Challenges in Institutionalizing Democratic Governance via Popularly Elected Mayor

The presumption underlying current policy discourse in the Caribbean – that local government represents a “convenient” political realm for the practice of democratic governance –resurrects a long-standing debate about the proximity of local government and democracy, and highlights the difficulty facing local governments in the region to “vindicate their democratic credentials,” especially given a pervasive view that local governments are the final frontiers of populism and patronage. This chapter employs a constructivist framework to analyze the extent to which popularly elected mayor, introduced in Jamaica in 2003, achieves a balance between democratic governance, populism, and patronage. Apart from its theorized democratic role, local government performs other subsidiary but critical functions dictated by the nature of the political environment. If democratic values are to predominate, innovations such as popularly elected mayor and the process of municipalization require sustained institutional support to minimize competition between old and new politico-administrative values.