If they are not offered a clear stake in a reorganized development process, the expanding ranks of working-class or unemployed Belizeans are likely to resist moves toward efficiency. Development is already a polyvalent term, defined by many Belizeans more broadly than economic growth, and a local nongovernmental organization has already launched nationwide discussions aimed at redefining democracy in terms of greater participation by civil society in policymaking. The uncertainties that Belizeans confront are widely shared throughout the Caribbean, where the majority of countries produce a rather narrow range of commodities at relatively small scales and depend heavily on more developed countries both as suppliers of imports and as markets for their exports. His assertion suggests that the mutual causality between democracy and capitalist development posed by CBI discourse resonated widely in the Caribbean region. However, throughout the region, this logic and the social configurations that it helped to shape are confronted by the competing logic of efficiency and its aim to reconfigure Caribbean societies.
International support leans decidedly toward the latter.
Efforts to transform Caribbean societies to confront the transition from protected to free-trade regimes will have differential impacts on Caribbean populations by class and economic sector and in many cases likely by gender and race as well. Back to Main Belize Development Trust Page Maintained by Ray Auxillou , Silvia Pinzon, MLS , and Marty Casado . Please email with suggestions or additions.