State Authority Structures and the Rule of Law in Post-Colonial Societies: A Comparison of Jamaica and Barbados Andrew Dawson Department of Sociology McGill University, Montreal August 2011 A thesis submitted to McGill University in partial fulfillment of the requirements of the degree of Doctor of Philosophy. © Andrew Dawson, 2011 TABLE OF CONTENTS ABSTRACT ....................................................................................................................... iii RÉSUMÉ ........................................................................................................................... iv ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ................................................................................................ v CHAPTER 1 – INTRODUCTION ..................................................................................... 1 State Capacity, the Rule of Law and Development .................................................................... 4 What is the Rule of Law? ............................................................................................................ 9 Literature Review of State-Building ......................................................................................... 10 Research Design ........................................................................................................................ 18 The Cases: Jamaica and Barbados....................................................................................... 19 The State Capacity Literature Applied to Jamaica and Barbados ....................................... 21 Research Methodology.......................................................................................................... 26 Argument Summary and Chapter Organization ....................................................................... 27 CHAPTER 2 – THE RULE OF LAW AND DEVELOPMENT ...................................... 30 Background ............................................................................................................................... 31 State Capacity and Child/Infant Mortality in Developing Countries: A Literature Review ..... 33 Causal Mechanisms Identified in the Literature ................................................................... 35 Measures of State Capacity .................................................................................................. 37 Rule of Law Mechanisms ...................................................................................................... 39 Data and Methods ..................................................................................................................... 42 Dependent Variable .............................................................................................................. 42 Independent Variables .......................................................................................................... 43 Results ....................................................................................................................................... 49 Comparative Case Analysis: Barbados and Jamaica ................................................................ 53 Conclusion ................................................................................................................................ 58 CHAPTER 3 – JAMAICA................................................................................................ 61 The Development of Class, Racial and Religious Differences in Jamaica, 1494 to 1938 ........ 62 The Disturbances of 1938 ......................................................................................................... 75 Divisions within the Labour Movement, 1938-1942 ................................................................ 80 The Parting of Ways, 1942-1943 .............................................................................................. 89 The Origins of Political Unionism, 1943-1944 ......................................................................... 92 Constitutional Change in Jamaica ............................................................................................. 96 The 1944 Elections ................................................................................................................... 97 The Jamaica Labour Party Government, 1945-1949 .............................................................. 102 The Second Jamaica Labour Party Government, 1949-1955 ................................................. 120 The People‘s National Party Government, 1955-1959 ........................................................... 122 The Unravelling of the Path-dependent Process: The 1959 Elections and Beyond ............... 126 Conclusion .............................................................................................................................. 129 CHAPTER 4 – BARBADOS.......................................................................................... 133 i Colonial Settlement and Development, 1625-1838 ................................................................ 134 Emancipation and the Tenantry System, 1838-1937 .............................................................. 141 The Disturbances of 1937 and its Aftermath .......................................................................... 146 A Progressive Party in the House of Assembly – The Elections of 1940 and 1942 ............... 151 A Split in the Progressive Movement and the Elections of 1944 ........................................... 153 The Elections of 1946 ............................................................................................................. 159 The Decline of the Congress Party and the 1948 Elections .................................................... 163 Universal Adult Suffrage and the Elections of 1951 .............................................................. 165 The Inter-Election Years 1951-1956: Full Ministerial Government, the Depoliticization of the BWU and the Rise of the Democratic Labour Party ............................................................... 167 Constitutional Change: The West Indies Federation and the Path Towards Independence, 1958-1966 ............................................................................................................................... 169 Conclusion .............................................................................................................................. 172 CHAPTER 5 – COMPARATIVE ANALYSIS .............................................................. 174 The Development of the Political Culture of the Masses ....................................................... 175 Race/Class Correlation ....................................................................................................... 176 The Sense of National Community among the Afro-Caribbean Populations ..................... 179 Religion and the Established Order .................................................................................... 181 The Cultural Autonomy of the Lower Classes .................................................................... 183 The Transition to Universal Suffrage: A Critical Juncture ..................................................... 188 Jamaica ............................................................................................................................... 188 Barbados ............................................................................................................................. 193 Conclusion .............................................................................................................................. 197 CHAPTER 6 – CONCLUSION ..................................................................................... 200 Theoretical and Practical Implications .................................................................................... 201 Potential Extensions of the Research Findings ....................................................................... 205 APPENDICES ................................................................................................................ 209 Appendix A ............................................................................................................................. 209 BIBLIOGRAPHY ........................................................................................................... 211 ii ABSTRACT This thesis examines the determinants of a strong rule of law in post-colonial societies by comparing Jamaica and Barbados, two countries with many similarities, but with divergent outcomes concerning the rule of law. The research takes a comparative historical approach, specifically investigating the origins of the divergence of the rule of law between Jamaica and Barbados during the transition to independence. The analysis suggests that the extent of communal divisions influenced the political culture of the masses during the transition to universal suffrage in the late colonial period. This proved to be the critical factor that determined whether political violence and patronage politics were institutionalized, which ultimately led to the deterioration in the capacity of the state to promote the rule of law. Differences along four key dimensions (the extent of a race-class correlation, the extent to which the Afro-Caribbean population viewed themselves as members of the national community, the orientation of the religion of the lower classes towards the established