2026/07/03 by Dana‐Marie Ramjit · 1 voice
Social Sciences · #Climate Change, Adaptation, Migration #Disaster Management and Resilience #Island Studies and Pacific Affairs
paper · doi:10.1002/pad.70100
openalex publication_date 2026/07/03 · openalex created_date 2026/07/05 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/05
ABSTRACT This paper examines how governance in Caribbean small island developing states (SIDS) is reshaped by enduring postcolonial legacies, recurrent crises, and deepening global interdependence. It highlights turbulence, understood as a structural, generative condition of fragmented and recombining authority, as its central analytical contribution. Using postinternationalism as a theoretical lens, the paper explores how sovereignty and authority are distributed across state institutions, civil society organizations, and regional bodies, producing hybrid governance configurations. Hybrid governance denotes analytically distinct arrangements in which authority is co‐constituted across state and non‐state actors through ongoing negotiation rather than fixed hierarchy, a formulation that differs from mere descriptive pluralism. The analysis identifies four interconnected dynamics structuring civil society–state relations: networked nationalism, turbulence as structural condition, the NGO–state node as a space for policy co‐production, and regionalism as flexible sovereignty. The paper also recognizes that hybrid configurations are not simply products of global interdependence: internal institutional factors, including administrative capacity constraints, shape these arrangements and must be incorporated into any rigorous account. Drawing on multiple empirical cases, including civil society's frontline roles in the COVID‐19 response, disaster management, digital advocacy, and cultural diplomacy, the paper shows that governance in the region is polycentric and multilevel, negotiated through networks that both complement and compensate for state capacity. Civil society emerges as both a co‐producer of policy and an accountability agent, while the state retains a central, if uneven, coordinating role. The study contributes to governance literature by demonstrating how postinternationalism and administrative capacity together clarify hybrid authority in vulnerable small‐state contexts.