| Chapter 1: | Jamaican Governance and Citizen Politics in Context |
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consumer lobbies are held up as ideal models of the value of civic association, it is noteworthy that some civil societies comprise groups (such as drug dealers, street gangs, hate groups, and vigilantes) which uphold values that are contrary to civility and civic behavior. For these groups, criminality, violence, and intolerance are their mandate. Other groups in civil society boast undemocratic goals and methods, may seek to annex the state or other competitors, reject the rule of law, and seek to undermine the authority of the democratic state (Boyd, 2004; Diamond, 1994; Shils, 1992; Whitehead, 1997). In other words, some civil organizations and processes exemplify chronically uncivil features, which immediately negate their possibility as real, participatory, and functioning civil societies as well as their potential usefulness in advancing democratic processes, principles, and aspirations. It is this kind of ambivalence which besets citizen politics and civil society in Jamaica, leading to accusations that it has become a “roadblock democracy.”
“Roadblock Democracy”
One does not need to look further than the evening news to realize that popular protest is perhaps the most central of the democratic tools that are available to and employed by civilians globally to pursue rights-based causes, advance democracy, and draw attention to the daily struggles they confront. For example, a new wave of prodemocracy protests engulfed different parts of the world, particularly the Middle East, in the first decade of the 21st century. Whereas citizen protests for democratic reform and other social and political goods are vital, the permeation of citizen initiatives by intense violence is increasingly problematic. In Jamaica, frequent nationwide protests and demonstrations—featuring massive roadblocks, the burning of tires on major roadways, littering, looting, vandalism, and violent citizen-police clashes, including at times fierce gun battles—have led to assessments that the country may be a “roadblock democracy.” The forms such popular protests take are not only “glaring signals of the man in the street turning to his own