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Trinidad & Tobago
14/05/2007 By Angélica Durán Martínez
With high rates of economic growth and decreasing unemployment, Trinidad and Tobago (T&T) has been called a Caribbean ‘tiger’ (The Economist, 2006), awash with money and investment from the liquefied natural gas boom.
Prime Minister Patrick Manning has launched Vision 2020, a policy strategy which calls for T&T to acquire developed country status by 2020. However, an incipient deterioration in the quality of services provided by the state coupled with very high corruption levels point to the difficulty of translating economic wealth and macroeconomic stability into institutional capacities, especially those needed to confront expanding crime and corruption.
The diverse racial composition of T&T makes it vulnerable to polarisation, and its particular geographic location makes it vulnerable to international criminal networks which can build contacts with each ethnic community.
Thus, there is significant potential for democratic institutions to be eroded by:
I. The increase in crime and the influence of international crime networks;
II. The impact of ethnic politics on the functioning of the State and the political parties;
III. The difficulties of translating outstanding economic growth into state capacity.
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Keywords
Corruption Crime Fragile state Latin America & Caribbean Trinidad and TobagoRelated publications
Bio author: Angélica Durán Martínez
