PUBLIC ADMINISTRATION AND DEVELOPMENT, VOL. 8, 169-181 (1988)

Government administration in a very small microstate: developing the Turks and Caicos Islands

JOHN E. KERSELL

University of Watertoo

SUMMARY

As in the preceding articles on Bermuda and the Cayman Islands (Kersell, 1985 and 1987), our present purpose is simply to describe how a Commonwealth microstate, the Turks and Caicos Islands, has adapted the principles of the Westminster-Whitehall model to its particular conditions. It is even smaller than Bermuda or Cayman, and far less prosperous. Thus it has found it necessary to further scale down both jobs (to create employment) and services (to economize). To accomplish the latter, it must also omit altogether a number of government activities. The Turks and Caicos Islands are the least developed as compared to Bermuda, Cayman, or even the British Virgin Islands. It is interesting that they alone have not only tried to conserve their traditional economic base in fisheries, but have also launched vigorously into mariculture on several fronts. Later than Bermuda and Cayman, they have turned to tourism and offshore finance in order to develop economically. The base for such development, as elsewhere, is their people-a resource threatened more seriously than elsewhere by the North American appetite for illicit drugs.

INTRODUCTION

The problems of government administration in a microstate are magnified for a mini-microstate such as the Turks and Caicos Islands (TCI).

In general microstates, even large ones of 200,000-300,000 people, experience diseconomies in trying to provide security regulations and services on a small scale. For a very small country of 8000-9000, such as TCI, per-capita costs escalate, often beyond the ability of the government to handle them. Partially because of the international drug trade, for example, the TCI annually spend, on police services, between $110 and $120 for every adult and child. That amounts to about half of the usual budget deficit which is made up by Britain in the form of a grant-in-aid.

Some of the implications of Professor David Murray’s article in the 1981 volume of this journal are that microstates have experimented with a range of quasi- solutions to this kind of problem:

1. Follow the Whitehall model with scaled-down jobs and one employee per job. This is not a ‘solution’, but helps solve unemployment problems (e.g.) as in TCI .

2. Eliminate some government activities altogether (e.g.) Bermuda has no public workmen’s compensation insurance.

Professor Kersell teaches Public Administration and Management at the University of Waterloo, Ontario, Canada. Much of the information contained in this article was disclosed in confidence. It can be published, but its sources cannot be acknowledged.

@ 1988 by John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. 027 1-2075/88/02016P-13$06.50

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3. Scale down some or most services (e.g.) the TCI have very few street lights, road signs are not maintained, and windows in government offices are rarely washed.

4. Scale down particular jobs, and let each public servant do two or more. Policemen can act as customs and immigration officers-and do so on many small islands in the TCI.

5. Do not define jobs at all. Employ good people, show them what is to be done and let them define their own tasks and carry them out. Heap praise and recognition on those who prove to be star performers.

6. Put together ‘teams’ of good people to take responsibility for entire operations (‘games’?). In a system such as TCI’s the Minister might be roughly analogous to the manager, the permanent secretary like a coach leading his various captains and their team mates into spirited action. Team spirit can be raised by the use of participating management techniques on the North American, Japanese or traditional West African model -or some combination or variation thereof.

The use of teams would require a good deal of mutual trust and respect, especially between the political ministers and their permanent secretaries. If that existed, or could be developed, administrative teams could do many of the jobs required even by a welfarist government with relatively few public servants.

No microstate, of course, tries to experiment with all of these possible solutions, and some attempt none of them. In this article, however, we shall look at how the TCI try to deal with their diseconomies. Readers might bear in mind Professor Murray’s implications, and note how they apply to this interesting and very tiny country.

GENERAL

The Turks and Caicos Islands (TCI) were not first settled directly from Europe. They were almost literally a colony of a colony, Bermuda, which developed in the Islands the now-defunct salt industry. It was one corner of Bermuda’s triangular trade which had the Canadian Maritimes as its other destination (Kersell, 1985, p. 134). Bermudians brought with them, of course, their rather different understand- ing of British institutions and how to work them. Thus, like Canadian provinces and Australian states, the TCI have a second-generation parliamentary system or, at least, one based on second-generation foundations which had later influences from Jamaica and the Bahamas.

The Cabinet, nevertheless, remains the centre of political gravity, the prize sought by the competing parties. Though the private enterprise party (the Progressive National Party or PNP) was in office from 1980 until 1986, the populist People’s Democratic Movement (PDM) held power from the granting of the present Constitution in 1976 until 1980 (in Bermuda the social democrats have yet to win an election-Kersell, 1985, p. 379).

Though government is by far the largest employer, its limited revenue has ensured that bureaucracy has not become ‘overweight, overpowerful . . . [or] uncontrolled’. The TCI are not an appendage of a bureaucracy, and politicians are still able to innovate. No branch of government is so sophisticated as to limit the

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application of ‘ordinary knowledge’ (C. E. Lindblom and D. K. Cohen, 1979, as quoted by Murray, 1981, p. 249). Small is beautiful in this emerging savings sanctuary.

Again in this article ‘administration’ will mean the combination of politically determined goals with managerial means appropriate to their achievement. Goals, we assume, have to do with both problems and values. These cannot be understood without reference to past events and their environmental setting.

HISTORICAL BACKGROUND

If Christopher Columbus did not make his first landfall on Grand Turk, he certainly ‘discovered’ the Islands, for he pioneered the Turks Island Passage, a premier gateway to the New World. The Islands may not have been effectively ‘claimed’, however, until 1512 when Ponce de Leon landed. In that same year they were visited by Sir Richard Grenville en route to Virginia. By this date the original 4000 Arawak natives had been carried off to slavery in Hispaniola. In the 1670s Bermudians began to visit the Turks (named by the Spanish after the pirates who frequented them) to gather (rake) salt. Some undoubtedly stayed throughout the year and certainly many of their slaves did. In the 1780s about 4000 Southern Loyalists and their slaves settled on various of the Caicos (from the Spanish for ‘Cays’) but their plantations were beleaguered by drought and weevils. The Americans went elsewhere. Their slaves could not.

In 1799 the Islands were put under Bahamian control. During the Napoleonic wars they were briefly occupied by the French whom even Nelson failed to dislodge. In 1848 they were granted their own legislature and a ‘president’ to administer the government. That system was too expensive, so in 1873 the TCI became, like Cayman, a dependency of Jamaica, and remained so until 1962.

GEOGRAPHY

Compared to Bermuda and Cayman, the TCI are geographically large. Their more than 30 islands (only eight of which are inhabited) have an area of about 430 km2 (cf. Bermuda’s 47 and Cayman’s fewer than 80 km2). They lie about 80 km east of Inagua, the end of the Bahama chain, and 160 km north of Haiti. So they, like Bermuda, are in the Atlantic (some 1300 km SSW of Bermuda and 900 km SE of Miami), not in the Caribbean, but they are properly in the British West Indies. They are tropical, though tempered by the south-east trade winds which blow throughout the year. Surrounded by coral reefs they are, like the Bahamas to which they geographically belong, extremely flat and relatively treeless. Their most beautiful features are their magnificent underwater coral gardens. Temperatures range between a low of about 16°C on a cool winter’s night to the mid-30s on a hot summer day, but the brisk trade winds make these temperatures feel a couple or more degrees cooler. The Turks and South Caicos average only 52 cm of rain per year, so water is preciously guarded and agriculture is impractical. It was here that salt was dried from sea water until the mid-1950s. The rest of the Caicos receive up to twice that average rainfall, and with their smaller populations can grow sufficient crops of fruit and vegetables to meet their own needs. With its richer soil and ample

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water, North Caicos can send good-quality crops to Providenciales’ Club Med and other tourist resorts, and to the southern islands.

ECONOMIC ACTIVITIES

The major food-producing activity is, and always has been, harvesting the sea. The ‘belongers’ of the TCI, however, are turning to sea farming, in particular of conch and spider crabs, before natural stocks are depleted. This puts them decades ahead, conceptually, of both Bermuda and Cayman. They are maintaining a third leg of their economic stool before they have fully developed tourist and financial services. In absolute terms, of course, the Islands are still poor and dependent on well-to-do Americans for developing conch farming and on the US Smithsonian Institution for help in crab culture. Recent governments have been facilitating private interests, mostly from abroad, in establishing tourism and finance.

Though the TCI have far fewer international companies, banks and other financial institutions, their numbers until 1985 were growing at a faster rate than Cayman’s or Bermuda’s. Eschewing quantitative projections, we could hazard a suggestion that if Bermuda is the tax haven of yesterday, and Cayman of today, the TCI may yet be tomorrow’s savings sanctuary (a term inspired by John Houseman, an English ‘belonger’). This sanctuary will remain on Grand Turk, where Government is adamant in protecting its strong confidentiality legislation from U.S. pressures. Fishing, including for lobsters as long as they last, will be centred on South Caicos and Providenciales, or ‘Provo’. That island and North Caicos are by nature best endowed to appeal to tourists. With Club Med ‘Turkoise’ an unmitigated success, and a world-class jetport in operation, tourism could go far before it reaches its limit. A major public relations effort, to be mounted soon, could provide a useful fillip.

By contrast to Bermuda and Cayman, the TCI have some natural resources additional to their people. As we have seen, they have not exhausted the sea before starting to renew its bounty. It is estimated that crab culture alone could gross up to U.S.$25 million per year in export revenues. The long-term results of the ‘EpConch Centre’ may not bring as much monetary benefit, but they could be invaluable in helping to maintain protein levels in the diet of West Indians. That would be a great benefit, for adequate protein is essential to the learning process which, in turn, is critical to developing people’s abilities.

Aragonite, a rare form of sand used in Portland cement and in paint, glass and some steel manufacturing, is found offshore in West Caicos. Its development by offshore interests could bring the government U.S.$*/z million in annual royalties. It could also bring the first inhabitants to that Island-to be followed perhaps by diving tourists, for the undersea gardens there are reportedly unrivalled in dramatic beauty.

THE HUMAN RESOURCE BACKGROUND

While the development of these physical resources still requires attention from government, as does the building of inter-island causeways to facilitate travel and

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trade, like in Bermuda and Cayman the resource with the greatest development potential is people. Turks and Caicos have fewer than 9000 ‘belongers’, or citizens. More than one-third of them live on tiny, 18 km2, Grand Turk where, since the closing of the second U.S. base, there has been considerable unemployment. The problem is not, however, as much density of population as lack of education. More so than in Cayman, quality education has to be made available to adults as well as children. They can absorb it effectively, for they are healthy, very intelligent, optimistic and ambitious. The problems here are ponderous and should be tackled in conjunction with those of human resource planning. What is at stake is the successful development of tourism and especially the savings sanctuary. The third prop of the economy, mariculture, can be secured by a relatively few outside experts training fishermen to be sea farmers.

THE ADMINISTRATIVE PROCESS

As in other parliamentary systems of government the cabinet, or Executive Council, was the keystone. Before 1986, when he had to temporarily assume full authority, the Governor of the TCI had not yet formally turned over very much of his discretionary authority, and none of his constitutional responsibility, to his elected Ministers. The main reason for this is that, unlike Bermuda and Cayman, the TCI are dependent on annual grants-in-aid from Britain to balance their budgets. Until that changes, the TCI will remain a quasi-parliamentary Crown Colony in which the Governor and his Financial Secretary will control most major expenditures and the bulk of significant revenues. He may again ‘consult’ his elected advisors, but he will not feel bound to follow their advice, especially on finance, defence, external affairs, internal security or the public service, for which he has particular constituional responsibility (Constitution, 1976, Sections 7 and 14).

This reality has greater advantage for those who invest in the TCI savings sanctuary than the equivalent Caymanian faqade. Wisdom would seek to preserve it even after budgets are balanced, especially in the aftermath of the Chief Minister’s conviction on drugs charges and his successor’s removal from office on grounds of corruption. Like Cayman’s cabinet, TCI’s was the Executive Council but, in the TCI, unabbreviated to ‘Exco’. As in Cayman, four of its seven members were elected politicians-but due to a two-party system somewhat like Bermuda’s, they were the leaders of the majority party. These people may not have, it is true, as much education or experience as the three official members (usually career civil servants in the Foreign and Commonwealth Office) but they have common loyalty to their party leader, the Chief Minister, and a considerable political base as leaders of the party with the greatest popular support in the preceding general election.

Prior to July 1986, when the Governor resumed all powers, little was done by the Executive Council that was intolerable to its elected members, despite the Governor’s strong constitutional authority and the necessity for grants from Britain. There is every indication that, apart from the crisis of March 1985 (when the Chief Minister and two colleagues were arrested in Miami and briefly delayed their resignations), relations among the Governor and his Chief Minister and his political appointees had been harmonious and productive regardless of party or

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personality. Honest differences of opinion were bound to have occurred but, as in all parliamentary cabinets, were equally sure to have been resolved in the light of political realism and the traditions of collective responsibility.

Informality remains a hallmark of the TCI Executive Council, as it is of Cayman’s, not only because of its smallness but also because the Constitution provides, in Section 17, for attendance by outside specialists from either the public or private sector. Preliminary work on executive papers is not facilitated, as it is in Cayman, by close proximity of the Governor’s, Ministerial and Officals’ offices, but necessary liaison is effected nevertheless. Only the Governor’s office is much out of the way, and it is only a few minutes’ drive from the others.

The political-administrative interface occurs, as in other parliamentary systems, between Ministers and their permanent secretaries. Ministers are supposed to be concerned primarily with political desirability tempered by administrative con- siderations. In TCI the tempering is too often left exclusively to the permanent secretaries, who are preoccupied with considerations of administrative feasibility and suspicions of the political machinations of their principals.

This is a critical fault which would best be remedied by Ministers developing a closer working relationship with their public servants. Public servants might strive to put aside concerns for their personal job security. In the TCI the state is truly micro, for though government employs a quarter of the labour force on a full-time basis the number is fewer than 750 persons. Especially with a laissez-faire party in office, jobs are also small. It has been advocated by John Houseman (Turks and Cuicos News, 21 February 1985) that the public service could be halved, presumably by letting the remaining half do twice the number of jobs. That is an option open to under-utilized microbureaucracies, but the political-administrative leadership of the TCI has apparently opted for the politically more desirable option of dealing with a major part of the unemployment problem by keeping relatively large numbers on the public payroll rather than on a public dole. There is another political consideration. In this small country patronage has been a significant factor in elections. Even the Public Service Advisory Board is generally used as a source of patronage.

This does not mean that there are not significant numbers of public servants doing good work, especially on sparsely populated islands. For example, their policemen routinely perform as customs and immigration officers. Some District Commissioners are jacks of many trades and, in the process, build enduring monuments to their administrative efforts, at least in the hearts of their people.

Since the transfer of the Training Officer to another country in 1984, in-service training has been reduced in essence to supervisory coaching. That is not too serious, for the present service is well-trained and many have been upgraded. Overseas training is still available to a few who qualify for U.N., U.K., or other such programmes.

CONSTITUTIONAL MONITORS OF THE PROCESS

Some parliaments are not supreme. That of the TCI is among a dozen or so Commonwealth exceptions which are subject to important limitations. Though the Legislative Council has considerable power and ability to influence local events,

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any of its ordinances may be disallowed by the British government or even by the Governor in his own discretion (Constitution, 1976, Sections 44-46). Further, if the Governor considers that a certain ordinance should have been enacted ‘in the interests of public order . . . or good government’ (including financial control while Britain is balancing the budget with grants-in-aid), he may declare such a bill to have effect as if it has been passed by the Council (ibid., Section 43). The TCI parliament is not supreme. Their Governor appears constitutionally to be so. As long as the Islands are dependent on grants from Britain-and as long as suspicion of imprudent behaviour by politicians lasts-practice will approximate the Constitution’s restrictive provisions.

Despite what has just been said, elected Ministers, until July 1986, controlled a broad range of administrative activities and regarding these the Governor acted, if he intervened at all, in accord with their advice. The elected Government determined and implemented policy on the bread-and-butter issues of tourism, trade, development, health, education, welfare, local government, works and communications (with the proviso that spending remained reasonable in the eyes of the Governor and the Foreign and Commonwealth Office). In checking these functions the legislature was not well equipped. There are no constitutional provisions concerning a Leader of the Opposition (though one exists) or an auditor (though a regional auditor based in Barbados reports to the Executive Council through the Chief Secretary). And there were no provisions of any sort for staff assistance to Members of the Legislative Council. Because of a system of disciplined parties, the governing party could do much as it chose, even maintain indicted Ministers in office for a couple of weeks.

SOCIAL MONITORS

The TCI, as we earlier noted, were colonies of Bermuda, so it should be no surprise that the main street of the capital, Cockburn Town, is named after the main street of Hamilton, Front Street. It follows that TCI’s ‘establishment’ is also known as ‘the Front Street boys’ (though not thieves of any number despite the Islands’ equally long traditions of pirating and wrecking). Like Cayman’s, TCI’s elite is less sophisticated culturally and politically. There is no ‘old money’ monitoring government’s major moves and disposed to intervene if proposals or actions are likely to jeopardize long-term community interests. The ‘new money’, represented by the Chamber of Commerce, is more dynamic and, working with government, is responsible for many initiatives taken in both tourism and especially finance. On its own the Chamber has adopted a ‘Code of Conduct for the Financial Industry’ which forbids accepting instructions from ‘a person known to be a citizen of a country whose laws may proscribe the business which that person intends to carry out’ (2.2). The Code also forbids references in advertising to ‘tax haven, secrecy laws or confidentiality’ so as not to attract ‘persons unhelpful or detrimental to (the Islands’) development’ (4.2(e) and 2.3). The idea undoubtedly is that if drug and other criminal money could be kept out of the Islands’ banks and other financial institutions so could U.S. authorities be kept out, and this savings sanctuary could survive. That is a major goal of ‘Front Street’.

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THE JUDICIARY

The court system in the TCI is quite conventional as a monitor of government and other politicalAega1 actors (Constitution, 1976, Part VI). The court of first instance, the Supreme Court, has one judge. The Court of Appeal has a President and two Justices of Appeal. Further appeal can, of course, be had to the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council in Britain. The courts interpret and apply the Islands’ Ordinances and rules made thereunder, the common law and the Constitution including Part VIII concerning the traditional range of Fundamental Rights and Freedoms. This latter provides no clearer confines to governmental authority than in Bermuda or elsewhere in the Commonwealth. Though the TCI parliament is not supreme, it is powerful enough to support an executive declaration of emergency suspending rights and freedoms. Its refusal to do so, therefore, would be the only guarantee of rights, the courts notwithstanding.

One of only half a dozen statutory boards, the Public Service Advisory Board, is supposed to act as a watchdog over government’s not uncommon desire to use public service positions for patronage purposes. Though no elected politicians and no public servants (except the Secretary who has neither voice nor vote) sit on the Board, most members are affiliated with the party in power. The Board makes a show of following merit principles in advising the Governor on recruiting and other personnel practices but it has been ‘used‘ by the politicians, at least in the past.

POLITICAL MONITORS

There were political parties in the TCI before the 1976 Constitution went into effect. Both have led government from the Executive Council and watched it from the opposition benches of the Legislature. The populist People’s Democratic Movement took office in 1976 and after the death of their widely loved leader, James McCartney, lost to the Progressive National Party in 1980. With the support especially of ‘Front Street’ and other ‘progressive’ commercial interests throughout the Islands, it renewed its mandate in 1984.

Unlike the majority party in Bermuda, the comparatively immature governing party in TCI is less effective as a watchdog over its leaders. In the crisis of March 1985 it proved willing to support them categorically even when two had been indicted on criminal charges before U.S. courts-despite the facts that this meant the Executive Council was left without a quorum, and that especially the Islands’ financial sector was put under a dark cloud. The Opposition has since 1980 been so small (three seats of eleven in the Legislature) that it has been less than a real check on administration. Three people, no matter how dedicated, cannot keep an eye on the full range of governmental activity even in a microstate as small as the TCI.

It is more likely that Front Street can have an impact on government, elected and appointed. The Chamber of Commerce, especially, has people with education, breadth of perspective and desire which carry conviction. Even so, the elite can effect nothing like the influence Bermuda Incorporated’s ‘board of directors’ wields. There is no TCI Inc. There are no trade or professional unions by any name, no other organized politicaygovernmental interests (additional to the Chamber of Commerce) and, apart from Blythe Duncanson’s penetrating journal,

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Current, only apolitical media. If it is fair to say the TCI are like Cayman was 25 year ago, they are like Bermuda was half a century ago, at least politically and governmentally.

DEVELOPMENT ISSUES

Economic

The TCI are as committed to private enterprise as Bermuda or Cayman, but they go even further, as Professor Murray puts it, in scaling down their administration. They are far less prosperous and so simply cannot assume many functions that are normal even in a laissez-faire system. For example, they do not gather the most basic data from companies and individuals, not because of their philosophy but because of their poverty. They rely on ‘ordinary knowledge’, rather than statistics, to tell them where their successes have been, their needs are and their efforts should be made.

Their successes have been in fishing, especially conch (a disappearing West Indian staple) and Caribbean lobster (a disappearing North American delicacy). They need to maintain and increase such exports, and so have accepted U.S. aid in establishing a conch farm (potentially able to maintain a $2 million export industry) and a crab farm (with a $20-25 million export potential). A shrimp farm is also being considered for Salt Cay. Government aside (it employs about a quarter of the labour force) fishing is not only the biggest moneymaker but also the Islands’ biggest employer (about a fifth of the workforce). Tourism employs about half as many, but ‘belongers’ prefer less servile work. So as this sector expands to absorb the few willing employables, outsiders from Haiti and the Dominican Republic are being brought in. The financial sector probably realizes as many foreign earnings as tourism, but provides fewer than half the jobs and most of the higher-paid positions are, as elsewhere, held by expatriates. The only other sizeable employer is the construction industry which provides work for 5 or 6 per cent. Real estate sales and building does, however, earn significant foreign currency to help the balance of payments. No references can be given for these items of what Murray dubbed ordinary knowledge. Though some were reported in the Financial Times of 25 June 1984, they too are of that inimitable nature, bred of sense rather than of science. They tell of the forest, not of the trees. They are useful in indicating potential and how to develop it.

Potential of the people

In no particular order, potential seems to lie in mariculture, tourism and offshore business. To develop these what is needed in the short run is foreign aid: financial, technical and managerial. In the long run the Islands will have to exploit their own human resources. That means cleaning up a drug problem and providing quality education to every able adult and child. A high proportion of the population have good potential and justifiable self-confidence. They are ‘British Americans’, not West Indians or Caribbeans!

Perhaps education, at least about drugs, should come first. There seems to be little concern in the Islands that drugs, including alcohol even in moderate

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amounts, impair mental functions. The more addictive drugs from marijuana on up (or down?) at best induce apathy, at worst preoccupy conscious thought. Drug addicts, including alcoholics, cannot work effectively and rarely want to try. The TCI cannot afford many addicts if they are to develop mariculture, tourism, and finance with a workforce of less than 3000.

An indispensable step is to stop the drug traffic through the Islands. Those are ideally located for transhipping and for refuelling planes and boats on their way from Colombia to Florida. Apart from the damage done to their American friends damage is done to Islanders. Some of the pay-off to locals helping traffickers is in kind to be sold in the Islands, there to make worthy people, especially young ones, into dopes. A good use for the abandoned U.S. Air Force Base on Grand Turk would be as a drug rehabilitation centre open to Americans and others devastated by dope, and manned in part by belongers who have made it back from oblivion. (To help with local drug abuse, short of a rehabilitation centre, a few Alcoholics or Narcotics Anonymous groups in population centres could support Island addicts and alcoholics who have suffered enough.)

The Royal Turks and Caicos Islands Police, the British government and the U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) have done a good job in reducing drug traffic through the Islands. A measure of the commitment of the Royal TCI Police and the British authorities is their cooperation with the USDEA in apprehending and prosecuting the head of the Turks and Caicos Government, a cabinet colleague, a legislative supporter and a Canadian ‘businessman’ on charges of conspiracy to import drugs into the U.S. Therein lies assurance that responsible Island and British authorities will do all in their power to stop the narcotics cancer. It is also testimony to the efficacy of the British connection-though there is some disquiet that action was delayed on a corruptive problem long known to exist.

Education

Though educational efforts would be more effective if the drug problem were under control, some good initiatives are already under way. As a rule teachers in both primary and secondary schools have lacked qualifications, especially in English, mathematics, and other disciplines relevant to the Islands (Collister, 1983). In 1984 in-service training programmes were begun to help remedy this situation. Standards for admission to secondary schools had been adjusted to conform to the number of available high-school places. In order to establish more viable standards, the TCI adopted the Caribbean Examinations Council system. Related to both these problems was a curriculum which was neither demanding of students nor relevant to the technological, service or managerial needs of the Islands. The Education Department began in 1984 to upgrade the quality of the curriculum (‘Schools’, 1984, p. 52).

Still there is little hope that the Islands’ schools can on their own produce more than minimally qualified workers for the fish farms, hotels and offices, even if they introduced advanced educational principles like those of Cayman’s Wesleyan Academy (Kersell, 1987). Technical, hospitality, business and other specialists will have to be produced by Islanders studying and perhaps working briefly abroad after they have completed high school. This is facilitated quite liberally in the TCI where eight to twelve government scholarships to study in Britain, North America or

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elsewhere in the Caribbean are provided each year. This is about the same number as available in Cayman, which has twice the population. The only problem in the past has been that there was little encouragement to holders to study in fields helpful to the Islands-and there was no understanding about taking up certain positions upon returning to TCI.

Almost 1 per cent of the government’s expenditures is allocated to dealing with the drugs problem. More than 12 per cent goes for education (compared to 16% per cent in Bermuda and over 13 per cent in Cayman). The other human development area, health, receives just under 7 per cent in TCI, 2Y2 per cent in Bermuda and over 11 per cent in Cayman (TCI Accounts, 1983-84; Kersell, 1985, 1987). At least in these small countries individuals are helped to get an education, provided they are reasonably healthy. The best are given a chance at a profession. The rest are on their own-especially in the TCI if they are not supporters of the governing party, in which case they are likely to secure a job in the public sector.

Diversification

The TCI have had the foresight, or the good fortune, to begin serious efforts to diversify and rationalize the economy. Before the fisheries were too dangerously depleted Americans, feeling guilty about the closing of U.S. bases, began the conch and crab farms. Other private American interests have begun to develop the aragonite deposits off uninhabited West Caicos. An American businessman bought from the government the Turks and Caicos National Airline (which was almost $1 million in debt)-thus ensuring an essential transportation system without additional public burden. The electric utility is up for sale, primarily because government is unwilling to collect from its supporters the bills they owe-to the tune of about $750,000. The only public enterprise that shows a significant surplus is the Post Office which, due largely to philatelic sales, netted over $622,000 in 1983-84 (TCI Accounts for that year). One can see why the TCI government is, like most governments of microstates, committed to privatization of the economy. The TCI are fortunate that this does not mean overspecialization, with its potential instability. The greatest threat to the Islands is a major deflation of the U.S. economy; for though they are British when it comes to balancing their public accounts, they are American when it comes to balancing their private sector payments.

CONCLUSIONS

The TCI have impressive development potential. Fishing is being stabilized and expanded, especially by crab farming. With the opening at the end of 1984 of Club Med ‘Turkoise’ in Providenciales, tourism took off. Provo is in the van. Go-getters there may see government as lethargic and restrictive. Many of the go-getters are Canadians and Americans. Most officials of government, unadmired ‘Brits’ excepted, are Turks Islanders who seem to have adopted Black American attitudes. Unlike the situation in Cayman, colour may not have lost, in TCI, its power to divide (J. Graves, 1985, personal correspondence).’

1. I am indebted to Mr. Graves, the former editor of Current, for stimulating many of the foregoing insights. He has been most helpful in his contributions over many years to my understanding of both the TCI and Cayman governments.

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The unfortunate publicity for the Islands in March 1985 and July 1986 at least removed from many potential tourists’ minds any question of where the Islands are. Despite that adverse media coverage, investor confidence remains. The behaviour of the British Government, the Governor, the Royal TCI Police, the Islands civil service and business community were such that the TCI remain an interesting and attractive investment and financial centre.

The government has, of course, two components-the political ministers and the career public servants. It was two members of the former and a legislative colleague who were convicted of conspiracy to import drugs into the U.S. Their party’s members, assuming their innocence until guilt was proved, continued to offer public support. Their successors in the Executive Council were found by a British commission of inquiry to have been involved in corrupt practices. The professional public servants kept any opinions about these matters to themselves. All that was as it should be in the case of a public controversy. Several close observers of this small but complex government suggested, however, that politicians and officals behave uniquely even on issues that have not emerged publicly. The politician ‘wheels and deals’, makes brash commitments to which the official is committed without his opinion being sought. After a career exclusively in government service with, perhaps, little formal education, the basically dependent public servant goes along with conditioned behaviour. It is such a ‘superior-subordinate’ relationship, rather than a collegial one, that militates against teamwork at this level in the TCI.

At almost as high a level, however, the Chief Secretary for some years, Edward Brooks, had orchestrated ‘team administration’ even across departments-much as Murray described team efforts in the Solomon Islands (Murray, 1981, p. 253). At this level small made for beautiful administrative harmony-though much depended upon the personality and skills of that particular Chief Secretary. Withal, he probably would not have been able to achieve a system-wide teamwork of a similar nature in a large traditional bureaucracy.

Other quasi-solutions to the dual TCI problems of smallness and lack of money include:

1. scaling down jobs but letting one employee do each, thereby making work for

2. omitting some government activities, e.g. workmen’s compensation; 3 . scaling down certain services such as street repairs and lighting.

the unemployed;

Such measures do not necessarily make for beauty, as does team administration, but in a less affluent small state such as the TCI smallness, especially in budgets, is inevitable. Beauty, except in the sea, is only desirable.

REFERENCES

Collister Report on Education in the Turks and Caicos Islands (1983). British Development

Constiturion of the Turks and Caicos Islands (1976). United Kingdom Statutory Instrument

Government of the Turks and Caicos Islands, Accounts, 1983-1984.

Division.

1976, No. 1156.

Government Administration in a Very Small Microstate 181

Kersell, J . E. (1985). ‘The administration of government in Bermuda’, Public Administra-

Kersell, J . E. (1986). ‘Developing the Cayman Islands’, Public Administration and

Murray, D . J. (1981). ‘Microstates: public administration for the small and beautiful’, Public

‘Schools need major overhaul’, Current, Jan.lFeb. 1984. Turks and Caicos Islands Chamber of Commerce, Code of Conduct for the Financial

tion and Development, 5 , 373-384.

Development, 7 , 95-107.

Administration and Development, I , 245-256.

Industry.