Grenada is the smallest of the so-called Windward Islands of the Lesser Antilles. Barely 120 square miles in area, it falls short of the 100,000 population mark. Political scientist Archie Singham sees clear advantages in the study of such small polities as Grenada. First of all the question of size or “scale,” as he calls it, is an important variable in political analysis, and his study clearly demonstrates just where that importance lies. Second, Grenada, at least during the period under analysis (basically the decade, 1951-1962), embodied many of the problems found in the process of decolonization, which usually brings intense mobilization of native political forces and personages. Singham’s generalizations from the Grenadian case are plausible and convincingly discussed. Third, the reduced size of the polity enables these processes to be observed in their functional “whole”—in their relationship to the rest of the institutional and dynamic forces in the society.

The context of the “total” system is analyzed in terms of what is called the colonial condition, essentially a state of social, economic, and psychological dependency, “a deep-rooted state of mind” (p. 11). Having set the stage, Singham discusses the constitutional development of Grenada, leading up to the critical political and constitutional crisis of 1962 that forms the bulk of the analysis. Central to this discussion of antecedents to the crisis is the analysis of how political interests are aggregated and articulated within such a context of decolonization. This is done, Singham maintains, not through a Western-type political party structure, but rather through the nearly symbiotic relationship between the “hero” and the “crowd.” Legitimacy is centered on the individual, making politics personalistic and thus dangerously prone to conflict—a danger from which Grenada did not escape. An uneven conflict ensued between the flamboyant native politician (Gairy, the “hero”) and the “rational” civil-servant in Her Majesty’s service, bound by tradition and duty. As a result, by 1962 Grenada had lost many of its constitutional gains and was behind other colonies of the Windward chain.

Many of the reservations concerning Singham’s analysis can be dealt with under one substantive criticism,. He fails to make his book what he promises, i.e. a “contemporary history” (p. 20). Having whetted the reader’s appetite with an incisive “Third World” critique of Western social science models in colonial areas, Singham soon forgets his opening caveats, and he speedily adopts the most distressing mixture of Western social science concepts which he juggles in dizzying sequence—Weber, Easton, Shils, Adorno, Verba, Pye, the two Neumans, Lasswell, and many others. Frantz Fanon is also there, of course, even though from all appearances dragged in by the scruff of the neck. The parade of theoreticians regularly and irritatingly interrupts the flow of narrative and any sense of development. Also the book’s title is questionable, for there is nothing in the description and analysis of the major protagonist, Gairy, to justify the label of “hero.” He is, rather, a demagogue, as Singham seems fully aware: “It is open to question whether Gairy could have developed a different political style. Both the social structure and the political system encouraged demagoguery rather than genuine charismatic leadership” (p. 198). A “crowd” appears only occasionally on the scene, the predominant leader-follower relationship being described as one of “very weak links between the leaders and the masses” (p. 227 and passim).

It is astonishing also to discover that the research for the book was done by “three senior researchers, two graduate students, and ten undergraduate students” (p. 332)—in the best (or worst) American social science tradition, to say the least. The value of the work lies in the author’s keen insights into different facets of the political culture of Grenada. As a whole it falls short of the initial promise.