ABSTRACT
Thirty-five small countries, the great majority of them islands, are included in this section as mini-states. There is considerable range in terms of their economic development and some of them, such as Bahamas or Barbados, have relatively high per capita incomes and enjoy reasonable standards of living which place them at the upper end of the middle-income group of countries. Seychelles is an excellent example of a mini-state that has managed to maximize its limited resources – fisheries, tourist attractions and an oil refinery for re-export – to provide at least a tolerable standard of living for its 75,000 inhabitants. What these states have in common is an absolute limitation of size and resources that makes any major change of economic status in the future, except in one or two possible cases, extremely unlikely. Almost all the states included here have populations of less than 1 million – the cut-off point for a mini-state – although there are one or two borderline cases. Guyana, for example, has a population of 770,000 but a land mass as large as Britain (most of it uninhabited). The mini-state is also characterized by its actual or potential political vulnerability to the pressures of larger neighbours and in a majority of cases is and will remain dependent upon aid into the foreseeable future.
