A remarkable resilience : political and bureaucratic impediments to economic development - a case study of Newfoundland and Labrador

Abstract

The machinery of the state in its various forms has a habit of looming larger than life in most small island territories. The accident of geography implies a natural disposition for the insular territory to require some degree of administrative autonomy, necessitating the rudiments of a mini-public service; the more physically and logistically distant and inaccessible the island unit, the more likely it is to warrant a broad and specialized public sector. Such a sector becomes even more important and inevitable in cases where the island units served as colonies of other faraway powers and where local economic conditions - such as the poverty of natural resources - were not enough to permit a decent quality of life. The presence of an administrative sub-sector in the local economy, with its associated conditions of employment, often serves as a fateful attraction to islanders, enticing them with offers of job security, occupational mobility, and an escape from the harrowing ups and downs of a typically fragile and fickle economy which may otherwise oblige them to consider emigration.