Godfrey Baldacchino

The Contribution of ‘Social Capital’ to Economic Growth: Lessons from Island Jurisdictions

This paper is concerned with the relationship of ‘social capital’ to economic development, with a deliberate focus on island territories. It argues that an appreciation of ‘social capital’ theory makes for a more informed understanding of how many (though not all) small, peripheral and network-driven island societies develop ‘good governance’ practices and manage a commendable standard of living. ‘Island neo-corporatism’ merits recognition on its own terms as the deep structure to ‘good governance’; and, in combination with jurisdictional powers, it is a key primer of economic development.

Lessons from the political economy of small islands

Preface: Introducing the North Atlantic Islands Programme H.Bagole & B.Lindstrom Editorial Acknowledgements G.Baldacchino & D.Milne Brief Notes on Contributors EDITORIAL INTRODUCTION G.Baldacchino & D.Milne PART I: SMALL ISLANDS IN CONTEXT Islands in Comparative Constitutional Perspective R.Watts Small Islands in the Global Kaleidoscope: The Politics of Localism B.Bartmann Identity, Culture and Self-Confidence in a New World of Old Possibilities H.Srebrnik PART II: CONSTITUTIONALISM AS AN ECONOMIC RESOURCE: ISLAND CASE STUDIES The Economic Costs of Divided Jurisdiction: the Canadian Island Provinces of Newfoundland and Prince Edward Island D.Milne The Jurisdiction of the Isle of Man: Catapult to Development W.R.McKercher Autonomy, Culture and Economic Development in the Aland Islands B.Lindstrom Constitutionalism and Economics in the Faroes A.Olafsson From Home Rule to Sovereignty: The Case of Iceland G.H.Kristinsson PART III: ORGANIZING FOR BUSINESS AND ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT: SECTORAL PERSPECTIVES The Primary Sector: Problem and Opportunity for Islands R.Paterson Manufacturing Development on the North Atlantic Rim R.Greenwood & S.McCarthy Small Places, Big Ideas: Exporting Knowledge-Based Services from the Atlantic Periphery M.Shrimpton & C.Pollett Tourism and Cold Water Islands in the North Atlantic T.G.Baum with L.H.Grant, L.Jolliffe & B.Sigurjonsson Conclusion G.Baldacchino & D.Milne Subject and Author Index

The Beak of the Finch: Insights into the Economic Development of Small Economies

Abstract Many scholarly analyses of small economies over the past two decades have been premised on the implicit understanding that a states small population size, compounded by such factors as islandness and remoteness from markets, is to blame for an inherent and unavoidable economic vulnerability. The article critiques the core features of this approach, and proposes in turn to discuss and profile the development trajectories of small economies from the vantage point of the strategic flexibility used by small states (at multiple levels as individuals, household units, corporate entities and complete jurisdictions) in seeking to exploit opportunities and maximize economic gains in a turbulent and dynamic external environment with which they must engage. Keeping alive a portfolio of skills and revenue streams enables these actors to migrate inter-sectorally as well as trans-nationally.

Successful Small-Scale Manufacturing from Small Islands: Comparing Firms Benefiting from Locally Available Raw Material Input

Abstract This paper draws on an European Commission-supported Leonardo da Vinci Vocational Training pilot project-in-progress to review the prospects for SMEs in small island territories. It, focusesing on manufacturing firms, and deliberately selects those which conform to a tough set of conditions of “success”: strong and consistent export orientation; local ownership; locally developed or adapted technology; and a workforce of up to 50 employees. This paper is based on “best practice” data collated specifically from five such “successful” firms, each based in one of five European island regions, manufacturing a product which benefits from locally available, raw material input. Research findings suggest that idiosyncratic features associated with smallness and islandness identity facilitate business success in such locations in spite of various well-documented structural handicaps. These features include a strong branding of the product with the respective island and associated characteristics island; free riding on island tourism; limited domestic local firm rivalry; an appreciation of social capital and the “quality of island life”; and the luring of islanders back to their island in order to become local entrepreneurs.

Total quality management in a luxury hotel: a critique of practice.

Abstract Total quality management (TQM) has become popular in the hospitality industry. It proposes to elicit the cooperation and loyalty of employees in the pursuit of corporate goals via an educational, empowering and positively rewarding relationship entered into by staff with their subordinates. But is the outcome of a TQM programme ‘in synch’ with its appealing rhetoric? This hotel case study of TQM practice offers insights into the problems which can arise when there is apparently only lip service paid to the corporate programme, and a naive interpretation attached to ‘employee resourcefulness’.

Islands and despots

This paper challenges a conventional wisdom: that when discussing political systems, small is democratic. And yet, can there be paradises without serpents? The presumed manageability of small island spaces promotes and nurtures dispositions for domination and control over nature and society. In such dark circumstances, authoritarian rule is a more natural fit than democracy. By adopting an inter-disciplinary perspective, this paper argues that small island societies may be wonderful places to live in, as long as one conforms to a dominant cultural code. Should one deviate from expected and established practices, the threat of ostracism is immense. Formal democratic institutions may and often do exist, and a semblance of pluralism may be manifest, but these are likely to be overshadowed by a set of unitarist and homogenous values and practices to which many significant social players, in politics and civil society, subscribe (at least in public).

The challenge of hypothermia 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.

Exploring sub-national island jurisdictions: An editorial introduction

Abstract Sub-national island jurisdictions (SNIJs) manifest diverse expressions of governance within typically asymmetrical relationships with a much larger state. Dubbed ‘federacies’ in the literature on federalism, these bilateral systems of self- and shared-rule arise almost exclusively on islands. The jurisdictional powers that island federacies enjoy are principally a result of bilateral negotiations between island political elites and a (usually benign) metropole. This bargain is struck against the backdrop of a particular colonial inheritance, a local ‘sub-nationalist’ culture, and the varying ambitions of local elites to win jurisdictional powers to advance ‘sub-national’ territorial interests. At other times, however, island autonomies arise as crafted, deliberate devolutions of central governments eager to exploit islands as ‘managed’ zones for economic or security-related activity in a globalised economy. In either case sub-national autonomies often show more success and resilience as non-sovereign island jurisdictions than their sovereign island-state counterparts.

Guest editorial introduction: islanding cultural geographies

Islands allure imagination, thought and affect. Imagination, thought and affect conjure islands. Literary imaginations create islands more than any other geographical form. Metaphorically, we use concepts of bounded and contained islands to think with, to an extent not commonly recognized. Emotions and desires are moved by and commonly move us towards or away from islands. Relatedly, in a deeper time scale, islands have played a central role in the evolution of life forms, spawning biocultural diversity. Torsten Hagerstrand recognized this in identifying the ‘dilemma which arises from expanding over given boundaries while remaining sheltered [as] the eternal theme of first biological evolution and then cultural’. Islands bind and shelter, for better or worse, by design or imposition. Commonly associated today with escape – from tedious, stressful and mundane everyday lives; from financial regulation and taxation; from the chaos, destruction and chemical cocktails of modern society – islands serve a host of other purposes on the maps of higher authorities: for locating military outposts, incarcerating political foes, dumping waste, expanding markets or engineering sites of social experimentation. If islandness is a particular state or condition of being, there is a corresponding action in islanding. We propose island as a verb, islanding as an action. With this collection of papers, we wish to contribute to the islanding of cultural geographies, most definitely not in the sense of bounding off and isolating, but rather in the sense of bringing the stream of cultural and social theory into communication with alternative currents, byways and eddies created by islands. We believe that the islanding – in this sense – of cultural geographies is underway, and that there are new spatial understandings that can be brought into play from the island perspective. Finally, we hope this collection will encourage your participation in islanding cultural geographies. (Less)

ISLANDS AS NOVELTY SITES

Being on the edge, being out of sight and so out of mind, exposes the weakness of mainstream ideas, orthodoxies, and paradigms and foments alternatives to the status quo. Islands are thus propelled as sites of innovative conceptualizations, whether of nature or human enterprise, whether virtual or real. They stand out as sites of novelty; they tend toward clairvoyance; they are disposed to act as advance indicators or extreme reproductions of what is present or future elsewhere. This article, which is essentially bibliographical, celebrates islands as the quintessential sites for experimentation, with reference to the physical sciences, the social sciences, and literature.