Sovereignty and Material Welfare in Small Island Jurisdictions

Sovereignty and Material Welfare in Small Island Jurisdictions

Geoff BertramStout Centre Winter Research Seminar Series

3 August 2011

Three bits of conventional wisdom under threat in small islands

• The presumption that there are economies of scale and scope in government

• The presumption that there are crucial economies of scale and scope in economic development

• The presumption that developmental success in a small open economy requires strong trading performance on the export side to sustain material standards of living.

• Over the past three decades I have gradually worked my way up that list, using data on a widening set of small islands around the world.

Empirically observed unimportance of strong trade performance to sustain living standards

• MIRAB model: Bertram and Watters 1985; Bertram 1986, 1993, 1998, 2006.

• Strength of tourism as a leading sector: McElroy 2006

• Wide range of other options - “resourcefulness of jurisdiction: Baldacchino and Milne 2000; Baldacchino 2006

• Synthesis of nine development strategies with export-led growth only one: Bertram and Poirine 2009

Empirically observed failure of the ‘vulnerability paradigm’

• Small islands intuitively seen as vulnerable: Streeten 1993, Briguglio 1995

• Empirical work showed ‘vulnerability’ was inversely related to income per head: Armstrong et al 1998, Easterly and Kraay 2002, Sampson 2005

• Alternative model emphasises the power of local agency and the strategic-flexibility model of island success: Baldacchino and Bertram 2009

World Development indicators Top Ten Countries by 2007 GNI per capita (Atlas method)

1 Monaco 173,3102 Liechtenstein 111,690

3 Luxembourg 78,4704 Norway 76,1905 Channel Islands 68,6006 Iceland 58,4307 Switzerland 57,0208 Denmark 54,7009 Isle of Man 49,300

10 Sweden 48,900

http://data.worldbank.org/data-catalog/world-development-indicators accessed 2 August 2011

http://data.worldbank.org/data-catalog/world-development-indicators

That’s six very small countries, three of them islands, in the top ten

• WDI misses a lot of small islands: Bermuda, Aruba, Cayman Islands, Sint Maarten…..

• Easterly and Kraay 2002 p.2015: “if we control for the location by continent of all countries, whether they are oil producers, and whether they belong to the OECD, then small states are actually significantly richer than other states”.

• Diseconomies of scale and scope did not turn out crippling – again this led to the research on development strategies I mentioned earlier

Easterly and Kraay’s (2002) scatter relating population to income per capita

Easterly, W. and A. Kraay, 2002 “Small States, Small Problems? Income, Growth, andVolatility in Small States” World Development 28(11): 2013-2027, November

A by-product of the empirical work on size and import financing was the explanatory power of political status

• Strong statistical evidence that non-sovereign status is positive for the level of per capita GDP: Armstrong et al (1998, 2002), Bertram (2004), McElroy and Pearce (2006), and Sampson (2005 p.7)

• Sampson found, however, no significant effect of sovereignty status on the growth rate, and a negative effect on growth of being a small state, after controlling for sovereignty. Higher incomes today, in other words, seemed to be explained by past, not current, economic growth.

• Bertram (1987) – reviewed the various options for decolonisation: sovereign independence, integration with another

state, self-government in free association, and possible unspecified other options – argued the case that sovereign independence was likely to be an inferior option for very small islands– further argued that integration – if done on the right terms – could well be superior to free association.

• Bertram (2004): Integrated political status was estimated to add between $5,600 and $7,500 in USD to per capita income, relative to sovereign independence

G. Bertram, 2004, ‘On the convergence of small island economies with their metropolitan patrons’, World Development 32(2): 343-364, p.346

G. Bertram, 2004, ‘On the convergence of small island economies with their metropolitan patrons’, World Development 32(2): 343-364, p.352.

11

Relationship of Real Per Capita Income of Islands and their Metropolitan Patrons, Panel Data at Five-Yearly Intervals, Log Data

5

6

7

8

9

10

11

12

8.8 9 9.2 9.4 9.6 9.8 10 10.2 10.4 10.6

Log of Metropolitan Real GDP per capita

Log

of I

slan

d R

eal G

DP

per

capi

ta

IntegratedAssociatedSovereign

Source: Geoff Bertram, “On the Convergence of Small Island Economies with their Metropolitan Patrons”, World Development 32, 2 (February 2004) pp.343-364.

12


5

6

7

8

9

10

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12

8.8 9 9.2 9.4 9.6 9.8 10 10.2 10.4 10.6


Log

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DP

per

capi

ta



13


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12

8.8 9 9.2 9.4 9.6 9.8 10 10.2 10.4 10.6


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• I hypothesised that non-sovereign political status conferred advantages in political-economy terms, because by being integrated with a larger, usually richer, economy, a small island community could secure more favourable treatment in terms of financial aid, migration access, other market access, and ability to leverage off some functions of large-country government services such as education and health.

• Poirine (1999) demonstrated that in the 1990s not only did islands receive more aid per capita than larger, non-island countries, but that non-sovereign islands secured 36 times more bilateral aid than comparable sovereign independent island states.

• Feyer and Sacerdote 2009 began to nail down the long-term effects of colonialism – and hence the outcomes of decolonisation - across a sample of 81 islands

• They found “a robust positive relationship between colonial tenure and modern outcomes. “

• They also found that (2009 p.256) “Being a colony at the end of the twentieth century remains very positively associated with income.”

• For them, this was an accidental by-product of statistically establishing a separate result, that “Conditional on making it to the end of the century as a colony, years as a colony in the twentieth century are negatively associated with income.”

Feyrer, J. and B. Sacerdote, 2009, “Colonialism and Modern Income: Islands as Natural Experiments” Review of Economics and Statistics, May, 91(2): 245–262, p.251.

• By “remaining as a colony”, Feyrer and Sacerdote meant being a sub-national political unit, subordinated in some sense to a larger metropolitan power.

• But this misconstrues the issue

• Decolonisation does not necessarily have to consist of moving to a sovereign independent nation state.

• On the contrary, small islands have been the laboratory for exploring various ways of exiting from the colonial era, and sub-national status in the early twenty-first century is fully compatible with genuine exercise of autonomous local agency in economic and social development, as Godfrey Baldacchino and I have been arguing (Baldacchino and Bertram 2009).

• To develop and explore this issue, more historical data research is needed, and so I have been working towards assembling a data set to trace case-by-case outcomes from different sorts of decolonisation.

Some history

• Decolonisation was one of the great historical transformations of the twentieth century

• But it has to be borne in mind that in the Americas there was a similar political upheaval in the years 1775 to 1825, as a colonial order operated on the North and South American continents by Britain, Spain, Portugal and France was supplanted by a swarm of new sovereign nation states.

• The dominant process in both cases was installation of sovereign national governments in place of the colonial administrators

• That resulted in other options getting relatively little attention in the past half-century, so that sub-national jurisdictions tend to be confused with colonies

• The real issue is the extent of local autonomy, agency and initiative, and decolonisation in the sub-national context is a change in degree rather than in kind on these dimensions

Note that the decolonisation of the Americas ran aground on the islands of the Caribbean

• Only in Haiti did an independent nation state emerge

• Initially, the elites controlling the Caribbean islands threw in their lot with the metropolitan colonial powers as a matter of straightforward self-interest.

• Over time the number of groups that benefited from the colonial relationship grew to encompass a growing proportion of the islander population

• Eventually this developed into the great post-World War II burst of West Indian migration to Britain; between 1948 and 1970 about half a million people moved out of a population in the British West Indies of 3-4 million – about 15% out-migration.

• Spanish colonial rule in the Caribbean was broken by the USA in 1898 by conquest - but the outcome was one nation state (Cuba) and one sub-national jurisdiction (Puerto Rico) which remains cheerfully non-sovereign

• And then the USA went and bought the US Virgin Islands from Denmark (1917) – still an “unincorporated organized territory”

US inhabited island territories US State

Since Other history Hawaii 1959 Annexed by US 1898

Commonwealths of the United States Puerto Rico 1952 US colony 1898-1952 Northern Mariana Islands 1978 UN Trust Territory 1946-

78 Unincorporated organized territories Guam 1898 Conquered from Spain US Virgin Islands 1917 Purchased from Denmark Unincorporated unorganized territory American Samoa 1898 Extraterritorial jurisdiction Guantanamo Bay 1903 Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Territories_of_the_United_States#cite_note-0 accessed 1 August 2011

None of these really think of themselves as colonies any more

After World War II the UN progressively became the agent of decolonisation worldwide

• Chapter XI of the United Nations Charter contains a “Declaration Regarding Non-Self-Governing Territories”.

• Administering powers were to foster self-government and local political aspirations (Article 73(b)) and to report to the UN on their administration (Article 73(3))

• In 1946 a list was produced of such territories

• The list missed the Portuguese territories and several small British possessions, and did not include the trust and mandate territories which had separate reporting lines

• A further list was prepared in 1963, with substantially different coverage

The two UN lists provide me with two samples for analysis of the impact of decolonisation

• In each case I take out the small island countries as a representative sample of candidates for “decolonisation”

• I divide them between those that (as of 2011) have moved to become sovereign states, and those that have become sub-national island jurisdictions (SNIJs)

• I aim to compare the two groups on indicators such as population, income per head, life expectancy, early childhood mortality, imports per head

• This is only work in progress at this stage, though – the time-series data sets are still being assembled

Sample 1: the 1946 UN list• Under Article 73(e) of the UN Charter, administering powers were required to report

on non-self-governing territories under their control• In 1946 the UN produced a list of the territories covered by this requirement.• The list contained 64 named territories of which 33 were islands or groups of islands• Decomposing the island groups according to their eventual identities and excluding

Madagascar (but including its previous dependency the Comoros) the 33 island listings in the 1946 list contained 50 individual islands or archipelagoes with distinct identities

• The number drops to 46 if the Netherlands Antilles excluding Aruba but including Curacao are treated as a single entity (which will be done here, although the political unit was dissolved in 2010, since statistics usually refer to the group)

• Two of the islands, Singapore and Puerto Rico, are marginal as “small islands”, coming in under the 5 million population mark but much bigger than the rest of the sample

• Excluding those two gives 44 small islands that were non-self governing in 1946• Dividing them between those which are now sovereigns and those which are SNIJs

we can check whether it was the big ones that became independent (20) and the small ones that did not (26):

Island territory Component islands Colonial power Greenland Greenland Denmark Madagascar and Dependencies Madagascar France

Mayotte France

Comoros France

French Establishments in Oceania French Polynesia France

Wallis and Futuna France

New Caledonia and Dependencies New Caledonia France Saint-Pierre et Miquelon Saint-Pierre et Miquelon France New Hebrides New Hebrides France/UK Reunion Reunion France Netherlands Antilles Aruba Netherlands

Bonaire Netherlands

Sint Maarten Netherlands

Saba Netherlands

Sint Eustatius Netherlands

Surinam and Curacao Curacao Netherlands Cook Islands Cook Islands New Zealand

Niue New Zealand

Tokelau Tokelau New Zealand Bahamas Bahamas UK Barbados Barbados UK Bermuda Bermuda UK Cyprus Cyprus UK Dominica Dominica UK Falkland Islands Falkland Islands UK Fiji Fiji UK

Island territory Component islands Colonial power

Leeward Islands Antigua UK

British Virgin Islands UK

Montserrat UK

St Kitts-Nevis UK

Anguilla UK

Malta Malta UK Mauritius Mauritius UK St Helena and Dependencies St Helena UK

Tristan da Cunha UK

Ascension Island UK

St Lucia St Lucia UK St Vincent St Vincent UK Seychelles Seychelles UK Singapore Singapore UK Trinidad and Tobago Trinidad and Tobago UK High Commission Territories of the Western Pacific Gilbert and Ellice Islands UK

Solomon Islands Protectorate UK

Pitcairn Island UK

American Samoa American Samoa USA Guam Guam USA Hawaii Hawaii USA Puerto Rico Puerto Rico USA US Virgin Islands US Virgin Islands USA

Islands in the UN’s 1946 list of non-self-governing territories

First question: was it that bigger islands became sovereigns and smaller islands became SNIJs?

Ellic

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1,000,000

1,500,000

2,000,000

2,500,000

3,000,000

3,500,000

4,000,000

4,500,000

5,000,000

Island territories listed by the UN in 1946, arrayed by size and political status as at 2011

Sovereign states Sub-national jurisdictions

Popu

latio

n

Ellice

Islands -

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lu

St Kitts-N

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Dominica

Antigua a

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d0

200,000

400,000

600,000

800,000

1,000,000

1,200,000

1,400,000

Island territories listed by the UN in 1946, arrayed by size and political status as at 2011,

excluding Singapore and Puerto RicoSovereign states 2011 Sub-national jurisdictions 2011

Popu

latio

n

There’s certainly a tendency for larger entities to have become sovereign independent states, but there’s a wide range of sizes on

both sides

• The average population of the sovereigns at about 2006 is 371,000 and the average of the SNIJs is 145,000

• But the standard deviations are 394,000 and 293,000 respectively, which means the relationship of size with propensity to become sovereign is pretty weak

• Ask now how the two sets of islands rank in terms of GDP per capita half a century after being listed by the UN in 1946

Independence and GDP per capita• There’s an immediate data problem: the big databases

(Penn World Tables, World Development Indicators, UN National Accounts Statistics) cover sovereign states well but only a few sub-national jurisdictions

– PWT incudes Bermuda but none of the other SNIJs– WDI has no sub-nationals at all– UN National Accounts Statistics cover Greenland, French Polynesia, New

Caledonia, Aruba and Netherlands Antilles, Cook Islands, Bermuda, British Virgin Islands, Montserrat and Anguilla – that’s ten entities, or nine of the 25 SNIJs in the earlier charts (we now separate Aruba from the rest of the Netherlands Antilles); but data is not PPP-adjusted

• The CIA World Factbook covers all the SNIJs with PPP estimates of per capita GDP but is a bit dodgy

Try first the UN data

Com

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mon

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nds P

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us

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sh V

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Cook

Isla

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tser

rat

0

10,000

20,000

30,000

40,000

50,000

60,000

70,000

80,000

Per capita GDP, US dollars at 2005 prices, UN Statistics Division data

Sovereigns SNIJs

US $

at 2

005

price

s, no

t PPP

adj

uste

d

Now the CIA’s 2005 PPP-adjusted data as collated by McElroy and Parry

Comoros

Ellice

Islands -

Tuva

luTo

nga

St Vincent

Dominica

Seych

elles

Antigua and Barb

uda

Mauritius

Bahamas

Cyprus

Bermuda

Aruba

French

Polynesi

a

Netherl

ands Antilles

Saint-P

ierre

et Miquelo

nNiue

Wallis a

nd Futuna

Mayotte

Trista

n da Cunha

Toke

lau0

5,000

10,000

15,000

20,000

25,000

30,000

35,000

40,000

45,000

Per capita GDP, US dollars at 2005 prices, CIA dataSovereigns SNIJs

US$

at 2

005

price

s (PP

P ad

just

ed)

Still looks as though SNIJs ended up ahead• Weighting each entity’s observation by population and then taking the

population-weighted average for those that became sovereign and those that became SNIJs gives some confidence that the result is robust

• But the data are still not good enough to support much statistical sophistication

• The good sources - PWT and WDI - have virtually no SNIJ observations, so we’re stuck with comparisons from the other two sources

• UN Statistical Division is probably better data, but CIA has at least tried PPP adjustment

• Summary findings:

McElroy-Parry CIA PWT 6.3 WDI UN Statistical data current US$

0

5,000

10,000

15,000

20,000

25,000

30,000

35,000

40,000

45,000

50,000

Population-weighted average per capita GDP: various sources and samples from 1946 UN list

Sovereigns SNIJs

US$

at 2

005

Sam

ple

= 19

Sam

ple

= 25

Sam

ple

= 19

Sam

ple

= 1

Sam

ple

= 17

Sam

ple

= 0 Sa

mpl

e =

19 Sam

ple

= 10

Other indicators of welfare• Life expectancy and child mortality both seem to correlate with material

welfare

• The UN life expectancy statistical database at http://unstats.un.org/unsd/demographic/products/dyb/dyb2008.htm has 35 of the 46 islands in the 1946 list (including Singapore and Puerto Rico), including 17 SNIJs

• The WHO life expectancy database at http://apps.who.int/ghodata/?vid=710# has 2009 data for 21 islands but only 2 of them are SNIJs

• Although the UN data is more mixed in its dates – mainly around 2000 – I use it here to get coverage except for the Comoros where the WHO figure is used (no UN figure)

• This gives me 19 sovereigns and 17 SNIJs

http://unstats.un.org/unsd/demographic/products/dyb/dyb2008.htm

http://apps.who.int/ghodata/?vid=710

Comoros

Gilbert

Islan

ds - Kirib

ati

Solomon Isl

ands

Ellice

Islands -

Tuva

lu Fiji

Vanuatu

St Kitts-N

evis

St Vincen

tTo

nga

Trinidad

and To

bago

Baham

as

Mauriti

us

St Lu

cia

Barbad

os

Seych

elles

Antigua a

nd Barbuda

DominicaMalt

a

Cyprus

Singap

oreHaw

aii

Bermuda

Guam

Anguilla

Puerto Rico

Reunion

New Cale

donia

Netherl

ands A

ntilles

French

Polynesi

a

St Hele

na

Wallis a

nd Futuna

British

Virgin Isl

ands

Aruba

American

Samoa

Niue

Cook Islan

ds

Greenlan

d0.0

10.0

20.0

30.0

40.0

50.0

60.0

70.0

80.0

90.0

Life expectancy at birth c 2000Sovereign SNIJs

Data from http://unstats.un.org/unsd/demographic/products/dyb/dyb2008.htm downloaded 2 August 2011 plus (for Comoros) http://apps.who.int/ghodata/?vid=710# accessed 2 August 2011 .

• There is also data at http://unstats.un.org/unsd/demographic/products/socind/health.htm showing life expectancy estimates mainly for 2010-2015 but a few older figures) for 17 sovereigns and 16 SNIJs

• This gives a second chart with slightly different samples

http://unstats.un.org/unsd/demographic/products/socind/health.htm

http://unstats.un.org/unsd/demographic/products/socind/health.htm

Gilbert

Islan

ds - Kirib

ati

Comoros

Ellice

Islands -

Tuva

lu

Solomon Isl

ands Fiji

St Kitts-N

evis

Trinidad

and To

bago

Vanuatu

St Vincen

tTo

nga

Mauriti

us

St Lucia

Baham

as

Barbad

os

Cypru

sMalt

a

Singa

pore

US Virg

in Islan

ds

Puerto Rico

Mayotte

Reunion

New Cale

donia

Netherl

ands A

ntilles

Guam

French Polyn

esia

Aruba

Wallis a

nd Futuna

St Hele

na

Cook Isla

nds

American

Samoa

Niue

Greenlan

d

Tokel

au0

10

20

30

40

50

60

70

80

90

Life expectancy at birth 2010Sovereigns SNIJs

Data from http://unstats.un.org/unsd/demographic/products/socind/health.htm accessed 2 August 2011

Here again the SNIJs seem, if anything, a nose in front.

• On a population-weighted basis, in the first chart the sovereigns have average life expectancy at birth of 74.8 years and the SNIJs have an average of 77.7 years

• In the second, more up-to-date, data set, the population-weighted averages are 76.5 years for the sovereigns and 76.83 for the SNIJs

• This provisionally says that the SNIJs have certainly come out no worse, and may have come out ahead

How about trends over time?

• An historical supplement to the UN Demographic Yearbook at http://unstats.un.org/unsd/demographic/products/dyb/dybhist.htm has historical data from 1948 to 1997

• The coverage matches some of the 1946 UN sample of small islands

• A quick plot of the data (next slide) indicates that – there is convergence over time (low starters improve more rapidly than high starters)– Territories that started out with low life expectance were somewhat more likely to

become sovereigns– Solomon Islands, Trinidad and Tobago, and Vanuatu, may be slipping in the past

decade, whereas no SNIJs slipped– SNIJs are among the best performers but have shared the space with plenty of

sovereigns– There does seem some basis for suggesting that the poorest colonies were especially

apt to get independence

http://unstats.un.org/unsd/demographic/products/dyb/dybhist.htm

1948

-50

1950

-195

5

1955

-196

0

1960

-196

5

1965

-197

0

1970

-197

5

1975

-198

0

1980

-198

5

1985

-199

0

1990

-199

5

2010

-15

30.0

40.0

50.0

60.0

70.0

80.0

90.0

Life Expectancy Data 1948-2010 for UN 1946 list countries Hawaii

Seychelles

Antigua and Barbuda

Dominica

Saint Lucia

St Vincent & Grenadines

Singapore

Fiji

Bermuda

American Samoa

Cook Islands

Cyprus

Malta

Puerto Rico

Netherlands Antilles

Bahamas

Guam

Trinidad & Tobago

Barbados

New Caledonia

Reunion

Greenland

St Kitts & Nevis

Kiribati

Mauritius

French Polynesia

Solomon Islands

Vanuatu

Comoros

Here’s the movie…

Kiribati

Comoros

Solomon Isl

ands Fiji

Trinidad

& To

bago

Vanuatu

Seychell

es

St Vincen

t & Gren

adines

Mauriti

us

Antigua a

nd Barbuda

Dominica

St Kitts &

Nevis

Saint Lu

cia

Baham

as

Barbad

os

Cypru

sMalt

a

Singa

poreHaw

aii

Puerto Rico

Reunion

Netherl

ands A

ntilles

New Cale

doniaGuam

French Polyn

esia

Cook Isla

nds

American

Samoa

Greenlan

d

Bermuda

0

10

20

30

40

50

60

70

80

90

Life expectancy at birth 1950-55

SovereignsSNIJs

Kiribati

Comoros

Solomon Isl

ands Fiji

Trinidad

& To

bago

Vanuatu

Seychell

es

St Vincen

t & Gren

adines

Mauriti

us

Antigua a

nd Barbuda

Dominica

St Kitts &

Nevis

Saint Lu

cia

Baham

as

Barbad

os

Cypru

sMalt

a

Singa

poreHaw

aii

Puerto Rico

Reunion

Netherl

ands A

ntilles

New Cale

doniaGuam

French Polyn

esia

Cook Isla

nds

American

Samoa

Greenlan

d

Bermuda

0

10

20

30

40

50

60

70

80

90


SovereignsSNIJs

Sample 2: the 1963 UN list

• The UN role in decolonisation became strongly pro-active in 1960• Resolution 1514 set out a Declaration on Granting of Independence to Colonial

Countries and Peoples• Resolution 1541 spelled out the types of political change that could relieve

governing powers of their reporting obligations under Article 73(e). • In 1961, General Assembly Resolution 1654 established a Special Committee to

push decolonisation along.• In 1963 a new list of non-self-governing territories was produced

– This list had 65 territories, of which 40 were small islands or collections of small islands– When decomposed into identifiable islands and island groups the list contains 42– Of these, 26 had been on the 1946 list and 16 were new additions – mainly the Portuguese

island colonies, the US Pacific Trust Territories, Nauru, HongKong, and several small Caribbean islands that missed the cut in 1946 or were buried in larger entities then

• Spectacular disappearances since1946 were the French territories which were accepted as having been decolonised by integration into the French Republic in 1947, and the Netherlands Antilles which had been similarly integrated to the Kingdom of the Netherlands in 1951

• The same procedures have been repeated for the 1963 sample

Listed entity Constituent islands Administering power

New Hebrides Vanuatu France & UK Cook Islands Cook Islands New Zealand Niue Niue New Zealand Tokelau Tokelau New Zealand Bahamas Bahamas UK Barbados Barbados UK Bermuda Bermuda UK Dominica Dominica UK Falkland Islands Falkland Islands UK Fiji Fiji UK Antigua Antigua UK

British Virgin Islands British Virgin Islands UK

Montserrat Montserrat UK St Kitts-Nevis-Anguilla

St Kitts-Nevis-Anguilla UK

Malta Malta UK Mauritius Mauritius UK St Helena and Dependencies St Helena UK St Lucia St Lucia UK St Vincent St Vincent UK Seychelles Seychelles UK Singapore Singapore UK Gilbert and Ellice Islands

Gilbert Islands - Kiribati UK

Listed entity Constituent islands Administering power

Ellice Islands - Tuvalu UK

Solomon Islands Protectorate Solomon Islands UK Pitcairn Island Pitcairn Island UK American Samoa American Samoa USA Guam Guam USA US Virgin Islands US Virgin Islands USA Cape Verde Islands Cape Verde Islands Portugal Sao Tome e Principe Sao Tome e Principe Portugal Macau Macau Portugal Cocos (Keeling) Islands Cocos (Keeling) Islands Australia Cayman Islands Cayman Islands UK Grenada Grenada UK Hong Kong Hong Kong UK Turks and Caicos Islands

Turks and Caicos Islands UK

New Guinea New Guinea Australia Nauru Nauru Australia Trust Territory of the Pacific

Federation of Micronesia USA

Marshall Islands USA

Palau USA

Northern Marianas Islands USA

Islands in the UN’s 1963 list of non-self-governing territories

French Overseas Territories and Departments Overseas Departments Other history Since Guadeloupe 1946 Martinique 1946 French Guiana* 1946 Reunion 1946 Mayotte 2011 TOM 1976-2003 Overseas Collectivities French Polynesia 2003 TOM 1946-2003 Saint-Pierre et Miquelon 2003 TOM 1976-2003 Wallis and Futuna 2003 TOM 1961-2003 St Martin 2003 Formerly part of Guadeloupe St Barthelemy 2003 Formerly part of Guadeloupe Special Collectivity New Caledonia 1999 TOM 1946-1998

The only non-island Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Overseas_departments_and_territories_of_France accessed 1 August 2011

• The new sample contains 24 territories that have became sovereign states and 18

• that are SNIJs.

• Again there are three large territories with 2011 populations around the 5 million mark: Hong Kong, Singapore, and Papua New Guinea

• Excluding these gives the second chart when we ask whether it was just big islands that became independent

Naur

uEl

lice

Islan

ds -

Tuva

luPa

lau

St K

itts-

Nevi

s-An

guill

aM

arsh

all I

sland

sDo

min

icaAn

tigua

Gilb

ert I

sland

s - K

iriba

tiSe

yche

lles

Gren

ada

St V

ince

ntFe

dera

tion

of M

icron

esia

Sao

Tom

e e

Prin

cipe

St Lu

ciaVa

nuat

uBa

rbad

osBa

ham

asM

alta

Cape

Ver

de Is

land

sSo

lom

on Is

land

sFi

jiM

auriti

usSi

ngap

ore

New

Gui

nea

Hong

Kon

gM

acau

Guam

US V

irgin

Isla

nds

Nort

hern

Mar

iana

s Isla

nds

Berm

uda

Amer

ican

Sam

oaCa

yman

Isla

nds

Turk

s and

Cai

cos I

sland

sBr

itish

Virg

in Is

land

sCo

ok Is

land

sSt

Hel

ena

Mon

tser

rat

Falk

land

Isla

nds

Niue

Toke

lau

0

1,000,000

2,000,000

3,000,000

4,000,000

5,000,000

6,000,000

7,000,000

Island territories listed by the UN in 1963, arrayed by size and political status as at 2011

Sovereigns SNIJs

Popu

latio

n

Naur

uEl

lice

Islan

ds -

Tuva

luPa

lau

St K

itts-

Nevi

s-An

guill

aM

arsh

all I

sland

sDo

min

icaAn

tigua

Gilb

ert I

sland

s - K

iriba

tiSe

yche

lles

Gren

ada

St V

ince

ntFe

dera

tion

of M

icron

esia

Sao

Tom

e e

Prin

cipe

St Lu

ciaVa

nuat

uBa

rbad

osBa

ham

asM

alta

Cape

Ver

de Is

land

sSo

lom

on Is

land

sFi

jiM

auriti

usM

acau

Guam

US V

irgin

Isla

nds

Nort

hern

Mar

iana

s Isla

nds

Berm

uda

Amer

ican

Sam

oaCa

yman

Isla

nds

Turk

s and

Cai

cos I

sland

sBr

itish

Virg

in Is

land

sCo

ok Is

land

sSt

Hel

ena

Mon

tser

rat

Falk

land

Isla

nds

0

200,000

400,000

600,000

800,000

1,000,000

1,200,000

1,400,000

Island territories listed by the UN in 1963, arrayed by size and po-litical status as at 2011, excluding ingapore, HongKong and PNG

Sovereigns SNIJs

Popu

latio

n

Here selection by size seems more apparent

• Again, however, the range of sizes in both groups is very wide

• With HongKong, Singapore and PNG excluded,– The sovereigns have mean population of 245,000 with

standard deviation of 302,000– The SNIJs have mean population of 75,000 with

standard deviation 126,000

• Conclusion is still that there is a lot more than size driving the choice of political status

GDP per capita today

• Again there are data problems with only 2 SNIJs from the list in the Penn World Tables 6.3, and only 3 in the WDI

• So again at this stage I’m using the CIA and UN data

New

Gui

nea

Sao

Tom

e e

Prin

cipe

Solo

mon

Isla

nds

Gilb

ert I

sland

s - K

iriba

ti

Vanu

atu

Cape

Ver

de Is

land

s

Fede

ratio

n of

Mic

rone

sia

Ellic

e Is

land

s - T

uval

u

Mar

shal

l Isla

nds

Nau

ru Fiji

St V

ince

nt

Dom

inic

a

Mau

ritius

St L

ucia

Gre

nada

Pala

u

St K

itts-

Nev

is-An

guill

a

Antig

ua

Seyc

helle

s

Barb

ados

Mal

ta

Baha

mas

Sing

apor

e

Caym

an Is

land

s

Briti

sh V

irgin

Isla

nds

Hon

g Ko

ng

Mac

au

Turk

s and

Cai

cos I

sland

s

Cook

Isla

nds

Mon

tser

rat

0

10,000

20,000

30,000

40,000

50,000

60,000

Per capita GDP at 2005, US dollars at 2005 prices, UN data

Sovereigns SNIJs

2005

US4

Gilbert

Islands -

Kiribati

Sao Tome e Prin

cipe

Solomon Isl

ands

St Helena

Vanuatu

Grenada

St Lu

cia Fiji

Seych

elles

Palau

Mauritius

Bahamas

Singapore

Hong Kong

Falkla

nd Islands

Cayman Isl

ands

US Virg

in Islands

Turks and Caico

s Islands

Niue

Montserra

t0

10,000

20,000

30,000

40,000

50,000

60,000

Per capita GDP at 2005, US dollars at 2005 prices, CIA data

Sovereigns SNIJs

2005

US$

McElroy-Parry CIA PWT 6.3 WDI UN Statistical data current US$

0

5,000

10,000

15,000

20,000

25,000

30,000

35,000

40,000

45,000

50,000

Population-weighted average per capita GDP: various sources and samples from 1963 UN list

Sovereigns SNIJs

US$

at 2

005

Sam

ple

= 25

Sam

ple

= 15

Sam

ple

= 22

Sam

ple

= 2

Sam

ple

= 18

Sam

ple

= 3

Sam

ple

= 24

Sam

ple

= 7

Again all the results point in the same direction despite diversity of sources and gaps in the data

• There’s a wide spread of incomes in both sets of islands, which means one can’t say that any particular island would necessarily have ended up better by changing its historical track out of colonialism

• But in terms of tendencies, the SNIJ success stories seem to outnumber the sovereigns

The next stage is to make serious progress on time-series data for GDP per head and imports per head

• One possibility will be pair-wise comparisons of entities that share some characteristic but followed different paths. There the bi problem is to make sure international comparabiity is maintained….

• Look, e.g., at the UN data for three former French-dominated Pacific territories….

19651967

19691971

19731975

19771979

19811983

19851987

19891991

19931995

19971999

20012003

20052007

20090

5,000

10,000

15,000

20,000

25,000

30,000

35,000

UN Statistical Division GNI per capita US$ at 2005 prices

New CaledoniaFrench PolynesiaVanuatu

Sovereignty and Material Welfare in Small Island Jurisdictions

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