Autonomous but not sovereign? : a review of island sub-nationalism

Abstract

This paper hypothesizes that small islands provide a number of lessons in the political economy of development, particularly in the manner in which they enjoy and deploy sub-national jurisdictional leverage. A range of examples illustrates how a number of small island jurisdictions navigate “autonomy”: that is, what at face value appears to be the “limbo” between sovereignty and dependency, in practice may turn out to be a winning strategy in political economy. A distinction is also made between, on one hand, the utilization or rendering of autonomy as merely a lever for the extraction of larger fiscal transfers or “rents” from benevolent sponsors, and, on the other hand, as a driver for increased constitutional discretion, while notionally remaining a sub-national jurisdiction. The concept of sub-nationalism explains the particular combinations of “shared rule” and “self rule” that these small territories have secured in the contemporary political scene. In considering the “creative politics” of small islands, special attention is given to the five main policy dimensions of their articulation: natural resource management, fiscal policy, freedom of movement of people, air/sea transportation policy, and para-diplomacy.