A critical political economy of the small island developing states concept: South-South cooperation for island peoples?

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A critical political economy of the small island
developing states concept South-South
cooperation for island peoples?

• Liam Campling,
• Department of Development Studies, School of
  Oriental and African Studies
• Email lc10_at_soas.ac.uk

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Overview

• 1) Theoretical framework critical theory
• 2) Historical development of the Small Island
  Developing States (SIDS) concept
• 3) Interrogating the SIDS concept
• 3.1) Interrogating the SIDS concept
• 3.2) Ethnography of institutional perceptions
• 3.3) Whats left? Reformulating SIDS for
  sustainable cooperation
• 4) SIDS and South-South cooperation integrating
  island peoples
• 4.1) South-South cooperation a historical case
  study
• 4.2) Three theories of South-South cooperation
• 4.3) Critical theory and South-South
  cooperation island peoples in the 21st century

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1) Theoretical Framework

• Theory is always for someone and for some
  purpose. All theories have a perspective.
  Perspectives derive from a position insocial and
  political time and space.
• (R. W. Cox 1986 1981)

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1) Theoretical Framework

• Why use Critical theory?
• 1) It is analytically sensitive to the underlying
  forces in the international political economy
• 2) It reflects historical-ideological change
• 3) It is emancipatory
• 4) It is a bottom-up approach thus takes into
  account civil society as a counter-hegemonic force

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2) Historical Development of the SIDS
Concept 1970 ?????????????????? 1980
?????????????????? 1990 ??????????????????
2000     Focus of the SIDS Concept Theoretical
Focus I Theoretical Focus II Theoretical Focus
III Socio-Economic Geopolitical Security
Economic and Environmental Development
Vulnerability   Primary International
Security Dynamic Détente ???????????????? 'Second
Cold War' ????????? US Hegemony ???????????? Sept
11th     Primary Third World Dynamic Radicalism/N
IEO ???? Debt Crisis/ Structural Adjustment
??????? WTO Conformity ???????    Dominant
Development Discourse Dependency Theory
?????????? Neoliberalismwith a human face?...
attacking poverty? ?????    
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2) Theoretical Focus I Socio-Economic
Development (1970s)

• Emphasis on structural inequality of the
  international political economy
• Break dependence through development of national
  industry to increase and raise real levels of
  sovereignty
• Enable this via Import Substitution
  Industrialisation protect domestic firms from
  from competitors, create local employment and
  preserve foreign exchange
• Promote people-centred development through
  comprehensive systems of education and health
• Financed via taxing the private sector, Cold War
  patronage and ODA

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• 2) Theoretical Focus II
• Geopolitical Security (1980s)
• Preoccupation with geopolitical security of SIDS
• Focus on internal security (traditional defined),
  e.g. secessionist tendencies
• Division of the Third World, and by extension
  SIDS, through debt leverage and neoliberal
  adjustment
• Emphasis on role of domestic economic policy in
  development, e.g. economic liberalisation,
  privatisation and export-led development
• The separation of the 'social' from the
  'economic'

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2) Theoretical Focus III Economic and
Environmental Vulnerability (1990s)

• Final victory of neoliberalism (and its
  variants)
• Era of soft' politics, i.e. prominence of
  economic and environmental issues on the
  international agenda
• General decline of untied overseas development
  assistance (ODA) (e.g. 1994 US2.3 billion 2001
  US1.7 billion) and Cold War-associated
  patronage/ rent-seeking
• Environmental vulnerability becomes a key source
  of ODA and SIDS concept reflects this
• Rise of the 'new regionalism' as a solution to
  constraints of smallness and Third World
  development in general
• Financial and monetary liberalisation opens SIDS
  to capital flight, speculation-led economy and
  financial fragility and crisis

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2) Theoretical Focus III Economic and
Environmental Vulnerability (1990s)
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2) Theoretical Focus III Economic and
Environmental Vulnerability (1990s)     You
believe perhaps, gentleman, that the production
of coffee and sugar is the natural destiny of the
West Indies. Two centuries ago, nature, which
does not trouble herself about commerce, had
planted neither sugar-cane nor coffee trees
there. (Karl Marx, 1848)
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2) Theoretical Focus IV Economic Conformity and
Vulnerability to 'Terror'? (2000s)

• SIDS-to-EU preferences cut in 2008 (Cotonou
  Agreement) and Economic Partnership Agreements
  (EPAs) redesigning SIDS economies
• SIDS locked-in to deepened WTO influence and
  regulatory forces (free trade) benefits for
  large developing countries but for non-LDC SIDS?
• US unilateralism and aggressive foreign policy
• 1) A rise in terror attacks/ insecurity across
  the globe
• 2) Reduced tourism receipts rise in inter-SIDS
  competition
• 3) Tourism-dependent SIDS increase surveillance/
  policing budgets?
• 4) Continued decline in ODA

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3.1) Interrogating the SIDS Concept

• What is smallness? (subjectivity of the
  approach)
• No island is an island? (opportunism/fatalism in
  the literature)
• SIDS resilience over vulnerability?
• Intra-SIDS competition/ conflict

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3.2) Ethnography of institutional perceptions of
SIDS

• Sympathisers Commonwealth, UN (espcially
  UNCTAD and UNESCO)
• Agitators IMF, WTO
• Fence-sitters European Community and World Bank

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3.3) Whats Left? Reformulating the SIDS
Concept for Sustainable Cooperation

• SIDS are permanently isolated, therefore
• SIDS will always be in a situation of economic
  and environmental volatility
• Integrating resilience to combat vulnerability
• Civil society ownership for sustainable
  cooperation and grass-roots implementation of the
  Barbados Plan of Action.
• .Why? Because history shows that SIDS will not
  otherwise succeed

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4.1) A Case Study in South-South Cooperation The
New International Economic Order

• Reasons for rise
• 1) Domestic and international political-economic-m
  oral weakness of the West
• 2) A culmination of ongoing Third World unity in
  face of glaring structural inequalities
• 3) Supported by commodity power through OPEC

• Reasons for decline
• 1) Third World economic collapse in the face of
  the commodity and debt crises
• 2) Re-emergence of Western unity around
  neoliberalism and the Second Cold War
• 3) Fragmentation of fragile Third World unity,
  e.g. it lacked popular support

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4.1) A Case Study in South-South Cooperation The
New International Economic Order

• LESSONS FOR SIDS
• NIEO benefited from majority in UN General
  Assembly, commodity (oil) power The SIDS
  grouping is exclusionary and only has normative
  force
• NIEO was a state-led movement and collapsed due
  to disunity
• Popular support and input is imperative

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4.2) Contemporary Theories of South-South
Cooperation Inter-governmental cooperation

• PROS
• The G15/G22 overcomes unworkable size of NIEO
• Possessing relative autonomy, industrial capacity
  and debt power
• A representative voice of the Third World

• CONS
• Orientation towards emulation of the core
  development trajectory
• Ignored by constituent parts
• In compliance with neoliberalism

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4.2) Contemporary Theories of South-South
Cooperation Inter-governmental cooperation

• LESSONS FOR SIDS
• Interests of large developing countries
  contradict those of many SIDS and SDEs
• Institution of the ruling elite likely to counter
  hegemonic forces? They are often the key
  beneficiaries!

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4.2) Contemporary Theories of South-South
Cooperation Regional Delinking

• PROS
• Asserts centrality of asymmetry of capitalist
  development
• Encourages self-reliant regional groupings of
  multi-nation states
• Rejects Eurocentric world order

• CONS
• An impossible utopia(?)
• Assumes emulation of core industrial development
  is desirable
• The site and strategy of social forces is unclear
• Requires a similar transformation in the core

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4.2) Contemporary Theories of South-South
Cooperation Regional Delinking

• LESSONS FOR SIDS
• Would delinked regional groupings assert new
  core-periphery relations? (i.e. for SIDS/SDEs)
• The capacity of the biosphere must be factored-
  in (i.e. environment-economy nexus)
• Internal social forces cannot be ignored

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4.2) Contemporary Theories of South-South
Cooperation New Multilateralism

• PROS
• Build a system of global governance from the
  bottom-up gt Global Civil Society (GSC)
• Emerges from the self realisation by majority at
  the micro-level that do not benefit from
  macro-effects of neoliberalism
• Form a distinct non-Western identity

• CONS
• A creative approach but constructive?
• How to harness non-Western identity across
  diversity of Third World
• Fails to question the integrity of GSC

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4.2) Contemporary Theories of South-South
Cooperation New Multilateralism

• LESSONS FOR SIDS
• There is no clear unifying island culture that
  transcends global oceans
• NGOs as the community face of neoliberalism?
• Must not underestimate the ability of the core to
  manage capitalist crises

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4.2) South-South Cooperation

• SUMMARY
• As NIEO demonstrates, options open to SIDS
  framework as an insular and exclusionary movement
  are minimal
• Centrality of island peoples in any form of
  sustainable cooperation

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4.1) Critical Theory and South-South Cooperation
Island Peoples in the 21st Century

• At the purely foreign policy level, great powers
  have relative freedom to determine their foreign
  policies in response to domestic interests
  smaller powers have less autonomy (Gramsci, 1971
  264). The economic life of subordinate nations is
  penetrated by and intertwined with that of
  powerful nations. (Cox 1993 59)

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4.1) Critical Theory and South-South Cooperation
Island Peoples in the 21st Century

• There is very little SIDS can do to influence the
  international agenda without linking to SDEs,
  sympathetic developing/developed governments,
  social movements and lobby groups in the core
• Policy orientation in SIDS reflects globally
  hegemonic discourse
• The UN system and IFIs were formed and act in
  core interests
• SIDS framework must be as much about intra-SIDS
  cooperation as an external common front

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4.1) Critical Theory and South-South Cooperation
Island Peoples in the 21st Century

• Impact of a front of island peoples will deepen
  and widen the scale and scope of the SIDS
  grouping a move beyond token civil society
  empowerment and/or participation
• Unity among islanders vs. intra-SIDS
  competition/conflict
• Popular democracy central to realisation of
  island peoples aims, objectives and cooperation
• Ecological debt as an example of potential
  negative cooperation within and between SIDS and
  island peoples
• The diasporas of island peoples as a key source
  of advocacy and influence

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4.1) Critical Theory and South-South Cooperation
Island Peoples in the 21st Century

• Sustainable cooperation based upon centrality of
  island peoples to
• Network and ally with sympathetic partners in
  the North and South
• Compliment and if necessary contest top-down
  SIDS negotiations in the interests of the
  majority

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4.1) Critical Theory and South-South Cooperation
Island Peoples in the 21st Century

• our main task as intellectuals and as
  responsible, politically engaged citizens, is to
  counter the incessant claims that resistance is
  futile. (Manfred Bienefeld)