Elections and Democracy in the Caribbean

Abstract

The works included in this compendium summary address themes relevant to the elections and democracy in the Caribbean region. The states that fall within the relevant “region” include the formerly English, French, and Dutch colonies in the Caribbean Sea and the South and Central American mainland, as well as the remaining English, French, Dutch, Danish, and Spanish colonies in the Caribbean. The aim of this bibliography is to provide readers and researchers with a broad overview of the kinds of theoretical, thematic, and empirical emphases that have framed the questions around which the electoral and democratic landscape of the Caribbean has been studied. For purposes of clarification, the collection does not address Caribbean democracy as a stand-alone isolated issue, but instead provides a survey of works on elections in the Caribbean through the lens of their interrelation with Caribbean democratic history, practice, culture, and constitutional development and institutional framework. (A survey of Caribbean democracy will require isolated treatment). Relatedly, while the article addresses the experience of the wider Caribbean, much of the emphasis on the intellectual output is on the works relevant to the English-speaking Caribbean. Where the experiences of the non-English countries have given rise to critical intellectual interventions, these are included to bring balance to the Caribbean story and to highlight commonalities and divergences, useful for researchers interested in comparative analyses. Following this introduction, the article is divided into eleven thematic sections, examining (1) seminal texts and works on Caribbean democracy and Caribbean elections, or works providing general data and analysis of large blocs of countries or works presenting pathbreaking theoretical treatment of critical issues in Caribbean democracy; (2) texts addressing the issue of the administration and governance of elections, inclusive of concerns with money and electoral financing; (3) texts concerned with constitutional development; (4) texts on electoral reform; (5) works addressing dysfunctionalities such as electoral corruption and electoral violence; (6) women and political participation; (7) public opinion and voting behavior; (8) works concerned with providing analyses of the results and outcomes of Caribbean elections in a largely statistical or data-capturing sense; and (9) works that have sought to offer analyses of Caribbean elections in relation to the broader political-economy of the region. Given the reality of ethnic division and the absence of racial and cultural uniformity in several countries of the Caribbean, one of the sections is devoted to (10) surveying some of the key works that have addressed the challenges of ethnicity, ethnic mobilization, and ethnic voting, and their implications for democratic development. The final section presents (11) the main works that have sought to address the very important question of election monitoring in the Caribbean.