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8 Chapter 1 Conceptual Issues Sovereignty, Nationalism, and Independence in the Era of Global Neoliberalism The impact of global neoliberalism on the practice of sovereignty of the independent nation-state has given rise to a wide body of reflection (see, for example, Agnew 2009; Sassen 1996, 1998; Harvey 2005; and Robinson 2004, 2008). The work of Robinson in particular is key to understanding the impact of global neoliberalism for the independence experience of St. Lucia. In contrast to the widely held viewpoint that globalization has brought about the end of the nation-state or the death of sovereignty, Robinson (2008), in contrast, sees the state as being transformed to serve the needs of a transnational capitalist class as distinct from a traditionally understood “national interest.” Thus the state has been transformed into a “neoliberal state” whose role is to “serve global (over local) capital accumulation, including a shift in the subsidies that states provide, away from social reproduction and from internal economic agents and toward transnational capital” (ibid., 33). In a context where St. Lucia gained its independence in 1979, the very moment leading to the rise of global neoliberalism—the decade of the 1980s—Robinson’s formulation provides a useful framework for understanding the independence experience of St. Lucia in the era of global neoliberalism. The central theoretical assumption of this work is that a process of globalization has shaped the experience of decolonization and independence and has shaped the meaning and practice of the notion of sovereignty in St. Lucia. This shift in the understanding of sovereignty has meant specifically that at the very point of its birth as an independent nation-state, the instrumentality of sovereign statehood was consciously tailored to facilitate St. Lucia’s incorporation into the emerging global neoliberal order as its principal purpose. This stands in stark contrast to the experiences of Caribbean states such as Jamaica, Trinidad and Tobago, and Barbados, which embarked on formal decolonization under global conditions that were shaped by Keynesianism as distinct from neoliberalism. Conceptual Issues: Sovereignty, Nationalism, and Independence 9 Exploring Global Neoliberalism While the buzzword of “globalization” enjoys popular usage (Scholte 1996), the extent and reality of globalization remain a contentious issue. Klak (1998c, 4) has classified the debate on globalization “in terms of whether globalization trends are interpreted as positive or negative with respect to global and national distributions of power, wealth, and development, and political and economic struggles over resources.” Similarly, Tabb (1997b, 21) sees the conflict as lying between the view of the international economy as one that “subsumes and subordinates national level processes” and a more “nuanced” view that gives a major role to national-level policies and actors, and the central position not to inexorable economic forces but to politics. However, the situation is complicated by the presence of varying degrees of skepticism over the existence of globalization. On the one hand, there is a tendency to reject wholesale the idea of globalization, while, on the other, there exist varying degrees of circumspection in the application of the concept. Thus Held (1998) distinguishes between “hyper,” “strong,” or “extreme” globalizers and “weak,” “nuanced,” or “soft” globalizers. As a result, many researchers avoid using the term “globalization,” fearing that it obfuscates more than illuminates (Amoore et al. 1997). A major argument of the skeptics is that the “level of integration, interdependence , openness . . . of national economies in the present is not unprecedented” (Hirst and Thompson 1996, 49). These writers suggest, for example, that the “level of autonomy under the Gold Standard up to the First World War was much less for advanced economies than it is today.” While acknowledging a degree of change, they seek to “register a certain scepticism over whether we have entered a radically new phase in the internationalization of economic activity” (ibid.). Similarly, D. M. Gordon (1988, 54) contends that “we have been witnessing the decay of the postwar global economy rather than the construction of a fundamentally new and enduring system of production and exchange.” In a related argument, Hirst and Thompson (1996, 49–50) suggest that the tendency to oscillate between autonomy and interdependence is a normal feature of states within the international system. Others reject globalization on the basis that the developments associated with the concept are confined to a very small sector of world economic activity. Thus Ruigrok and Van Tuldor (1995, 151) argue that “what is often referred to as ‘globalization ’ is perhaps better described as triadization.” They maintain that in “the 1980s internationalization of trade...

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