REPORT #18 1998
AN INTRODUCTION TO BELIZEAN COMPARITIVE POLITICS!


Produced by the Belize Development Trust

A method of studying and constantly changing government systems to achieve social goals and results.

Belizean Comparative Politics from the observations of a Caye Caulker uneducated fisherman:

To the extent that comparativists discover general patterns that explain variations on such crucial dependent variables as democracy, regime breakdown and revolution, economic growth, and the relative success of business to keep operating despite government micro-management.

The fundamental concern of comparative politics is to explain across polities the differential values or core dependent variables. If democracy is the value on a dependent set of variables then comparativists using other political systems have to explain such variables as; economic growth, gross national product, the rise of a new aristocratic class of lifetime political party dictators masquerading as democratically elected leaders with "minister's discretion" and rubber stamp parliaments, with no checks and balances; against such effects as anarchy, rising crime, foreign pressures and corruption as a new accepted political social code.

Stability favors investment and growth, but democracy and stability seem to go together when democratic methods are gradually widened to include more citizens in policy making.

Studies of religions and democracy have shown that Catholicism in such countries as Austria, France, Italy, Portugal, Spain, Weimar Germany, many Latin countries have shown that Catholic populations tend not to be stable democracies. Catholicism is indeed authoratarian and hence populations that have majority catholic populations, tend to become unstable democracies. Democracy is more at home and successful in secular societies of Northern Europe and North America.

To what extent Jesuit influence in Belize has had on the current crop of politicians due to pre-independence brain washing and the resultant failure of such politicians to widen citizen voter participation systems of government, to make Belize a rich stable nation is worth some serious study. Can the 3/4 billion dollar debt of Belize and lack of democratic autonomous local governments and checks and balances on policy making be attributed to authoritarian Jesuit rule in towns and villages of Belize of forty to fifty years ago, when they were the hidden government in power under the benign neglect of the paternal Colonial British system?

Back to Main Belize Development Trust Page

Maintained by Ray Auxillou, Silvia Pinzon, MLS, and Marty Casado. Please email with suggestions or additions for this Electronic Library of Belize.