Towards a Caribbean Developmental State Framework

This paper seeks to provide a Caribbean Developmental State framework. It is recognised that the public sectors of many countries have undergone changes since the 1980s, as governments try to respond to the challenges of the new millennium. Recent years have seen wider-ranging reforms than any other period of the 20 century, although both the pace and extent of these reforms are greater in some countries than in others. Thus, states require an alternative. They need to have strong policy instruments which will enable them to plan and finance their strategic goals such as job creation, higher mass living standards, R&D, industrial competency, environmental protection, etc. This re-tooling of state policy-making requires a re-thinking of the form of government intervention and, especially, an emphasis on its ‘modern’ developmental role. This is a crucial challenge today facing countries in general, and Caribbean islands in particular. The argument of this paper is as follows. The first part summarises past development efforts in the Caribbean. The second section examines an institutional system which appears to have been used with enormous success but, unfortunately, has been neglected in the region –the “Developmental State”: the case of state which takes on a central developmental role in the economy without directly owning most of the productive assets. The third section seeks to chart the “Caribbean” Developmental State framework. The final part of the paper identifies key strategic requirements and offers alternative policy recommendations, which the Developmental State approach implies and suggests. (*) Sir Arthur Lewis Institute of Social and Economic Studies, The University of the West Indies, Mona Campus, Kingston 7, Jamaica. Tel.: (876) 9271020, E-mail: [email protected]