Publication date:
05 June 2014Length of book:
142 pagesPublisher
Lexington BooksISBN-13: 9780739190272
This book examines the democratic ideas of Michael Manley, Jamaican prime minister from 1972 to 1980, and again from 1989 to 1992, during his government in the 1970s. Manley wrote three books during or about that period, The Politics of Change, A Voice at the Workplace, and Jamaica: Struggle in the Periphery. The first two laid out his policy ideas regarding egalitarian democratic change and economic democracy, and the third reprised those ideas and assessed their implementation and the obstacles they faced during the eight and a half years Manley served as prime minister. While Manley was seen as a socialist firebrand, a close examination of his ideas reveals a democratic nationalist whose motivation was love of country and a desire to promote national self-confidence and egalitarianism within the framework of liberal democracy and a reformed capitalism.
Ledgister steers us deftly through the recent political history of Jamaica as he examines the politics and ideas of one of the most influential leaders of the past half century and throws light on this critical period in Jamaican and Caribbean history. It is time for a fresh look at the Manley years, and Ledgister's scholarly, elegant, yet critical study does exactly that. This is necessary reading for all students of the Caribbean, as well as anyone interested in the practical and theoretical questions associated with postcolonial regimes that sought to initiate social change in the difficult political economy of the late twentieth century.