What About Us? The Anglo-Caribbean Democratic Experience

Abstract

This article contributes to the sparse literature on democratic regimes in the Caribbean by examining the emergence and persistence of Anglo-Caribbean democracies. British colonialism, not socio-economic modernisation, explains the origins of the democratic institutions of Anglo-Caribbean states. British colonial heritage, however, fails to explain why these democracies have persisted, in contrast to the experience of other former British colonies and many Latin American and non-Anglo Caribbean states. We identify two key variables that we believe account for democratic sustainability. These are size and a political culture of patronage politics that integrates the different socio-economic and ethnic strata of Caribbean society into the political process. Size and patronage politics are conceptualised as interactive variables because the relatively small geographic size and population of Anglo-Caribbean states allow for a high degree of personalisation of politics and reinforces common political cultural dynamics. In this way, we provide a theoretical account of democratic sustainability among Anglo-Caribbean states, despite sharp inequalities, corruption and violence related to the international drug trade.

Acknowledgements

We would like to thank the anonymous reviewers whose comments greatly helped to improve this article.

Notes

1. From here on ‘the Caribbean’ refers to the former British colonies that are the focus of this study.

2. Democracy is defined, following the Schumpeterian tradition (see Huntington, 1993), as a system in which the majority of the adult population selects political leaders and elites by means of non-arbitrary (systematic), periodic, and contested elections. In this system, citizens have the freedom to hold their leaders accountable. By this definition, democracy is measured in terms of inclusiveness, contestation – two elements which Dahl (1971) sees as integral aspects of democracy – and representation.

3. Freedom House classifies states as overall free, not free, or partially free based on their combined political rights and civil liberties scores. Composite scores of 2 to 5 fall into the free category, 6 to 10 and 11 to 14 are in the partially free and not free categories, respectively.

4. The bigger variances may be attributable to the inclusion of the outliers, Seychelles, Mauritius, South Africa, and Botswana, in the sample of sub-Saharan Africa. These states have considerably higher scores for democracy compared to other sub-Saharan countries in the sample.

5. In the context of this research, and like similar studies, a small state refers to a population size below 1.5 million inhabitants (see Ott, 2000; Srebrnik, 2004).

6. Data based on 2005 estimates from CIA World Factbook.