Regional governmentality: neoliberalization and the Caribbean community single market and economy

Formally launched on 30 January 2006, the Caribbean Community (CARICOM) Single Market and Economy (CSME) is, like many other regional economic initiatives, designed to create an economic space in which the uninhibited flow of goods, capital and skills across the borders of member states is anticipated to generate competitive business opportunities and external investment. Despite the intensification of such regional programmes, promoters and critics alike continue to consider CARICOM to be an intergovernmental organization dependent on the political will of member states as they negotiate the pressures of neoliberal globalization. In this paper, I argue that such a framing of regional integration in the Caribbean misses some of the tangible ways that CARICOM works beyond the sovereign intent of member states to enable the encroachment of neoliberal-style economic orders across the space of the region. I adopt a Foucauldian analytics of governmentality to unhinge CARICOM from the governments of its member states. Once freed from a persistent statism it becomes possible to consider the technical competencies through which CARICOM initiatives increasingly connect and cohere with neoliberal rationalities. My goal in developing such an analytics is not to suggest CARICOM operates as a superstate but rather to broaden the sites considered relevant to understanding the encroachment of neoliberalism in the Caribbean