I have just read Marshall's book explaining the source of the development crisis facing the Anglophone Caribbean. It is a text rich in analytical insight and valuable nuggets of empirical information. We learn here of the stymied role merchant capital in these parts, helped none by populist-driven politicians.
I was particularly excited about the theoretical framework in the book as it sought to go past global-centric and state-centric models for explaining underdevelopment in the Caribbean. Neostructuralism, as he explains, seeks to look at development opportunities that arise at historical moments and the catalytic role state and culture can play in producing successful development outcomes. Of course the record of the Caribbean has been about missed opportunities and he spends some time in Chapter 2 addressing these. More could have been said about the structure/agency debate and the kinds of institutional changes needed to improve Caribbean competitiveness, although both his opening chapter and Chapter 6 raise related issues. The Chapter on the Free Trade Area of the Americas was especially sharp about the importance of bargaining. The evidence brought to bear explaining how Mexico and Canada came to steer the NAFTA formation process in ways the US never imagined, make for interesting reading. It certainly exposes the lie which holds that countries of the South are always disadvantaged in North-South trade deals.
The final chapter features a discussion on the need to `reconstitute state power at the regional level'. It usefully combines earlier debates on the role of the state, synthesises old arguments about the problems shackling Caribbean integration, and open eyes as to the myriad possibilities that can flow provided politics is brought back to the centre of the integration process.
Where the book crosses over to a wider global audience is in its novel treatment of the globalisation phenomenon and the connection made between offshore banking and merchant capital. Pity these two strands were not brought together in his Chapter 3 on global restructuring. We are nonetheless reminded of world historical constants of boom and bust, core-periphery antinomies, inter-state/firm rivalry, and movement in the political economy of the world system. To wit, despite the myriad changes as it relates to computer technology, we should be reminded that the system's logic has not been fundamentally altered. We are back to the role capital plays and has played in human history for many centuries, millennia even (yes Frank and Gill's 1993/4 breakthrough work on world system history is read into his work as well!).
As a graduate student working in the field of Latin American studies, I find this book refreshing in its decomposition of the state, its nuanced reading of the role of capital domestically, and in its critique of neoliberal globalisation discourse. My only wish is that Macmillan Publishing & St. Martin's Press rush to get it in paperback.

Perhaps the most stiking feature about Don. D. Marshall's book is its positive optimism in the absence of idealism. As the title suggests, the bleak apocalyptic picture so commonly forcasted of the Caribbean future, is not presented. Instead OPTION is the key part of the narrative of his argument. The precise aim of his argument was to not only identify the problems of Caribbean economy but also to present economic-political prescriptions that go beyond the rhetoric of common literature. Theoretically, the argument presents itself within the more eclectic framework of neo-structuralism. This theoretical framework is influenced by traditioal theories based on the Marxist type historical materialism found in world systems theory and dependency schools. However the emphasis is not on how the Structure affects the world's actors (primarily the state) but how the actors do and can indeed effect change on and exploit the structure. As he defines it neo-structuralism encompasses structuralist economics and concepts of conjuncture and geopolitics.(1998, p.9) This inturn informs his interpretation of the global challenges of today, to which some have attached the term Globalization. Central to the issue of response to global challenges, is the role of the State. Contrasting with Strange's(1996) argument about the decline of the role and autonomy of the state, Marshall's emphasis is that state role is underscored by the global challenges not minimized by it. However the concept of the state as traditionallly understood within populist or welfare typologies must be transformed. This echoes Ian Clark's (1999)work. Much like Marshall he recognises that states are not merely products of the global structure but they also create the structure by their own actions.
'. . . globalization becomes a phase in the continuing historical adaptation of the state, and not. . . its impending demise.'
Converging on the point of state transformation vis-a-vis the new global challenges, Clark (1999, p.103) says that state transformation involves the imperatives of change in state identity and that this change is linked to the evolving and unfolding of broader systemic changes. Marshall's historical illustrations in Chapter 2 elucidate the inadequacy of the concept and function of Caribbean states' role which contribute to the 'structural weakness of the Caribbean sub-region', which help perpetuate patterns of peripheralization. It is true that exogenous factors present difficulties in development but the role of the state is crucial to overcome these hurdles impeding advancement. Paraphrasing from Serbin, the Caribbean is a product of deliberate political acts but to rise successfully, the region must acquire a substance that trancends the origins of its birth.(Serbin, 1998, p. 10 quoting Giacalone 19956, p.5) The other aspect of the theoretical framework defined by Marshall was the importance of conjuncture and geopolitics. Structural opportunites arise at sensitive moments in history (conjuncture) and this in addition to the existence of the developmental state explain ascent. Empirically this was illustrated with his example of the ascent of Malaysia. Chapter 5 presented an interesting proposal of NAFTA/FTAA as an example of the link between structural opportunity and the developmental state. Mexico with a similar economic history to Caribbean states (IMF and World Bank interludes for example) and similar challenges of liberalization, provided a basis for Marshall to further deploy his argument. Despite the problems of debt and the exogenos pressures of liberalization, Mexico was able to secure for itself through politically and economicallly strategic negotiations and geopolitcal initiatives via the NAFTA/FTAA aggreement, the space for its paticualr sectors and industries. The point here for the Caribbean, is that an export-oriented economy driven by market forces but guided by a developmental state can be the answer to Caribbean ascent. Cognisance of the other limitations that impede Caribbean global competitiveness,like limited bureaucratic capactiites, is important. Marshall suggests that regional integration is essential to counter this. Unlike the rhetoric of functional integration perspectives that present integration as the cure-all prescription for Caribbean economic pathology, for Marsahll integration is only a tool to correct the structural weaknesses of the Caribbean region. As he pointed out, the national option and self-determination have desolved into archaisms. The requirements of global competitiveness - a vigourous entrepreneurial class and the capacity to negotiate an intensive neo-liberal course of action - are not possibly attainable by the indidvidual economies. It is the congruency of industrial and development policies that integration offers, that can allow the Caribbean to harness the structural opportunity that is to be found within NAFTA/FTAA. Marshall outlined extensively the technicalities of political and institutional reform and industrial policies that must occur in Chapter 6. Despite the clarity of his argument and the inclusion of sound empirical evidence, his argument fails to incorporate an in depth analysis of the kind of social transformation that his prescriptions entail. Considering the inextricable linkage of the social with the political, Marshall's casually borrowed prescription (p. 193) from Sir Arthur Lewis, recommending education campaigns and effective public relations to transform attitudes, seems altogether too flippantly dismissive of the weight of the social as an impedement to Caribbean ascent. The fragmenting power of the heterogenous social character of the Caribbean region aptly described by Serbin (1998, p. 108)must be dealt with in any discussion of the road to ascent and global competitiveness of the Caribbean. The logic of an export-oriented economy entails the attraction of foreign direct investment, of which Marshall is supportive. The dangers of increasing unchecked capital flows in an economy are ilustrated grimly by crises like the East Asian crisis of 1997. To guard against such vulneralbiltiies, Marshall advocates the 'disciplining' of capital. The feasibility of this for the Caribbean developmental state was not however convincingly argued by his vague allusions to the imposition of high taxation.(p.198) However, the surprisingly easy narrative of this book, general clarity and ingenuity of its theoretical progression and its sound empirical grounding make this book not only refreshing but useful for policy makers and all concerned abut the future of the Caribbean political economy.
Notes See Ian Clark (1999), Globalization and International Relations Theory, p. 91
References Clark, I. (1999), Globalization and International Realtions Theory, New York: Oxford University Press. Serbin, A. (1998), Sunset Over the Islands, London: Macmillan Educated Ltd. Strange, S. (1996), The Retreat of the State, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.