This article brings to an end, at least for the time being, the segment of this series that has been dealing with globalization, governance, and the criminalisation of the state, based on the concrete experiences of Guyana. Even as I indicate this, momentous outcomes at the Ministerial Conference of the WTO at Cancun, Mexico are already being digested and preliminary assessments offered. Next week the series will return to these issues, which have previously engaged it. Much, however, has happened since March 9, twenty-eight weeks ago when this segment of the series started. This is a timely reminder to us all, lest we ever forget that change is one constant in life on Planet Earth. As it has been said before, we cannot shout and expect to be heard, “Stop the World, I want to get off.”

Last week I had highlighted three further theses. Thesis (10) stressed the absence of Government support for the public’s right to share economic information and participate in decision-making. This position is usually forcefully held, as was indeed indicated in the quote from SN, in which I cited the President as stating that the, “Unavailability of Government’s policy-intention policy documents with the IMF was deliberate as the information in the wrong hands could get distorted.” This I pointed out was “grist in the mill” for all those with vested interests that could not stand the light of public scrutiny. Thesis (11) emphasized the progressive narrowing of the scope for autonomous policy-making in the present global environment, which affects all states. This meant, I argued, that the process of the criminalisation of the state in Guyana is in substantial measure a product of the failure of the external agencies and donor governments to take a stand and live up to their own self-declared standards. Thesis (12) extended this consideration to “corruption in aid,” identified by several authors who have reviewed aid programmes to be a fairly common practice. I linked this corruption to the other corrupt practices found in aid-receiving countries like Guyana where criminalisation of the state is in process.

Thesis (13)

In the series I was at pains to point out that the criminalisation of the state is one of several possible forms of mutation or degeneration of the state, which can occur in this age of globalization. However, I sought to distinguish this state form from the more commonly referred to category of “failed states,” even though I did acknowledge they shared certain common traits, for example, widespread corruption and poor governance. This distinction between the two is a very important thesis (13) as I have sought above all to root the nature and form of the criminalized state in a particular historical and global context.

In the series I had shown how theorists of the ‘failed state’ had traced the origins of this category back to the failed states of Europe in the middle of the 17th century, when the state itself as a “Territorial entity in which the governed and the governing form a compact of reciprocal rights and obligations” was emerging. If, as I pointed out, the ‘failed state’ of the 17th and 21st centuries is treated as the same phenomenon then this category was devoid of any specific historical content or context and independent of the international environment.

There have been many varied explanations for the recent emergence of ‘failed states,’ including, exploitive colonialism, boundary disputes in post-colonial situations, the Cold War and superpower rivalry, and the global proliferation of small arms and light weapons. The latter do not of course cause ‘failed states,’ but their ready availability invites armed conflict as a means of settling political, racial, and cultural disputes within states. It is not surprising therefore that failed states invite external intervention, certainly more readily than would be the case in the criminalized state.

Despite a number of letters and offerings of literature on this topic by those who support the ‘failed state’ hypothesis, I remain convinced that the essential particularities of this category of state do not apply to Guyana.

Thesis 14: the authoritarian roots

The final thesis advanced (14) is that the criminalized state does not emerge spontaneously as it were, out of nowhere. I traced its origins to the “authoritarian state” about which I have written extensively and which prevailed in Guyana up to the return to ‘free and fair elections’ in 1992. This state was the immediate precursor to the insidious criminalisation of the state that has occurred. The authoritarian state itself was also the product of specific historical conditions and global environment, both of which have changed radically after 1992. This can be seen in a number of areas, for example the disappearance of much of the state property sector, the return to the ballot box as a means of changing government, and the spread of globalization. Some features of authoritarian rule, however, persist, giving flavour to the forms of rule and governance practised in the criminalized state.

The Achilles heel once more

In the series I gave a veiled warning borne out of experience, which I repeat (July 27). While the authoritarian state appeared to be a political solution to the circumstances facing the PNC at the time, in retrospect it can be seen to have intensified the problem of the economy and society; generated international coalitions of state and non-state actors against it; weakened the state, and therefore ultimately the PNC itself.

This too will be the fate of the criminalized state. In both instances the Achilles heel of these states is that they are political and social deformations, or perhaps more accurately political anachronisms and social pathologies in the age of globalization and democratic governance.