The political economy of development in Belize under the People’s United Party

Jacob Ferrell and Joel Wainwright

Economic History of Developing Regions, 2023, vol. 38, issue 1, 65-88

Abstract: The former British colony of Belize faces serious economic problems today, reflecting a collapse in tourism following COVID-19. To account for this fragility, a return to economic history is needed. We focus on two critical periods. First, we examine why the Belizean state was unable to form a developmental state in the period of the anticolonial movement and self-government (the 1950s–1960s). Particular attention is given to George Price, leader of the anti-colonial People’s United Party (PUP) and ‘father of the country’. Second, turning to the post-colonial period, we examine one experimental chapter that lasted roughly a decade (1998–2007) when a coherent state-led economic strategy was pursued. During both periods the PUP-led state sought to reorganize development strategy along progressive lines, but failed to deliver. Because capital was almost completely foreign dominated, the fledgling Belizean developmental state could not discipline capital toward developmental alignment.

Date: 2023
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/20780389.2022.2057294 (text/html)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:taf:rehdxx:v:38:y:2023:i:1:p:65-88

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.tandfonline.com/pricing/journal/rehd20

DOI: 10.1080/20780389.2022.2057294

Access Statistics for this article

Economic History of Developing Regions is currently edited by Alex Klein and Alfonso Herranz-Loncan

More articles in Economic History of Developing Regions from Taylor & Francis Journals
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Chris Longhurst ().