Scholarship on the Westminster model in the Caribbean conducted in the late 1980s and 1990s focused primarily on the formal dimensions of democracy and drew mainly positive conclusions about the model's effectiveness in producing stable democratic states in the region. Since then, however, the Caribbean has undergone radical changes which bring into question the more optimistic assessments of some of the early scholarship. This collection revisits debates about the history, legacies and contemporary implications of the Westminster model of governance in the Caribbean, covering the period from the last decades of British colonial rule to calls for political reform in the present day. The contributors consider how the Westminster political model has been adapted to the conditions of the Caribbean, its impact on Caribbean democracy, and the challenges the model has faced over the period of independence.Between 1962 and 1983, the majority of Britain's Caribbean colonies gained independence, achieved through a gradualist and largely consensual process of constitutional decolonisation. Far from marking a clean break with the colonial past, independence consolidated political institutions and norms based on Britain's Westminster model of government.' [this] implanting of colonial ways of thinking into native elites was one of the outstanding successes of British policy in the Caribbean. It was key to the entrenchment of Westminster government in the soon-to-be-independent states.'Scholarship on the Westminster model in the Caribbean conducted in the late 1980s and 1990s focused primarily on the formal dimensions of democracy and drew mainly positive conclusions about the model's effectiveness in producing stable democratic states in the region (Domínguez, 1993;Payne, 1993;Huber, 1993;Sutton, 1999). Since then, however, the Caribbean has undergone radical changes which bring into question the more optimistic assessments of these earlier works. As some scholars in the region have argued, globalisation, the transnational drugs trade, rising crime levels, debt, economic and environmental vulnerability all pose significant threats to Caribbean sovereignty and the power of the state (Ryan, 2001;Girvan, 2011); indeed, some contend that liberal democracy, which the Westminster model was assumed to produce, is in terminal decline.In the light of current debates about the nature, quality and resilience of democracy in the post-independence Caribbean, it is timely to return to the question of the Westminster model and its application in the region. This collection revisits debates about the history, legacies, and contemporary implications of the Westminster model of governance in the Caribbean, covering the period from the last decades of British colonial rule to calls for political reform in the present day. The contributors consider how the Westminster model has been adapted to the conditions of the Caribbean, its impact on Caribbean democracy, and the challenges the model has faced over the period of independence. These papers...
of political participation, economic progress and social uplifting and, in fact, found their own ways to construct their own notions of citizenship on a daily basis (p. 170). The reality of the plural society could not be avoided. Individually and collectively these three studies constitute monumental contributions to the historical literature. Although most pertinent to the history of the Dominican Republic, they offer highly sophisticated insights into the complex process of state formation and nation-building. Turits demolishes the concept of Sultanistic regimes based on the case study of Rafael Trujillo. Peguero illustrates how Trujillo effectively blended military culture with civilian popular culture to reconstruct society. Martínez-Vergne demonstrates that the discourse of state and nation had roots way back in the nineteenth century and that Dominican nationhood and culture resulted from the unstable dynamic reciprocity of class, race, colour, condition and international circumstances.
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