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This paper offers a personal reflection on 50 years of independence in the Commonwealth Caribbean. It critiques the Westminster model as part of a larger ‘independence pact’ designed to maintain the status quo in the English-speaking Caribbean, and assesses the major challenges facing the region today. It argues for a broader conceptualisation of sovereignty and calls for the invention of a new Caribbean democracy. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Colonial-era administrative institutions and doctrines are fundamental to any analysis of Westminster's legacy in the Caribbean. Applying the lens of ‘Public Service Bargains’ (PSBs) – the formal and informal understandings of reward, competence and loyalty of public servants – we first examine constitutional and administrative doctrines regarding the public service of Crown Colonies, before analysing how these worked themselves out in Jamaica. Our analysis reveals a number of perceived deficiencies in the PSB in the pre-independence period that cast a shadow on future relations in the post-independence period. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Globally women form a small minority of national parliaments and continue to face a number of obstacles in their struggle for greater political equality and indeed the Commonwealth Caribbean is no different. I argue that the culture of political parties and Westminster institutional arrangements not only fail to create the political opportunity structure that would enable women to participate more fully in political life but also constrain their ability to change the agenda setting. The article begins with a cursory discussion of the state of democracy in the Commonwealth Caribbean, reviews the debate on the need for gender equality and sets the context of the Commonwealth Caribbean by way of a brief discussion of the participation of women in politics. It acknowledges the persistence of male-dominated political institutions and the continuation of a political culture within political parties that does little to encourage women's political participation. The final section of the paper reviews the attempts to bring legislative reform on such issues as domestic violence and sexual harassment. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper examines the discourse on democracy and governance in the Anglophone Caribbean against the backdrop of the region's post-colonial experience. In particular it looks at the critique of formal democracy and the arguments for a modification of the Westminster model advanced by scholars and leading politicians. The paper aims to establish three interrelated claims. First, although formal democracy has been critical to the region's political stability, it has not led to broader participation in national decision making within formal institutions and in the wider society. Second, the critique of formal democracy has been due largely to the formal and informal marginalisation of opposition parties from meaningful participation in national decision making, ensuing non-cooperation by opposition parties and heightened ethnic conflicts in Guyana and to a lesser extent in Trinidad. Third, there is a growing consensus among scholars and politicians that a modification of the Westminster winner-takes-all system is a prerequisite for further democratisation and political and economic advance in the region. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A message is presented dedicating the February 2015 issue of the periodical to Professor Norman Girvan.