Social Development in Small States

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Social Development in Small States

• Naren Prasad
• United Nations Research Institute for Social
  Development (UNRISD)

Geneva, 15 May 2008
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Literature on small states

• Interests in small states from 1960s-1970
• many international conferences
• London Conference in 1962, in Barbados (in 1972
  and 1974), and the Canberra conference in 1979
• 1960s country size viability
• 1970s socio-economic development
• 1980s geopolitical security
• 1990s economic environmental vulnerability
• Barbados 1994, Barbados Plan of Action (10)
  (Mauritius Strategy)
• No discussion/research on social development
  issues in a coherent way
• 2000s new regionalism, WTO conformity,
  Vulnerability to terror

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Two quotes.

• Laws are generally found to be nets of such a
  texture as the little creep through, the great
  break through and middle-sized alone are
  entangled in.
• William Shenstone (1714-1763), (Oxford Dictionary
  of Quotations). Essays on Men, Manners, and
  Things
• The history of economics in the real world is,
  after all, none other than a continual attempt to
  distort the free market to ones perceived
  advantage
• Baldacchino (1993, p. 38)
• Erik Reinert (2007), Ha-Jhoo Chang (2003, 2007)

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Commonwealth Secretariat

• Sustained Commonwealth Secretariat scholarship
• Vulnerability Small States in the Global Society
  (1985), A Future for Small States Overcoming
  Vulnerability (1997), Small States Meeting
  Challenges in the Global Economy (2000).

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Pessimism. reversed

• Early titles bleak
• Vulnerability, viability, fragile, paradise lost,
  handicap, problems,
• Recently
• Resilience
• Briguglio and Kisanga (2004), Briguglio, Cordia
  et al. (2006)
• Resourcefulness
• Baldacchino

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Current knowledge on small states

• We know the inherent problems associated with
  smallness ( islandness)
• Policies designed to overcome them
• Social and Economic policies
• exchange rate regimes stabilization, financial
  globalization, labour market, market reform,
  human capital,
• Development Strategies
• OFCs, EPZs, tourism, Remittance, niche, rent

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Small states performance - history

• A look at 1950s to see how countries have
  performed overtime..

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Importance of Aid
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UNRISD research social policy

• Will investigate why some small economies are
  successful, while others not so
• Explain through
• democracy (social pacts or societal
  corporatism)
• welfare regime
• power of jurisdictional resourcefulness
• levels of social cohesion
• When all you have is a hammer, all problems
  start to look like nails (M. Twain)

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Social Policy in a Development Context Series
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Theoretical framework

• Social policy is state intervention that
  directly affects social welfare, social
  institutions and social relations. It involves
  overarching concerns with redistribution,
  production, reproduction and protection and works
  in tandem with economic policy in pursuit of
  national social and economic goals (UNRISD 2006,
  p. 1)
• Transformative social policy lessons from UNRISD
  Research

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Approach

• comparative analytical economic development
• political and economic history
• combine both a qualitative and a quantitative
  analysis
• Contemporary development discourse emphasises on
  putting in place institutions that are
• Developmental (high growth, structural
  transformation)
• Socially inclusive
• Democratic

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Countries

• Caribbean
• Trinidad Tobago, Guyana, Barbados, Grenada,
  Jamaica, Dominica/St. Lucia
• Pacific
• Vanuatu/Solomon, Fiji, Kiribati/Tuvalu,
  Samoa/Tonga
• India Ocean/Africa
• Mauritius, Seychelles, Lesotho/Swaziland
• Mediterranean
• Cyprus/Malta

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Achieve

• Contribute towards the empirical literature on
  small states
• Understanding of social policies in small states
  from a comparative perspective
• unmask the complexities in designing social
  policies within different socio-economic,
  institutional and historic settings
• Findings will provide lessons for other countries

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Country studies

• General development strategies
• Social situation
• Social policies
• Management of crisis
• Policy implications
• The role of economist is to advise, assist,
  guide, correct, flatter and cajole the rulers
  into doing their jobs properly (Reinert 2007, p.
  97)

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Provisional Findings

• State-led provision of social services
• Strong political leadership
• State capacity infrastructure to deliver
• State as organizer, provider, ability to regulate
  stimulate non-state actors

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Provisional Findings

• Priority given to universal education health
• Literacy, basic education, primary health care
• A United Nations Report (1951) showed that social
  factors are prerequisites for economic
  development
• in order for progress to happen, the social,
  economic, legal and political institutions must
  be favourable to it (p. 13).
• Recommendation 1 to remove the obstacles to
  free and equal opportunity. including
  progressive taxation and program for mass
  education (p. 93).

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Provisional Findings

• Spending and resources allocated to education and
  health sector
• Democracy, ideology, free media matters

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Social cohesion
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Provisional Findings

• History and colonial experience matters
• Social policy is a complex process, determined by
  the historical, political, economic and
  institutional context.
• History, especially colonial experiences shape to
  a large extent the contemporary policy making and
  institutional process
• types of political regime and how power is
  distributed among groups also determines how
  national resources (spending for example) are
  allocated
• Parliamentary Westminster type democracy,
  Caribbean islands also inherited the welfare
  state politics of the British Labour Party after
  independence

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Provisional Findings

• Sugar plantation colonies
• Population wiped out, countries went to war,
  cultures destroyed, trade multinationals
  expanded, slavery, migration
• Sugar has shaped our culture, landscape,
  politics, geography, economics, race, music,
  health, food drink in way that no other
  commodity has in human history
• Sugar exports contributed to economic and social
  development

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Provisional Findings

• Caribbean, Mauritius, Seychelles doing better
  than Pacific islands
• Most of Caribbean countries (Mauritius,
  Seychelles) were directly ruled, compared to
  indirect rule in Pacific
• Creating different institutions and states
• More developmental like Mauritius or Barbados,
  political electoral system
• major components of developmental state
• a determined developmental elite
• relative autonomy
• a powerful, competent and insulated economic
  bureaucracy
• the effective management of non-state economic
  interests

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Growth performance
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HDI
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