Has CARICOM reached its limits of regional integration? Part 2

The prevailing characteristic of CARICOM, apart from the agonizingly slow pace of institutionalizing the machinery for integration, has been the jealous retention of “sovereignty” by governments of the region. In other words, as the late, former prime minister of Barbados, Owen Arthur, put it disapprovingly: “[CARICOM] conceives of (itself) mainly as a community of sovereign states in which sovereignty is pooled but never ceded; with the nation-state being the locus of decision-making in respect of the implementation of regional commitments”