Small states, the Internet and development: Pathways to power in a global information society

The opening years of the third millennium are some of the most complex the modern states system has seen. The globalization of economies, political processes, cultures and social organization is changing national, regional and international landscapes in profound ways. Moreover, the transnational and destructive nature of terrorist and other criminal networks is adding to the challenge of modern-day existence. This dissertation is concerned with the difficulties the contemporary global design presents to small developing states, particularly the 15 members of the Caribbean Community. It is a theory-building thesis that explores a gap in the literature with regard to the relationship between the modern information revolution and the ability of small-state actors to exercise power and agency within the confines of a comparatively restrictive socio-political and economic global design. Indeed, Keohane and Nye (1998, 89) posit that the information revolution has not enhanced the power of small states but rather has had the opposite effect. Yet they do not provide satisfying reasons why this might be the case. Their speculative hypothesis fails to frame in a meaningful way the specific intervening and condition variables that affect the information revolution's ability to enhance small-state power. Thus, while this study corroborates their supposition, it argues that full-scale societal access to evolving digital technologies and telecommunication's frameworks represents the only condition under which the information revolution is likely to enhance the ability of small states to act in their enlightened self-interest within an increasingly restrictive world order. In arguing its case, the thesis develops and explicates a framework called the six-layered model of societal access built on physical, financial, basic, secure, policy and enlightened access to the new digital ICTs. It presents this model in two frameworks, one a simplified representation and the other a more complex relationship model suggestive of the ways in which the various access layers interact in a dynamic system that ultimately might lead to genuine innovation and knowledge creation. In the final chapter, the thesis employs generic scenario-building methodologies to imagine a range of possible future for Caricom states given the uncertainty implicit in the evolving global order.