IDPR, 27 (4) 2005 Jonathan Pugh and Pamela Richardson Playing the donor’s anxious game Physical development planning legislative systems in the Eastern Caribbean Jonathan Pugh is an Academic Fellow in the Global Urban Research Unit at the University of Newcastle upon Tyne, Claremont Tower, Newcastle NE1 7RU; email: JnPugh@aol.com. Pamela Richardson is researching for a PhD in Geography at the University of Oxford. Paper submitted January 2005; revised paper received November 2005 and accepted December 2005 This paper explores the politics of formal physical development planning systems in the Eastern Carib- bean. It argues that while Western funding agencies now articulate a more ‘democratic’ discourse of development in the form of participatory planning, this new approach is more reflective of the politicised anxieties of ‘the West’ than of the desire of Caribbean elites to connect with ‘the people’ through shared visions for change. Notwithstanding the prevalence of the participatory agendas espoused by Eastern Caribbean governments, boosted by the increased funding that accompanies their espousal, we suggest that the legislative structures of physical development planning remain static in practice. To conclude, this paper stresses the importance of local elites in re-appropriating the planning languages of donor agencies to support their own agendas. The importance of ‘personality power’, nepotism and elite power in Caribbean politics and governance has been discussed by a range of authors (Garrity and Picard, 1996; Allahar, 2001; Robotham, 2001; Nettleford, 2001). In the skein of such debate, this paper discusses the formal centralisation of power in the context of physical development planning in the Eastern Caribbean. We describe the ways in which, from the 1930s to the current era of ‘participatory planning’, the formal centralised power of many Eastern Caribbean states has been maintained and re-articulated through various planning procedures and Acts. To begin, we outline the ways in which ministers have maintained a high degree of formal control over all aspects of physical development planning, from the earliest years of formal (legislative) planning proce- dures in the 1930s. These early procedures were shaped by colonial funding regimes and the prerogatives of Empire. In the second section of the paper we discuss how, since the 1990s, new frameworks have emerged which draw attention to the need to re-connect governing elites to the general public – these are, in general terms, the languages of participatory planning. Participatory planning methods mobilise socio-political concepts such as commu- nity, autonomy, empowerment and consensus, in an ostensive attempt to make devel- opment planning a more democratic process with more democratic outcomes (Moran, 2004). Participatory methods emerged in the 1990s in the context of a series of post- modern anxieties regarding the efectiveness and fairness of ‘top-down’ approaches IDPR27_4_1_Pugh.indd 385 IDPR27_4_1_Pugh.indd 385 10/6/06 09:23:25 10/6/06 09:23:25