This talk considers the role of comparison in interpretive research by applying Boswell et al’s (2019) approach to how leaders in the Caribbean and Pacific regions balance the autonomy -viability dilemma of postcolonial statehood - that political self-determination is a hollow achievement unless it is accompanied by economic development - by practising statehood à la carte. Previous research has focused on the pursuit of decolonial self-determination through and above the nation state, via regionalism and internationalism, or by creating non-sovereign alternatives to it. My most recent book looks at how communities have sought the same goals below the state, including via secession and devolution. Downsising is typically portrayed as the antithesis of progressive, cosmopolitan internationalism and employed as evidence for the claim that the age of anticolonial self-determination has ended. By using a distinctly comparative interpretive approach, I show how these movements are animated by similar ideas and motivations that are rendered viable by the simultaneous pursuit of regional integration and forms of non-sovereignty. I argue that the à la carte pursuit of political and economic independence through, above, and below the state, and via non-sovereign alternatives to it, is a pragmatic response to the contradictions inherent to coloniality.

Jack Corbett is Professor and Head of the School of Social Sciences at Monash University. He is the author of seven books, two edited volumes, and more than 60 journal articles, the majority of which use interpretive methods. He has taught interpretive approaches to comparison at IQMR in the US and for NCRM in the UK. He has also served as co-convenor of the Interpretive Political Science specialist group for the UK’s PSA.

A recording of this event is now available to watch here: Statehood à la Carte in the Caribbean and the Pacific with Professor Jack Corbett 

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