What the Petro-state Does Do: Power in the Caribbean After 1973

This essay responds to the critical reflections on The Petro-state Masquerade: Oil, Sovereignty, and Power in Trinidad and Tobago (2024) offered by Chelsea Schields and J. Brent Crosson. Meditating on the petro-state as a political form not limited to petroleum-exporting nations, it proposes instead that we tend to the petro-state as an arrangement of power that structures Caribbean political life after the oil price shocks of 1973. Finally, this essay considers how novel arrangements of power are made manifest in the Caribbean today.