The Kingdom of the Netherlands is a strange animal. It isn’t much of an empire. Nor is it a proper federation; it doesn’t even have a federal government per se. International treaties apply differently to the different parts. (See Articles 24-28 of the Charter of the Kingdom.) The Caribbean members have duty-free access to the European Union, but there is no true common market. In theory, Article 35 requires that they pay for their own defense. (In reality, it doesn’t matter: the insular Caribbean outside Cuba is a de facto military protectorate of the United States.) The Supreme Court of the Netherlands is the ultimate court of appeal, but most of the ex-British insular states (save Barbados and Guyana, but including Mauritius an ocean away) still use the Privy Council. It uses a different currency, with its own central bank. Finally, the Caribbean countries can all withdraw fairly easily, using provisions laid down in the Charter. Sint-Maarten could remove Dutch influence far more easily than the Bahamas could get rid of the United States.
So is the Kingdom meaningless? Are the constituent countries simply independent countries without a seat in the U.N.? Well, not quite. First, there is a common citizenship. Immigration and naturalization laws may vary (the latter by rather little), but once you’ve got that Kingdom passport you’re a full citizen. If Great Britain had been willing to extend that to the West Indies Associated States, I doubt that any of them would be sovereign countries today. (To be fair, the WIAS had other issues, not least of which that there was no equivalent of the Charter. British officials treated the association as nothing more than a British administrative inconvenience, which rankled on the islands.)
Second, law enforcement. The relationship is a bit of a mess. This Dutch document goes into it: since I am not a Dutch speaker, and translation software is overvalued, I can’t say that I understand the details. That said, while Dutch police have less authority in Sint-Maarten than, say, the FBI does in Puerto Rico, they do have authority, even if they generally need local approval to make arrests. That is a bit more authority than, say, OPBAT gives American officials in the Bahamas, or than DEA agents have in Colombia or Mexico.
Third ... well, here it gets interesting. The Netherlands provides financial support to the other countries in the Kingdom, but it is phasing it out. Development and fiscal aid is supposed to end by 2013. In fact, transfers have been generally miniscule. According to IMF data, in 2008 aid to Sint Maarten amounted to only 0.3% of GDP.
Recently, however, that has changed. Aid rose to 2.0% of GDP in 2009 and 6.2% in 2010, most of it to pay off Sint-Maarten’s debt arrears. More substantively, the Netherlands took over the debt from the former government of the Netherlands Antilles that otherwise would have gone to Sint-Maarten, a gift worth approximately 30% of the country’s GDP. In return, however, the island has had to accept Dutch financial supervision. The Financial Supervision Authority is supposed to stick around until 2013, by which point Sint-Maarten is supposed to have trained up enough people to take over the functions formally carried out by the government of the Netherlands Antilles. We’ll see.
In short, being part of the Kingdom of the Netherlands is a bit more substantive than simply lacking a U.N. seat. That said, technical sovereignty matters very little. The U.S. routinely took control of the finances of Latin American countries before WW2, and the IMF effectively does so today. (A country can refuse IMF money, of course ... but Sint-Maarten can, in theory, also refuse Dutch support.) Similarly, law enforcement officials from a powerful state can often find ways to exercise their authority inside a weaker one. Finally, lots of nominally sovereign countries share or outsource judicial authorities. What matters, rather, is citizenship and the moral authority to call on Dutch resources when necessary. It is a relatively weak relationship, but a real one nonetheless.
The French side of the island is completely different. If there’s interest, I’ll discuss it later.
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nice. and interesting about the kingdom. Its rather different than I expected.
Posted by: Will Baird | January 06, 2012 at 06:13 PM
How so?
Posted by: Noel Maurer | January 06, 2012 at 06:14 PM
Very interesting. By the way another way Netherlands supports St Maarten is by lending to them at rates and tenors the island would likely not get on is own.
Posted by: Ed | January 06, 2012 at 08:59 PM
Its far more of a Confederation than I expected.
Posted by: Will Baird | January 10, 2012 at 01:29 PM