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This study is a sequel to one done by this writer on the foreign policy of Jamaica from 1972 to 1977 (Lewis, 1981) and covers the remaining period during which the People's National Party (PNP), led by Prime Minister Michael Manley, presided over the government of the country.In elections held on October 30, 1980, the PNP government was decisively defeated by the opposition Jamaica Labour Party (JLP). The latter had, in the previous elections of December 15, 1976, retained only 13 seats in Jamaica's parliament. When the Jamaica Labour Party administration took office, as the party had promised in its election manifesto, it reversed the central planks of the domestic and foreign policies of the PNP administration and reestablished a close relationship with the United States as the main element of its domestic and foreign policies.

Difficulties experienced by regional integration movements in both the developed & underdeveloped parts of the globe are leading theorists to a reexamination of theories of integration previously proposed. Particular consideration is given to the relevance of the theories to integration movements in the Third World where the processes of both nation-building & integration are being undertaken simultaneously. The internal & environmental prerequisites to integration are explored for Third World countries which are both open & heavily penetrated systems. The establishment of a diplomatic zone or "theater" with defined rules of behavior is a necessary prerequisite to the creation of a viable, bounded integration area. AA.

The Commonwealth of the Bahama Islands entered the international system as a sovereign state on July 10, 1973. It did so by sponsorship, which is to say that as far as relations between the Bahamas and the imperial country (United Kingdom) are concerned, independence has been granted, rather than taken or seized, with a minimal amount of difficulty. The identification of various issue-areas related to the entry of the Commonwealth into the international system is one way of indicating the various components that have gone into making up the "national interest" of that country, at least in the perspective of the state's policy makers. More concretely, the peculiar problems arising from its character as an archipelago state with a relatively open economy, make the questions to be resolved before and immediately after independence perhaps more complex than those faced by the other independent states of the Commonwealth Caribbean that have acceded to full sovereignty in the last decade.

Vaughan Lewis is Professor Emeritus of the University of the West Indies and former Prime Minister of St Lucia. In a distinguished career as a Caribbean intellectual and policymaker, he served as the first Director General of the Organisation of Eastern Caribbean States (1982-1995), and in various positions within government in St Lucia. As an academic, he published many monographs and articles on a wide range of issues related to Caribbean politics and international relations, small states, regionalism and regional integration, and he made a number of key contributions to the development of IR more broadly.