Belize has the queen on their money and Bob Marley in their hearts. Almost everyone rides cruiser bikes and have machetes to mow the lawn. Despite its avid use, marijuana is illegal. Some people like smoking near the LDS missionaries as they teach people outside because Cops will be less suspecting (I came to know the smell well). Voting day in Belize is very easy to recognize. Instead of an "I Voted" sticker (my greatest incentive to vote) everyone must dip their finger in a blue or red (depending on the party) paint that shows they've voted. This also prevents them from voting twice (I guess south of the equator paint doesn’t come off for 24 hours).
An interesting fact about Belize voting is their turnout rates. Belize voter turnout is around 80% for national elections. Pretty good for a country with no stoplights. So who gets out the vote? One party voter theory developed by researchers Karp and Banducci claims that voter activation by parties differs between new and old democratic states. Belize qualifies as the former so lets compare. According to Karp/Banducci parties in new democracies have less active campaigners, are less organized and funded, seek after a base to activate and target specific voters with influence and resources. By looking at its election history Belize seems to generally fit this theory.
1954 brought Belize’s first elections with an 80% turnout rate. This doesn’t fit the Karp/Banducci theory but could be explained by the fact that the winning party, the PUP, had already been around for 5 years building a base. The ’57 elections saw a 63% voter turnout. Right before this 10 members of the PUP committee resigned including the head representative of the Belize Worker’s Union. By losing this one member, the PUP lost access to all the union votes. This fits Karp/Banducci’s claim that new-democracy parties go after individual voters with influence and resources. The ’61 voter turnout of 80% further illustrates this as it was just after the formation of The Women’s United Group within the PUP. This new coalition gave women members of the PUP an urge to get out the female vote for their party causing a resurgence of voter turnout. Lastly in ’79 turnout was a whopping 89%. This is attributed to the newly created UDP party and its efforts to get voters to the polls. As far as we’re concerned the marijuana/machete country seems to follow suite.
While this blog deals mainly with the claims that has been submitted by the political scientists Banducci and Karp, there seems to be a lack of explanation as to what this claim entails and further more how this relates to the country of Belize. Looking at the election turnouts in countries of both westernized democracies and the countries where democratic traditions are still trying to settle is interesting, but to do so one has to look at a broader aspect and not just at a single country to do so. This is by political scientists known as low N research based on comparative data and approached from looking at independent variables and dependent variables. How to do this study highly relies on the individual perspective, but I would like to have looked at other similar countries like Belize, being a relative new democracy, a developing country and one with a political culture of few parties.
ReplyDeleteOf the things in the article that I especially found interesting were the information of the different elections, but would have liked in this process to have seen what basis that these data has been compiled on. In other words, whether these election results has been based on VAP (Voting Age Population) as the more used model for countries outside of Europe and Northern America, or as VEP (Voting Eligible Population). In addition here to would be to hear your analysis on the reason for a democracy in this part of Central America to have such a strong voter turnout as they do, and if this is truly in indicative to a strong sense of civic duty or if there is something more sinister at play, such as election fraud or coercion of the electorate.