Barbados’s transition to Republic status in regional perspective

The Institute of the Americas Caribbean Seminar Series was delighted to bring you this expert panel discussion in collaboration with the AHRC-funded collaborative research project, The Visible Crown: Elizabeth II in the Caribbean, 1952 to the present. This event was held online on November 10,2021. Panel: Professor Cynthia Barrow-Giles is Professor of Political Science and former Deputy Dean of Outreach at the University of the West Indies(Cave Hill). H.E. David Comissiong has served as Ambassador of Barbados to CARICOM since 2018. Dr Derek O’Brien is a Reader in Public Law at Oxford Brookes University. Professor Emerita Carolyn Cooper taught literature and popular culture at the University of the West Indies, Mona, Jamaica for over three decades. In November 2021, fifty-five years after independence, Barbados will transition from a constitutional monarchy to a Republic. Barbados is the fourth Commonwealth Caribbean nation to remove the Queen as constitutional head of state, joining fellow republics Guyana (1970), Trinidad and Tobago (1976), and Dominica (1978). While the decision to become a republic has been broadly supported, the process of enacting this change is not without controversy. What are the implications – constitutional, symbolic, and material - for Barbados, and for the wider region? Why has Barbados succeeded in this endeavour where other Caribbean states have failed? To what extent is there political will or popular support to effect such a change elsewhere? Has ‘time come’ for the British monarchy in the Caribbean?