Predation Politics and the Political Impasse in Jamaica

Rethinking the Identity of Power

The huge and continuing social crisis in Jamaica has occasioned an outpouring of commentaries, most notably from journalists and academics. ¹ These accounts have been valuable for their provocation of debate about the nature of political leadership in Jamaica, the character of state power and opposition to it, and the prospects for social reconstruction. Much of the liveliness of this contention over Jamaican politics has been informed by the stunning recognition of several apparently unyielding realities in the current crisis.

The first shock of recognition is that the incumbents of Jamaican political power—the governing black middle class—have hardly relied on innovative economic policies or on sustained economic growth for their legitimacy. ² On the contrary, their tenure confirms a legitimacy based on having won political independence, securing meaningful cultural standing for the Afro-Jamaican majority, and enabling a substantial degree of political participation for them through reasonably democratic elections and involvement in the party system. ³

A second shock produced by the current crisis is the realization that neither profound failure nor the indecency of its power has altered how the postcolonial governing class has ruled. Despite the failure of economic policies, near-weekly accounts of human rights abuses, and recurrent disclosures of the corruption of power, the political bosses have retained their predominance, and the political apparatus that supports them has remained largely unchanged. Indeed, notwithstanding fissures and cracks, the main political structures and the political culture supporting them remain intact. The two-party system rooted in hand-me-down Westminster democratic politics has not only retained its durability, but this now compromised structure that exercises public power is still regarded by a majority of the voting public and by most critics of the status quo as the primary vehicle for social reconstruction.

Third, voices demanding the invigoration of a democratic culture are still too few and are isolated, with no broad social base or groundswell of support for their counter-claims. ⁴ For example, two notable political formations that offered alternatives—the New Beginning Movement and the National Democratic Movement—stirred little public enthusiasm and faded amidst much recrimination. Incredibly, as the social crisis has worsened, indifference—not enthusiastic embrace—greeted activists offering alternative programs and organizations.

Finally, it is remarkable that despite the postcolonial regime's substantial curtailment of democratic citizenship for more than half a century, no broad-based, widely supported movement or organization has so far made consolidation of a political dictatorship in the country its central critique of power in the current period. Nor has any would-be successor movement offered, as its unyielding demand and motive for seeking power, the twinning of practices in democratic citizenship to the project of social honor for Afro-Jamaicans. ⁵

The question this article raises, then, is what form of power and what political coalition could produce such sweeping and persistent nullifications across the decades and yet remain not only viable but also remarkably potent and politically appealing? Equally important to this inquiry are the implications of this form of rule for the meaning of empowerment. Which forms of power does this regime concede and which forms does it negate? Can a political regime satisfy vital popular yearnings yet choke off these supporters' aspirations for effective democratic citizenship? If so, what consequences follow from permitting the Jamaican people culturally significant forms of social power yet denying them politically relevant forms of citizenship?

Finally, in light of the roiling effect on the island of huge convulsions—cultural, political, and economic—in the world system, can a political "bargain" in which the state trades cultural forms of social power for nullified expression of democratic citizenship be renewed indefinitely? If not, where might analysts look for the means of social reconstruction and an end to this noxious pact?

These questions cannot be fully answered here, but they raise issues that are critical to Jamaica's future. What follows is an assessment that...