Preface

• Author: Cynthia Barrow-Giles
• Pages: 13-14

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PREFACE

This work seeks to build upon the pioneering compilation and

analysis of elections and party systems in the Commonwealth

Caribbean published by Patrick A.M. Emmanuel in 1992. A Deputy

Director of the Institute of Social and Economic Research (ISER) at

the University of the West Indies, (Cave Hill campus), at the time of

his passing, Emmanuel’s main intention in his 1992 study was to ‘fill

a number of gaps in the literature of Caribbean political science’, in a

context where there has ‘tended to be an insufficiency of hard data in

several existing published works of political analysis of Caribbean

countries’. In addition, Emmanuel’s 1992 study was intended to

correct Caribbean researchers’ tardiness in undertaking ‘comparative

studies of regional politics’, a factor which he recognized was itself ‘a

consequence of the absence of reliable hard data on several of the region’s

political systems’. Entitled, Elections and Party Systems in the

Commonwealth Caribbean, Emmanuel’s work presented for the first time

in a single volume, all of the general election results held in ten

Commonwealth Caribbean territories from the onset of universal suffrage

to 1991 — the year prior to the actual publication of his work.

This book represents an attempt to continue the effort started by

Emmanuel prior to his untimely passing. It therefore seeks to provide

an ‘update’ of the story of Caribbean elections, political parties and

democracy from the 1990s to the early twenty-first century. Given

the fact that comparative elections analysis is dependent upon a range

of elections, both over time and place, we have included abbreviated

information for the elections before the 1990s for all the territories in

this study.

In recognition of, and in agreement with, the concerns which

motivated the initial study by Emmanuel, we have widened the scope