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GLEANER: Jamaica Failing, Or Yet To Succeed?
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Is Jamaica a failing state? Or is it merely a state that has yet to succeed? I have been thinking a lot about this question lately. Obviously, the week's shattering events have focused my mind. But I have also been writing a book on a topic I have elsewhere called the new medievalism. And one could not have asked for a more graphic example of the new medievalism than the spectacle of gang leaders - the international press even calls them barons now - trying to defend their sovereign claims over their turf.
The battle that unfolded might be a sign that the Jamaican state is growing weaker. A natural metaphor seems inescapable, as we speak of the rot that has penetrated the body politic, turning it soft, like a termite-ridden tree.
But history abounds with examples of these kinds of civil war. They are not always signs a state is growing weaker. When kings crushed their nobilities, they were in the ascendant. It may be that the Jamaican state is not growing weaker, but rather stronger.
Success was not programmed into the genetic code of any independent country. When states in Africa, Asia and the Americas gained their independence, new elites occupied the shells of disappeared regimes, the retreating colonial empires. Any successes which followed were hard-fought. Many countries were swimming against a tide, and some states soon sank into civil wars, and even broke up. Some could not replicate an alien political structure, and fragmented into neo-medieval forms. A few did succeed, but the ride was not easy, and required rapid adaptation to an evolving world.
Initially, Jamaica seemed a success. Riding the post-war economic boom, in its first decade after independence, the country's economy grew at healthy annual rates, and its ability to host the Commonwealth Games and international title fights seemed to testify that the young nation had made it on to the world stage...</div></div>
<div class="ubbcode-block"><div class="ubbcode-header">Quote:</div><div class="ubbcode-body">
Is Jamaica a failing state? Or is it merely a state that has yet to succeed? I have been thinking a lot about this question lately. Obviously, the week's shattering events have focused my mind. But I have also been writing a book on a topic I have elsewhere called the new medievalism. And one could not have asked for a more graphic example of the new medievalism than the spectacle of gang leaders - the international press even calls them barons now - trying to defend their sovereign claims over their turf.
The battle that unfolded might be a sign that the Jamaican state is growing weaker. A natural metaphor seems inescapable, as we speak of the rot that has penetrated the body politic, turning it soft, like a termite-ridden tree.
But history abounds with examples of these kinds of civil war. They are not always signs a state is growing weaker. When kings crushed their nobilities, they were in the ascendant. It may be that the Jamaican state is not growing weaker, but rather stronger.
Success was not programmed into the genetic code of any independent country. When states in Africa, Asia and the Americas gained their independence, new elites occupied the shells of disappeared regimes, the retreating colonial empires. Any successes which followed were hard-fought. Many countries were swimming against a tide, and some states soon sank into civil wars, and even broke up. Some could not replicate an alien political structure, and fragmented into neo-medieval forms. A few did succeed, but the ride was not easy, and required rapid adaptation to an evolving world.
Initially, Jamaica seemed a success. Riding the post-war economic boom, in its first decade after independence, the country's economy grew at healthy annual rates, and its ability to host the Commonwealth Games and international title fights seemed to testify that the young nation had made it on to the world stage...</div></div>
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