Renaturalising sovereignty 49
revenues, which are more amenable to formal rationalisation. Second,
to further compel the GCD to prepare like an insurer, the IMF’s recommendations also included the need for ‘unambiguous budget contribution
and disbursement rules, with triggers based on verifiable criteria, a clearlystated objective, and strict information disclosure requirements to ensure
the transparency of its operations’ (Guerson 2016, p. 13). For development
economists, designing-in triggers to disaster response plans provides the
kinds of coercive rules new institutionalist economists argue are required
to lock-in both donor and recipient decisions in advance of disaster events
(Clarke & Dercon 2016, p. 65). Triggers depersonalise and algorithmically
structure decision-making processes in advance of a disaster event, and thus
remove the subjective and institutional elements of disaster management
that can distort decision-making processes, delay rapid disbursements of
funds, and prevent the government from managing disaster response in a
timely and efficient manner.
Set in the context of struggles for political autonomy in the post-independence Caribbean, the insurantialisation of governance through the
formal rationalisation of development and disaster budgeting and the use
of triggers produces two significant state effects. First, insurantialisation
reconfigures the boundaries between the developing state, donors, markets,
and the public, in the process transforming the distribution of capacities,
competencies, responsibilities, and expectations that structures how decisions on pre- and post-disaster financing can be made in the face of climate
change impacts. Triggers attempt to fully automate the decision-making
process, in the name of achieving a more efficient and self-financed disaster
response. Clarke and Dercon (2016) suggest that:
to work as an index insurance product, a trigger should not lead to a set
of options for a decision-making body; it should result in an automatic
decision. In other words, a defined set of indicators reaching particular
pre-agreed values should lead to a defined action, as in insurance.
In effect, insurantialisation relocates the nominally sovereign decision over
how to manage the population’s welfare from the political realm, the province of the developing state, to the technical sphere (Aradau & van Munster
2011). Decisions on how to utilise limited government revenue to address
competing demands for immediate biopolitical needs and anticipatory,
pre-event risk management investments, and decisions on when and how to
access and distribute post-event contingency funds, becomes an automated
effect of pre-determined indicators developed in consultation between the
GCD, strategically courageous donors, and IMF advisors that lock in the
government’s actions in advance of any actual disaster event. This new configuration of developing states, donors, markets, and the public further hollows out the GCD’s effective sovereignty, relocating the sovereign decision
from the centralised state to a disaggregated risk assemblage of technical
revenues, which are more amenable to formal rationalisation. Second,
to further compel the GCD to prepare like an insurer, the IMF’s recommendations also included the need for ‘unambiguous budget contribution
and disbursement rules, with triggers based on verifiable criteria, a clearlystated objective, and strict information disclosure requirements to ensure
the transparency of its operations’ (Guerson 2016, p. 13). For development
economists, designing-in triggers to disaster response plans provides the
kinds of coercive rules new institutionalist economists argue are required
to lock-in both donor and recipient decisions in advance of disaster events
(Clarke & Dercon 2016, p. 65). Triggers depersonalise and algorithmically
structure decision-making processes in advance of a disaster event, and thus
remove the subjective and institutional elements of disaster management
that can distort decision-making processes, delay rapid disbursements of
funds, and prevent the government from managing disaster response in a
timely and efficient manner.
Set in the context of struggles for political autonomy in the post-independence Caribbean, the insurantialisation of governance through the
formal rationalisation of development and disaster budgeting and the use
of triggers produces two significant state effects. First, insurantialisation
reconfigures the boundaries between the developing state, donors, markets,
and the public, in the process transforming the distribution of capacities,
competencies, responsibilities, and expectations that structures how decisions on pre- and post-disaster financing can be made in the face of climate
change impacts. Triggers attempt to fully automate the decision-making
process, in the name of achieving a more efficient and self-financed disaster
response. Clarke and Dercon (2016) suggest that:
to work as an index insurance product, a trigger should not lead to a set
of options for a decision-making body; it should result in an automatic
decision. In other words, a defined set of indicators reaching particular
pre-agreed values should lead to a defined action, as in insurance.
In effect, insurantialisation relocates the nominally sovereign decision over
how to manage the population’s welfare from the political realm, the province of the developing state, to the technical sphere (Aradau & van Munster
2011). Decisions on how to utilise limited government revenue to address
competing demands for immediate biopolitical needs and anticipatory,
pre-event risk management investments, and decisions on when and how to
access and distribute post-event contingency funds, becomes an automated
effect of pre-determined indicators developed in consultation between the
GCD, strategically courageous donors, and IMF advisors that lock in the
government’s actions in advance of any actual disaster event. This new configuration of developing states, donors, markets, and the public further hollows out the GCD’s effective sovereignty, relocating the sovereign decision
from the centralised state to a disaggregated risk assemblage of technical