Conclusion: The Caribbean, Development and IPE

We opened the book by lamenting the relative under-representation of the Caribbean in the extant IPE canon. The core empirical agenda that we have advanced here consequently encompassed an attempt to counterbalance this reality by undertaking a detailed, controlled comparison of the political economy of four of the smallest islands in the region, the development of which has been characterised by a range of subtle — and not so subtle — differences in the post-war period. The analysis was grounded in the notion that contrasting British and French patterns of colonialism, their peculiar approaches to decolonisation, and changing global realities have all come to bear differently on the structural context within which these territories engage in development today. We sought to show how — both theoretically and empirically — it is Caribbean actors, operating within that (often highly constrained) context, which are producing and reproducing development on a daily basis.