Westminster Politics: Democratic Practice and Social Constraints - The Jamaican Experience

• Author: Peter Phillips
• Pages: 76-85

5 Westminster Politics: Democratic

Practice and Social Constraints – The

Jamaican Experience

Peter Phillips

It is generally recognized that among what used to be known as

the ‘new states’ in the 1950s and ’60s, the so-called Commonwealth

Caribbean states that achieved independence in the 1960s and ’70s

have sustained their democratic traditions. Unlike some other states

that were formerly part of the British Empire that assumed independent

status in the 1950s and ’60s, the Commonwealth Caribbean states have,

with one exception, sustained constitutional rule, held regular elections

and changed administrations by way of the ballot. They have also for

the most part maintained independent judiciaries, and an independent

civil service, and preserved the basic rights of the individual.

Specifically, in relation to Jamaica, there have been 16 general elections

held since the introduction of Universal Adult Suffrage in 1944,

resulting in seven changes of government.1 Universal Adult Suffrage

preceded the assumption of independent statehood. Nevertheless, with

independence, the basic political and administrative underpinnings

of the Westminster–Whitehall model of liberal democracy was

maintained. Since the assumption of independent statehood in 1962,

the country has maintained a cadre of impartial, politically neutral civil

servants, including an independent judiciary and has maintained the

essential individual rights of freedom of association, and assembly and

free speech, etc., which are at the core of modern liberal democratic

political practice.

Compared with other postcolonial Commonwealth jurisdictions the

durability of the ‘Westminster model’ in the Caribbean is notable. This

is unlike much of Africa, such as Ghana and Nigeria in West Africa,

or Kenya or Tanzania in the East, where the Westminster inheritance

quickly yielded to military government or one-party rule. In hindsight,

perhaps this should not seem so surprising.

Africa, with its checkerboard of competing ethnic loyalties and

surviving ‘traditional’ political institutions and ideologies provided a

vastly different social and institutional backdrop to postcolonial politics