INTRODUCTION

Reform is gradually transforming local government to local governance and ultimately to developmental local governance.

RESEARCH FOCUS AND OBJECTIVE

The objective of the research was to determine how, and to what extent, have the constitutional and legislative enactments facilitated local government change.

RESEARCH METHODS

The research deployed empirical and desk analyses of legal and constitutional provisions concerning Caribbean local governments.

FINDINGS

1. Reformers desire change but there is evidenceof political manipulation of the process.
2. There is a shift in policy perspective on the position and role of local government in Caribbean political systems.
3. Legislation associates sustainable development with local government but its role in poverty reduction and the broader issue of social inequality needs to be more explicit.
4. Legislation has not provided for the integration of information and communications technology (ICT) into local government operations.
5. A degree of fiscal decentralization has been granted but not fiscal empowerment.

CONCLUSION

Legislative changes create a progressive institutional framework for local government in the Caribbean. Regrettably constitutional changes are incremental. Constitutional reform in the Caribbean is not a revolutionary act...It is a process of better realizing the substantive values already present in the legal order (p. 55).

RELEVANCE

Caribbean policy officials, researchers and university educators and students as well as industry leaders, have been provided with contemporary analysis of an important level of the political systems.