Government administration in a small microstate: Developing the Cayman Islands
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1002/pad.4230070107 |
| Published date | 01 January 1987 |
| Author | John E. Kersell |
| Date | 01 January 1987 |
PUBLIC
ADMINISTRATION AND DEVELOPMENT,
Vol.
7,
95-107
(1987)
Government Administration in a small microstate:
developing the Cayman Islands
JOHN E. KERSELL
University
of
Waterloo
SUMMARY
The Cayman Islands use some of the increasingly familiar methods
of
resolving administr-
atively the problems of smallness. The country’s development and administrative perform-
ance depend
on
human resources which need
to
be planned
in
order to reduce dependence
on
outsiders, especially among the middle ranks of technical and professional staff. Edu-
cation and training for the public service in the Cayman Islands is inadequate. Control
of
the administration is weak, especially among the independent boards and commissions,
and there is a need for appeal procedures when the principles
of
natural justice have been
breached. Political manipultion
in
personnel matters adversely affects performance, and
there is a need for an effective civil service association
to
deal with other abuses. The
problems
of
public administration are solved by scaling down the role of government in
favour
of
private enterprise and against the provision of social welfare.
INTRODUCTION
This is another in the series of studies which includes the Bahamas (Agor,
1981), and South Pacific microstates (Murray, 1981), Haiti (Garcia-Zamor and
Mayo-Smith, 1983), nations in the Caribbean (Hope, 1983), St Helena (Gillett,
1983) and Bermuda (Kersell, 1985). Though not all
of
these articles follow Mur-
ray’s framework, most approximate to at least some
of
it. The present study
of
the Cayman Islands attempts to utilize Professor Murray’s implied range
of
possible
ways to deal with problems
of
scaling down the Whitehall administrative model
to suit a minigovernment. These ways are:
(1) Follow the model
as
applicable, but scale down the jobs. Even
so
you put
one person in each job, letting Parkinson’s Law
look
after the slack.
(2)
Eliminate some government activities altogether. Scale down the whole
system.
(3) Scale down some or most services.
(4)
Scale down particular
jobs
and
let
each employee do two
or
more.
(5)
Do
not
define jobs. Employ good people and challenge them to do as
much work as
they
can. Give public recognition and reward
to
those who
star and who ‘build monuments’ to themselves.
Professor Kersell
is
in the Department
of
Political Science, University
of
Waterloo, Waterloo, Ontario,
Canada
N2L
3GI
0271-2075/87/0
10095-1
3$06.50
0
1987
by John Wiley
&
Sons, Ltd.
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