Evelyne Huber Stephens

The Transition to Mass Parties and Ideological Politics The Jamaican Experience Since 1972

The dominant views in the literature on the evolution of ideological mass-membership parties, which hold that these parties emerged with the entry of the masses into politics and as a result of prolonged electoral competition moderated their ideological stands to appeal to more centrist voters, cannot account for the case of a mass party which, after years of electoral competition, moves sharply to the left and maintains or increases its electoral base, as was the case for the Peoples National Party (PNP) under Michael Manley in Jamaica in the 1970s. One element of the political strategy of “Democratic Socialism” of the PNP under Manley was the organizational strengthening of the party and the adoption of a stronger ideological profile and a commitment to ideological education at both the elite and mass level. This article discusses the importance as well as the limitations of the process of party transformation. On the basis of two surveys of the Jamaican elite, one carried out in the summer of 1974 and one in 1982, it documents the dramatic effect of this process on the ideological alignments in the Jamaican elite. Drawing on Gramscian ideas, the article develops an explanation for the process of party transformation in Jamaica, which emphasizes the importance of the extent of popular organization and mobilization for the center of gravity of public opinion and thus for the ideological and electoral room for maneuver of mass parties.

Capitalist Development and Democracy.

It is a commonplace claim of Western political discourse that capitalist development and democracy go hand in hand. Crossnational statistical research on political democracy supports this claim. By contrast, comparative historical studies carried out within a political economy approach argue that economic development was and is compatible with multiple political forms. The authors offer a fresh and persuasive resolution to the controversy arising out of these contrasting traditions. Focusing on advanced industrial countries, Latin America, and the Caribbean, they find that the rise and persistence of democracy cannot be explained either by an overall structural correspondence between capitalism and democracy or by the role of the bourgeoisie as the agent of democratic reform. Rather, capitalist development is associated with democracy because it transforms the class structure, enlarging the working and middle classes, facilitating their self-organization, and thus making it more difficult for elites to exclude them. Simultaneously, development weakens the landed upper class, democracys most consistent opponent. The relationship of capitalist development to democracy, however, is not mechanical. As the authors show, it depends on a complex interplay of three clusters of power: the balance of power among social classes, power relations between the state and society, and transnational structures of economic and political power. Looking to the future, the book concludes with some reflections on current prospects for the development of stable democracy in Latin America and Eastern Europe.