The Association of Caribbean States

Abstract

The Caribbean has found the deep-seated changes taking place in the structure of the contemporary world order particularly hard to handle. In essence, it fears that the rigours of globalization will expose it as unable to compete effectively in world markets and that the trend towards triadic regionalism will ultimately leave it excluded from the key such organization in the Americas. In short, it worries that it will face marginalization in the new world order. In these threatening circumstances the various states of the Caribbean have sought a measure of comfort in union and have lately formed an Association of Caribbean States (ACS). The ACS is, in fact, an interesting and illustrative example of the contemporary trend towards subregionalism, precisely because it seeks to build linkages between a set of states and societies which have not previously been the subject of serious attempts to effect closer union. It was only formed in July 1994 and is made up of the following 25 states — Antigua and Barbuda, the Bahamas, Barbados, Belize, Colombia, Costa Rica, Cuba, Dominica, the Dominican Republic, El Salvador, Grenada, Guatemala, Guyana, Haiti, Honduras, Jamaica, Mexico, Nicaragua, Panama, St Kitts and Nevis, St Lucia, St Vincent and the Grenadines, Suriname, Trinidad and Tobago and Venezuela. By any standards, this is a large number of countries to seek to bring into regional collaboration and the task is manifestly made the harder by the enormous diversities of situation represented in the membership of the association, ranging from tiny island-states with minuscule populations like Antigua, Dominica and St Kitts to medium-sized states with large populations like Colombia, Mexico and Venezuela (see Table 6.1). Nevertheless, this very diversity is revealing and important in itself, for it draws attention to the fact that the ACS derives its main impetus from a broader political and economic process which is beginning to constitute a reconfiguration of what is meant by, and included within, the concept of the Caribbean.