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Globalization, Inequality, and Growth in the Caribbean

ABSTRACT The relationship among globalization, inequality, and growth is currently a major focus of scholars and policy-makers around the world. The problem is that globalization engenders growing interdependence and a marked rise in international inequalities in income distribution, while inequality constrains economic growth and promotes social and political instability. A clear understanding of this dilemma is necessary in order to formulate better development theories and policies in the current era of globalization. Scholars and policy-makers in the English-speaking Caribbean have been drawn to these issues since the late 1980s through an intensive and extensive rethinking of development strategies pursued in the region that has resulted in four major sets of ideas on how the region could grow and develop. These are the competitive insertion and the strategic global repositioning of the region in the global economy, collective lobbying in global institutions, and strengthened governance. A close examination of these dominant ideas reveals that they merely echo the neoliberal views on globalization. Therefore, the main proposition of this paper is that the present course of economic, political and social action proposed for growth and development in the Caribbean based on these four sets of ideas will only increase inequality in the region, in what the US neo-conservatives have called “the new American century.”