By: Staff Writer
May 19, 2026
The United Nations Development Programme said in their Democracy and Development Report | Democracies Under Pressure: Reimagining the Future of Democracy in Latin America and the Caribbean 2026 report that Caribbean is one of the most democratic regions in the world.
The report said: “In electoral terms, the Caribbean is one of the most democratic regions in the developing world. Yet its democracies face structural pressures rooted in colonial legacies, economic vulnerability and global transformations that strain their ability to deliver well-being.
‘Some of these pressures arise from historical legacies, limited territorial scale and constrains on economies of scale, low productive diversification, high levels of debt, barriers to accessing international financing and high vulnerability to shocks.”
The Caribbean remains one of the most stable democratic regions in the developing world, with the vast majority of citizens living under elected governments. However, local democracies frequently grapple with exclusive two-party politics, top-down executive dominance, and colonial legacies that often strain accountability and public trust.
The report also said: “Caribbean societies share a common history shaped by colonial legacies rooted in slavery and plantation economies, which undermined social and ecological resilience and, in many ways, laid the economic, social and political foundations of the current era.
“Through the colonial enterprise, the Caribbean was structured as a space oriented toward the maximum extraction of wealth and the promotion of industrial development in imperial metropoles.
“Through the colonial enterprise, the Caribbean was organized as a space designed for the large-scale extraction of wealth and the promotion of industrial development in imperial metropoles.”
The report added: “Hegemonic influences and colonial legacies continue to shape many of the contemporary democratic dynamics in the Caribbean, helping to explain both its democratic advances and the main gaps and pressures affecting its development today. Neither democracy nor development can be understood without considering the vast and complex influences of slavery and the plantation system, with its “interconnected institutions and modalities”, as Barbadian historian and economist Sir Hilary Beckles called them.
“Early reforms of the slave-based economies led to the substitution and importation of labour under conditions of indentured servitude.
“With the arrival of people from southern Europe, India, China, other parts of Asia and the Middle East, the multi-ethnic character of many Caribbean nations emerged, along with social tensions that, while still present today, have not undermined the model of coexistence and social cohesion that positively characterizes the Caribbean.”