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A SIX-PROPOSITION MANIFESTO FOR SMALL ISLAND TERRITORIES
Conventional wisdom suggests that small, often island, states are more likely than larger nations to be hard hit by the effects of national disasters, of fluctuations in the global economy, and the political aspirations of world powers. The structural weaknesses they share have been quantified to create a Vulnerability Index. This paper points to what the author sees as flaws in the concept of vulnerability and its application to the weaknesses of small states. In particular he presents evidence that small developing countries have performed no worse than larger countries. He sets out six propositions which explain this paradox and identifies the comparative advantages that small states hold.
IT IS ONLY IN THE PAST FEW DECADES that a serious attempt has been made to explore critically the idiosyncrasies of small and island territories. No doubt, this area of research was by definition non-existent until such a category of independent, sovereign states started taking their place on the world's geopolitical map, albeit somewhat late in the epoch of decolonization. Such states have themselves lobbied for, or commissioned, internal and external studies which, within the single case study or comparative framework, investigate specific developmental issues in a small, island milieu-particularly public administration;1 economic growth and development;2 educational provision;3 and tourism.4
These forays dovetail with one of the latest trends in the analytic social sciences: precisely to depart from grand, all-embracing explanations of reality and to venture into a more in-depth, interdisciplinary and holistic appreciation of the specific, in a style traditionally associated with anthropology.5 This social science was actually ushered in and popularized thanks to the observation of small islander behaviour.6 This time, however, these sites are not being visited by virtue of presenting themselves as prototype and convenient social laboratory settings. Rather, the current concern is to consider these as territories harbouring a peculiar compendium of features which usher in a tendency for a particular cluster of behaviour patterns, or 'ecology'.7
Today, there is a fairly modest compendium of literature about small and island territories. Echoing Bray8 and Smawfield,9 many of these sources however go about these analytic arguments without any specific consideration of the smallness and islandness features; their subject matter just so happened to be...