Island versus region : the politics of small states in the Caribbean

Abstract

The Caribbean is the basin with the largest concentration of small states and territo- ries in the world. In a relatively small area – about the same size as the Mediterranean

Sea – we find today 13 sovereign states (and an almost equal amount of subnational jurisdictions) all of which are islands or archipelagos. To provide a sense of how small the states in this region are, note that the largest state in the Caribbean, by both land area and resident population, is Cuba, with 11.5 million residents (about the same population as either Belgium or Greece), followed closely by Haiti and the Dominican Republic (DR). The largest subnational jurisdiction would be Puerto Rico (PR), an unincorporated territory of the United States, with a population close to 4

million. In this chapter, and for the sake of inclusiveness, the Bahamas – geographi- cally, the largest archipelagic state in the region – is included in the review.