status in the ACP-EU negotiations on a successor agreement to Lomé IV” (Byron 2000, 35). Cuba was granted full membership in CARIFORUM in 2001 (CARIFORUM Secretariat 2002, 3). At the time (in the aftermath of the collapse of the Soviet bloc), Cuba’s pivot to CARIFORUM reflected its desire to “reintegrate” into the Caribbean space, while simultaneously improving relations with western Europe (Byron 2000, 35).

98. The EPA provides a legal basis for preferential trade between those CARIFORUM states which are signatories to same and the EU and its Member States. The Agreement was signed by 14 CARIFORUM States in October 2008 and by the 15th CARIFORUM State, Haiti, in December 2009. The EPA covers substantially all trade between CARIFORUM states and the EU and its Member States, and the expectation is that the Agreement will lead to the opening of the EU market beyond WTO commitments in respect of the services sector, inclusive of the creative and entertainment industries. The Agreement is being provisionally applied since 29 December 2008. Of note, the EPA lends itself to integration and cooperation between the CSME states, the Dominican Republic, Haiti, and The Bahamas.

99. Signed in 1975, the Georgetown Agreement is the constituent accord of the ACP.

100. The Secretary-General of CARICOM is the Secretary-General of CARIFORUM.

101. The grouping’s Rules of Procedure have been subject to periodic revisions.

102. The Council of Ministers is CARIFORUM, in keeping with the grouping’s legal character.

103. Haiti became a full member of CARICOM in 2002, in a context in which, for much of its post-revolutionary history and well into the last century, that country was relatively isolated from its Caribbean neighbors. There have, however, been longstanding, multi-faceted relations between the Dominican Republic and the Anglophone Caribbean. Of note, from the 1990s, the Dominican Republic and the Anglophone Caribbean have made strides to deepen integration. In 1998, the bilateral free trade agreement between CARICOM and the Dominican Republic was signed. For its part, the Dominican Republic has elected to engage multiple tracks of integration in the circum-Caribbean. For instance, in 2013, it became a Member State of the Central American Integration System (SICA). (Suriname, another country that is not part of the Anglophone Caribbean, joined the Lomé II Convention in 1979 and then, in 1995, was admitted as a member of CARICOM.)

104. Interview with a senior official of the European Commission Directorate-General for Trade, Brussels, Belgium, 22 January 2010.

105. Interview with a senior official of the European Commission Directorate-General for the Environment, Bridgetown, Barbados, 23 April 2010. (The official was formerly based in the Directorate-General for Trade during the negotiation phase of the CARIFORUM–EU EPA.)

106. Interview with a senior official of the European Commission Directorate-General for the Environment, Bridgetown, Barbados, 23 April 2010. (The official was formerly based in the Directorate-General for Trade during the negotiation phase of the CARIFORUM–EU EPA.)

107. Interview with a senior official formerly based in the Caribbean intergovernmental system, Georgetown, Guyana, 22 June 2011.

108. Interview with a senior official based in the civil service of the Dominican Republic, Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic, 12 June 2012.

109. Interview with a senior official formerly based in the Caribbean intergovernmental system, Georgetown, Guyana, 22 June 2011.

110. The Directorate’s bureaucratic capacity has been put to the test by its expanded responsibilities.

111. The Directorate’s role also extends to the provision of support in relation to CARIFORUM’s effective participation in the institutions provided for in the EPA.

112. The Agency was established in 1996 as the trade promotion Agency of 15 CARIFORUM states.

113. Interview with a senior official formerly based in the Caribbean intergovernmental system, Georgetown, Guyana, 22 June 2011.

114. The Joint Strategy, which was endorsed by the Parties in 2012, is built on five agreed areas of action: (1) the promotion of regional integration and cooperation for sustainable development; (2) responses to climate change and natural disasters; (3) support to Haiti; (4) cooperation on crime and security; and (5) joint action in bi-regional and multi-lateral fora and on global issues (Council of the European Union 2012). The 11th EDF CRIP is designed to give effect to the Joint Strategy.

115. The Dominican Republic has, to date, sought CARICOM membership at least twice (in 1989 and 2013).

116. The 10th Meeting of the Conference of Heads of Government of CARICOM was held at Grand Anse, Grenada, on 3–7 July 1989.

117. As far back as the early 1980s, CARICOM pursued an outreach strategy with both Haiti and Suriname, with a view to engaging the two countries within the context of the bloc. As documented in 1985, by the then-Secretary-General, “[a]t its Fifth Meeting in Nassau, the Conference of Heads of Government agreed to invite the Standing Committees of Ministers responsible for Agriculture, Education and Labour and the Conference of Ministers responsible for Health to grant observer status to Haiti and the Dominican Republic at their deliberations and to invite the Standing Committees of Ministers responsible for Agriculture and Education to grant similar status to Suriname which already enjoys observer status in the Community’s Institutions in the areas of Health and Labour” (CARICOM Secretariat 1985, 33).

118. It is noteworthy that the establishment of CARIFORUM has been characterized as “Europe’s answer to what was in fact the Caribbean Community’s conundrum of deepening versus widening, and its consequent resistance to drawing in the two states [i.e. Haiti and the Dominican Republic] was to propose the Caribbean Forum (CARIFORUM) as the main instrument for implementing in particular the aid provisions of the Lomé Convention” (Lewis 2001, 8).

119. Interview with Sir Edwin W. Carrington, former Secretary-General, CARICOM Secretariat, Georgetown, Guyana, 17 November 2011 and 29 March 2012.

120. See CARICOM Secretariat (1989, 5, emphasis in original).

121. See A.N.R. Robinson’s seminal paper The West Indies Beyond 1992, which is cited in West Indian Commission (1992, 3).

122. What were then emergent contours of the CARICOM regional integration movement are outlined in the Grand Anse Declaration and Work Program for the Advancement of the Integration Movement.

123. The looming end of the bi-polar world order, the momentous developments in the multilateral trading system, and globalization-related trends, as well as their broader implications for the Caribbeans, were among the prevailing themes of high-level deliberations at the time.

124. At its Special Meeting in Trinidad and Tobago in October 1992, the Conference of Heads of Government of CARICOM considered and adopted the Time for Action Report.

125. The Report also called for “deepening” of the Community by way of the CSME. It should be noted that the “deepening” and “widening” of the Community are not mutually exclusive. Rather, they are mutually reinforcing. The late Dr William Demas, a much celebrated integrationist, underscored that “[t]he relationship between deepening and widening is crucial. The deepening of CARICOM must be achieved in order to make widening and close trade cooperation with much bigger and more powerful countries, near and far, workable” (Lewis 2001, 8).

126. Outside of the CARICOM bloc, the ACS proposal received a mixed response (Gill 1995, 8).

127. The full text of the Convention Establishing the ACS is available at http://www.acs-aec.org/index.php?q=about-the-acs (last accessed 10 July 2016).

128. The ACS Member States are as follows: Antigua and Barbuda, The Bahamas, Barbados, Belize, Colombia, Costa Rica, Cuba, Commonwealth of Dominica, Dominican Republic, El Salvador, Grenada, Guatemala, Guyana, Haiti, Honduras, Jamaica, Mexico, Nicaragua, Panama, St. Kitts and Nevis, Saint Lucia, St. Vincent and the Grenadines, Suriname, Trinidad and Tobago, and Venezuela. The Associate Members are: Aruba, Bonaire (The Netherlands), Curaçao, French Guiana (France), Guadeloupe, Martinique, Saba (The Netherlands), Saint Barthelemy (France), Saint Martin, Sint Eustatius (The Netherlands), and Sint Maarten. The ACS also has a wide array of observers and partners.

129. The highest consultative and decision-making body of the ACS is the Summit of Heads of State and Government, in addition to which Permanent Bodies – including the Council of Ministers – are in place.

130. The ACS Secretariat, which coordinates the technical and policy work associated with these focal areas, is based in Trinidad and Tobago.

131. The countries in question are the Caribbean ACP banana exporters and some of the “dollar” banana exporting countries of Central/South America.

132. The entry of Belize (then known as British Honduras) into CARIFTA in 1971 foreshadowed the engagement of non-Anglophone Caribbean countries “within” and “by” the CARICOM fold, years later (Bishop and Payne 2010, 6).

133. Hence, while the regional political directorate has left open the possibility for the integration of non-Anglophone Caribbean countries within CARICOM, it has also leveraged regional cooperation-styled engagement of third countries by the bloc vis-à-vis other regionalist projects.

134. Interview with Vaughan A. Lewis, Emeritus Professor, University of the West Indies, Saint Lucia, 5 February 2010.

135. Cited in Stuart (2012, 21).

136. This is inextricably linked to peace and security, against the backdrop of an increasingly fragile and complex security environment that is being subjected to a number of emerging transnational threats. Concerted, institutionalized regional coordination and cooperation is the basis for effectively addressing such threats.

137. For example, see Chong and Maass (2010) and Maass (2014).

138. Developed by Acharya (2011), “norm subsidiarity” lends an innovative perspective pertaining to “norm creation and diffusion to explain why and how Third World states and regions engage in rule-making and normative action to regulate relationships among them and with the outside world” (96). Regarding Hettne and Söderbaum (2000), they have developed a useful framework that (at a fairly high level of abstraction) highlights how effecting regionness transforms a geographical area, formerly a “passive object”, into an “active subject” (an actor) voicing transnational interests (38).

139. What is more, an eminent Caribbean elder statesman has argued that “Caribbean unity” greatly influenced one significant pillar of South–South cooperation: the ACP (Ramphal 2013). In that speech, Sir Shridath underscores that “[i]n essence, we first consolidated the Caribbean’s unity, and then moulded the diverse countries of Africa and the Pacific with us into the ACP – the African, Caribbean and Pacific Group of countries. Caribbean unity made that wider unity possible. It could not have happened without it” (1).

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Nand C. Bardouille

Dr Nand C. Bardouille is a Visiting Professor at the University of Prince Edward Island’s Master of Arts in Island Studies (MAIS) Program, where he teaches in the area of the international relations of small island states. He has been appointed as a Research Associate at the University’s Institute of Island Studies, which is located in Charlottetown, Canada. He is also the 2018 co-awardee of the Warwick Transatlantic Visiting Fellowship, a visiting scholars program based at the Yesu Persaud Centre for Caribbean Studies, University of Warwick. Previously, Dr Bardouille served as a senior trade official at the Caribbean Community (CARICOM) Secretariat, the Caribbean Regional Negotiating Machinery (now the Office of Trade Negotiations of the CARICOM Secretariat), and the Organisation of Eastern Caribbean States (OECS) Secretariat (now the OECS Commission). Prior to that, he briefly worked with the United Nations. He holds a PhD in Political Science from York University. Dr Bardouille’s research and teaching focus on International Relations and Comparative Politics, with a specialization in the diplomacy, foreign policy and international economic relations of small states. All views expressed in this article are those of the author.