The Wrong Reform: Why Term Limits and Fixed Election Dates Cannot Work in Antigua and Barbuda | Part 4

By Gavin V. Emmanuel

Part Four: What Is Actually at Stake

Part Three demonstrated that term limits are constitutionally incompatible with the Westminster model, because they contradict Section 69 of the Antigua and Barbuda Constitution and impose a presidential logic of individual tenure on a parliamentary system whose accountability mechanisms operate through confidence rather than calendar. Part Four completes the argument by examining what term limits would actually do to democratic governance in practice. It also identifies the reforms that would genuinely strengthen accountability within the constitutional framework Antigua and Barbuda already possesses.

The Westminster system already has a term limit. It is called an election. It is also called the party room. The cases of Margaret Thatcher in Britain, removed by her own caucus in 1990, or the successive leadership changes in Australia across the 2010s, demonstrate that parliamentary systems do not require statutory caps to discipline their leaders. The discipline is built into the architecture. A leader who has lost the confidence of colleagues or constituents is removable at any time; not by the expiry of a constitutional clock, but by the exercise of democratic judgement. This is more responsive, more flexible, and more democratic than any statutory term limit, because it operates continuously rather than at predetermined intervals.

The research on term limits in other contexts reinforces this concern. When a leader knows they cannot seek re-election, the principal mechanism by which voters hold governments accountable (the prospect of losing office) weakens or disappears entirely. What political scientists call “electoral disconnection” sets in: the lame-duck leader becomes less responsive to constituent needs, less constrained by electoral consequences, and more susceptible to other forms of influence, including the influence of those whose relationships are not subject to electoral scrutiny. Term limits, in this analysis, do not discipline power. They redirect it.

In small island states, this problem is compounded by the reality of institutional capacity. Antigua and Barbuda, like many of our Caribbean neighbours, operates with a limited pool of experienced executive talent. A prime minister who has served multiple terms has accumulated diplomatic relationships, legislative expertise, and the institutional memory that is essential to navigating complex international negotiations and managing the cascading crises (hurricanes, pandemics, debt restructuring) that small island economies face with disproportionate frequency. To force that person from office at the precise moment when their experience is most valuable is not a democratic gain. It is an institutional loss imposed by constitutional calendar.

Defenders of term limits sometimes argue that they are necessary to dismantle the patron-client structures that have distorted Caribbean governance since independence. The critique has merit. But the prescription is misdirected. The patron-client problem is a product of weak legislative oversight, winner-take-all electoral systems, and the underdevelopment of fourth-branch institutions such as audit offices, ombudsmen, independent commissions, that can hold executives to account between elections. Term limits address none of these structural deficiencies. Indeed, by creating a predictable rotation of leadership, they may worsen the patronage problem: a prime minister who knows their time is limited has every incentive to consolidate rewards for supporters before the clock runs out, rather than investing in the long-term institutional development that produces genuinely accountable government.

The appropriate reading of the Antigua and Barbuda Constitution on this point is instructive. The framework established by Sections 60 through 69 (governing dissolution, electoral administration, and the appointment of the Prime Minister) is designed to produce accountability through confidence, not through calendar. The Governor-General’s reserve powers, the Boundaries Commission, the five-year maximum term: these are instruments of political discipline that operate through democratic judgement rather than mechanical rules. They are, collectively, a constitutional ecosystem. To introduce term limits is not to add a component to that ecosystem. It is to import a foreign organ that the body was not designed to receive.

True constitutional reform in Antigua and Barbuda, and across the Caribbean, demands something harder than setting arbitrary personal limits on leadership. It demands strengthening the legislature’s capacity to scrutinise the executive, securing the independence of oversight institutions, deepening the non-partisan character of the civil service, and ensuring that the Governor-General retains the constitutional space to exercise judgement when political actors will not. These are the reforms that address the actual sources of democratic weakness. They are also, not coincidentally, the reforms that the existing constitutional framework already makes possible. The Westminster system does not need to be replaced with a presidential logic. It needs to be made to work as it was designed: with a legislature that governs, an executive that answers to it, and an electorate that holds both to account.