The Concepts and Activities of Integration within the Caribbean Basin: Is there an Agenda for the 21st Century

• Main Author: Gordon Anthony Layne
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: Stockholm University Press 2009-12-01
• Series: Iberoamericana: Nordic Journal of Latin American and Caribbean Studies
• Online Access: http://www.iberoamericana.se/articles/84
• ISSN: 0046-8444; 2002-4509

Participation in regional integration projects is a feasible way for developing countries to simultaneously survive social, political, and economic challenges, and handle internal, regional and global dynamics. This grandiose venture has increasingly been the topic of scholarly discourse. After having briefly observed the countries in the British West Indies and their quest to establish a Single Market (SM), Charlatans and students of international political economy may question the viability of the initial project. Occasionally, even integrationists do question the validity of this enterprise among underdeveloped countries. There was good reason for scepticism in the inception. Apart from Guyana and Suriname located on the South American continent and Belize in Central America, all the other territories are 'insular'. Considering the state of affairs in logistics in the 1960s, one would not have necessarily expected many successful moves towards regional integration among developing countries that possessed this 'characteristic feature'; mainly due to them not having any outstanding comparative advantages, unavoidable high costs to set up transport facilities along with high freight rates, and the anticipated intra-regional competition for foreign investment and trade that frequently undermines such endeavours. A similar degree of scepticism may prevail, when one considers the numerous hindrances that have plagued this grouping over the last four decades.