Antigua and Barbuda's politics: a small island with a constitutional veto

How the independence constitution divides power

Antigua and Barbuda is a constitutional monarchy. The British monarch is head of state as monarch of Antigua and Barbuda and is represented by a governor-general. Executive power in practice lies with a prime minister, appointed by the governor-general as the member of the House of Representatives most likely to command a majority, and with a cabinet drawn from Parliament. The governor-general dissolves Parliament on the prime minister's advice, and may do so on his own judgement only if the House passes a vote of no confidence and the prime minister neither resigns nor asks for a dissolution within seven days.

Parliament has two chambers. The House of Representatives has seventeen members elected in single-seat constituencies for terms of up to five years, plus a speaker chosen by the House. The Senate is entirely appointed, and section 28 of the constitution sets out whose advice fills each seat:

A money bill may start only in the House. The Senate can delay other bills but not stop them: a bill passed by the House in two successive sessions goes to the governor-general for assent even if the Senate rejects it twice.

The constitution is hard to change. Any amendment needs the votes of two thirds of all members of the House. The most important provisions, listed in a schedule, also need an interval of at least ninety days between introduction and second reading and then approval in a referendum by at least two thirds of the valid votes cast. In 2018 a proposal to replace the Privy Council with the Caribbean Court of Justice as the final court of appeal was rejected.

What the constitution promises Barbuda

Section 123 of the constitution establishes a council for Barbuda as the principal organ of local government on that island. The council itself was created in 1976 by the Barbuda Local Government Act, passed while Antigua was still an associated state, and the independence constitution reached back and protected it. Parliament may alter the provisions of that act listed in the constitution's second schedule only if, after the bill's final reading in the House, the Barbuda Council consents to it by resolution.

The council has eleven members: nine elected directly for four-year terms at elections held every two years in March, and two ex officio members, Barbuda's representative in the House and its senator. It sits in Codrington. Barbuda is guaranteed one seat in the House and two voices in the Senate. The Barbuda People's Movement has been the only political grouping on the council since 2021, and it also holds the island's House seat.

The council's powers cover public works, finance, utilities, agriculture and roads. Land law is made in Parliament, and it has become the centre of national politics. The Barbuda Land Act of 2007, passed under a United Progressive Party government, provided that all land on Barbuda is owned in common by the people of Barbuda, with title held by the Crown on their behalf and their consent needed for any major development. The Judicial Committee of the Privy Council's summary of the Paradise Found case sets out both provisions.

How the land question reached the Privy Council

The dispute runs through a series of acts and court cases. In 2015 Parliament passed the Paradise Found (Project) Act to give effect to a lease of land on Barbuda for a resort, and the act provided that the Land Act would not apply to the leased land. Two Barbudans challenged it in the High Court in June 2016, arguing that it took away their interest in the land without compensation. The High Court let the claim proceed; the Court of Appeal ruled that the Land Act gave Barbudans collective rights as a class and not personal property rights that an individual could defend. In June 2022 the Privy Council rejected the appeal, as Freedom House recorded in its report on that year.

Hurricane Irma in September 2017 changed the terms of the argument. According to the Caribbean Investigative Journalism Network, the government repealed the Barbuda Land Act in 2018, with the attorney general arguing that it was unconstitutional because it prevented Antiguans from owning land. Freedom House reported that in 2020 the Barbuda Council called for Barbuda to secede, and that the government accused the council of treason and threatened to remove it from the constitution. A bill ending communal ownership passed in July 2023, and the Barbuda People's Movement and the council said they would try to reverse it, according to the Barbuda entry on Wikipedia.

Challenges have continued on other fronts. The Global Legal Action Network, which supports Barbudan claimants, records that in 2024 the Privy Council held that two Barbudans had standing to challenge the construction of a new airport on the island, sending the case back to the Caribbean courts, and that the council and residents have filed separate challenges to a process of land adjudication under which land judged unused or unclaimed would revert to the Crown. The government has argued that the Land Act was unconstitutional, and the prime minister said after Irma, as the CIJN reports, that Barbuda would no longer be allowed to operate as a "giant welfare island". Barbudan claimants and the council hold that the new laws take away land their island has held in common since slavery ended. This catalogue records both positions and adjudicates neither.

Why Antigua has no local councils

Barbuda's council is unusual partly because nothing like it exists on Antigua. The six parishes of Antigua, Saint George, Saint John, Saint Mary, Saint Paul, Saint Peter and Saint Phillip, were governed by parish vestries in colonial times and now have no government of any kind. Village councils operated in the 1940s and the legislation creating them was never repealed, and St. John's had a city council in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, but the St. John's Development Corporation has since taken over most of its functions. The Wikipedia country article records proposals for parish councils after the election of 2023, none of which had been set up by January 2025.

The practical effect is that Antigua is governed directly by the national government, while Barbuda has an elected body of its own with constitutional standing.

How elections are won and lost

Two parties have won every general election since 1994: the Antigua and Barbuda Labour Party, descended from the Antigua Labour Party founded out of the trade union movement in the 1940s, and the United Progressive Party. The Labour Party and its predecessors have governed for most of the period since 1951, with two breaks: the Progressive Labour Movement from 1971 to 1976, and the United Progressive Party from 2004 to 2014. Freedom House notes that power has nonetheless alternated between the two main parties and that opposition parties have a realistic chance of winning.

First past the post turns modest vote shares into large majorities. Recent results:

In 2018 the Labour Party took 59% of the vote and fifteen seats, while the United Progressive Party took 37% and one seat, according to Freedom House. The election of 18 January 2023 was much closer; the Inter-Parliamentary Union recorded that an independent member was sworn in to the House for the first time in the country's history.

Constituency sizes have drifted apart. Freedom House observes that boundaries have shifted only slightly since 1984, leaving constituencies that ranged in size from 1,138 in St. Phillip South to 4,878 in St. George when it reported on 2022. It also records concern that party and campaign financing is not transparent, citing the case of the American financier Allen Stanford, whose Antigua-based bank was the centre of a Ponzi scheme. Women are few in Parliament: two were elected to the House in 2018.

Who has the last word in court

The courts are part of the Eastern Caribbean Supreme Court, which has its headquarters in Saint Lucia and a High Court judge resident in Antigua, with a Court of Appeal above. Magistrates' courts hear lesser cases in three districts. The final court is still the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council in London, because voters kept it in 2018; Antigua and Barbuda belongs to the Caribbean Court of Justice but has not acceded to Part III of the agreement that set it up, so appeals still go to London.

Freedom House reports that the courts have increasingly asserted their independence from the government in recent years, with the support of the regional Supreme Court. In July 2022 the High Court struck down the parts of the Sexual Offences Act that criminalised same-sex sexual relations, holding that the constitution's ban on sex discrimination also covers sexual orientation and gender identity. The death penalty remains lawful under the constitution. Jury trial was largely abolished in 2024, according to the Wikipedia country article. Freedom House also records that prisoners on remand wait an average of three to four years for trial and that prisons stood at 155% of capacity in September 2022.

How far the press and the state keep apart

Freedom of the press is protected by the constitution and qualified in practice. Criminal defamation was abolished in 2015, but seditious libel remains an offence under the Sedition and Undesirable Publications Act, punishable by up to two years in prison. Freedom House reports that most media outlets are owned by a few firms tied to one of the two main parties, and that journalists face libel suits from politicians. The Wikipedia country article records self-censorship as common, especially at the state-owned Antigua Broadcasting Service.

The citizenship by investment programme is the other point of friction with outside observers. Freedom House notes that it has come under international scrutiny, that in March 2022 the government suspended applications from Russian and Belarusian nationals, and that the European Parliament recommended in the same month that visa-free access to the European Union be restricted for countries running such schemes. Public officials must declare their income and assets to an Integrity Commission, which Freedom House describes as short of the resources to investigate.

Where Antigua and Barbuda stands abroad

The state joined the United Nations and the Commonwealth at independence and is a founding member of the Organisation of Eastern Caribbean States. It also belongs to the Eastern Caribbean Currency Union, whose central bank issues the East Caribbean dollar. It belongs to the Caribbean Community, the Organization of American States, the Alliance of Small Island States, the World Trade Organization and the Bolivarian Alliance for the Peoples of Our America. The government describes its foreign policy with the phrase "friends of all; enemies of none", as quoted in the Wikipedia country article.

Ties to Montserrat are close. When the Soufrière Hills volcano erupted in 1997, Antigua and Barbuda took in 3,000 refugees, and most transport into the British territory still runs through Antigua. Defence rests on the small Antigua and Barbuda Defence Force, which has an army regiment, a coast guard and an air wing, and on the Regional Security System shared with neighbouring states.

The monarchy itself is under discussion. After the death of Elizabeth II in 2022, the government announced that a referendum on becoming a republic could be held within three years, and the Inter-Parliamentary Union noted that the election of 2023 was the first held after that announcement.