Since 1944, the Jamaican people, without ethnic or religious strife, civil war, military coup, one-party dictatorship, assassination of political leaders, insurgency or genocide, have voted out governments and voted in opposition parties in free and fair elections - a record in democratic governance equalled by only a handful of states worldwide. In this volume, Adult Suffrage and Poltical Administrations in Jamaica 1944-2002, Trevor Munroe and Arnold Bertram, both active participants in this process, document critical aspects of this record." "Key features include: the elections through which the consolidation of democracy occurred; the representatives - their gender, education, occupation, age - whom the people chose to form 13 successive governments and parliaments; the laws that the legislature passed and the institutions governments established in building a modern democratic state; advances and failures - political, economic, social and cultural - of each administration; comparison of the performances of successive adminstrations; and the critical challenges facing the Jamaican people and the new leaders."--BOOK JACKET.