Bicameralism in Small States: The Experience of the Commonwealth Caribbean

Abstract

Almost half of the bicameral legislatures in the Commonwealth are located in the Commonwealth Caribbean. Why so many bicameral legislatures are located in a relatively small geographic region, which is composed of countries that manifest characteristics more usually associated with unicameralism-small size, a unitary state, and homogeneity-is puzzling. Scholars have offered two possible explanations. The first concerns the presumed wish of the region's political leaders upon independence to replicate the values and institutions of their colonial mentor, Britain. The second concerns the presumed need to prevent one-party dominance by guaranteeing the representation of opposition parties in the second chamber. This paper challenges both these explanations. By examining the origins of bicameralism in the region with the arrival of the first settlers in the seventeenth century, its demise during the era of crown colony rule in the nineteenth century, its renaissance in the 1950s and 1960s, and its survival in the post-independence era this paper will offer a more multi-layered explanation This entails taking account of the complex relationship between these former colonies and their imperial past, the wide range of views expressed both locally and within the Colonial Office about the suitability of bicameralism in the debates that accompanied the transition from colonial rule to independence, and, finally, the very distinctive nature of Caribbean bicameralism. Almost half of the bicameral legislatures in the Commonwealth are located in one, relatively small, geographic region-the Commonwealth Caribbean. While this is in itself a striking statistic, what makes it even more striking is that most of these countries manifest characteristics which are more traditionally associated with unicameralism: small size,1 homogeneity,2 and limited resources.3 Moreover, the majority of these countries attained their independence in the 1960s and 1970s; a period when second chambers were being castigated in progressive circles as 'redundant, reactionary or undemocratic.'4 The prevalence of bicameralism in the Commonwealth Caribbean-with eight out of the 12 independent countries in the region having second chamberstherefore requires some explanation.5 The one usually offered by scholars is that at the time of independence these countries were simply seeking to replicate the values and institutions of their colonial mentor, Britain, and its second chamber,

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“…(e.g. Collier and Raney 2018; Defty 2020; Fleming 2019; Helms 2020; O'Brien 2019; Wincott et al 2020). Moreover, as Julian Bernauer and Adrian Vatter (2019) have illustrated, the concept of the ‘Westminster model’ has guided sampling strategies in both small-N and medium-/large-N comparative studies.…”

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Why it Is Indeed Time for the Westminster Model to Be Retired from Comparative Politics

“…The problem that we identified concerns the greater number of comparative studies where there is an implication of shared observable attributes, without these being either made explicit by the author or necessarily even being applicable to the countries concerned. The critics concede the need for authors to specify their attribute of interest, commenting elsewhere that in small-n comparative studies, ‘cases may be selected on joint colonial heritage’ (Flinders et al 2021: 10); yet of the five recent examples that they cite in support of their argument, only one (O'Brien 2019) explicitly provides any such justification for case selection.…”