Introduction: revisiting Westminster in the Caribbean

Abstract

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.