Representative Government in Socialist Cuba

Abstract

A study of representative government in socialist Cuba must be based on criteria that arise from and correspond to its particular socioeconomic system, taking into account the theoretical and historical background of socialist political development, the relations of production and the dominant class, and the economic development of the country. This means that many of the basic concepts of representative government under capitalism may not be applicable either in theory or in practice. The literature published on the Cuban government lacks detailed analysis of how the system functions. Even writers who supposedly sympathize with the revolution have concluded that, in the best of cases, Cuban representative government has severe limitations because it does not fall within the historically defined limits of capitalist democracy. Thus it is said that without electoral campaigns and electoral propaganda the people have no significant political options; that the only level that has direct elections, the municipal level, is limited to local issues and therefore insignificant; and that, the majority of municipal and provincial delegates and National Assembly deputies being party militants, voting in these bodies is dictated by the party, which in any case dominates the parliamentary system through the candidacy commissions. My study of the Cuban parliamentary system explores the roles of the municipal assembly, the provincial assembly, and the National Assembly and the role of the Communist party. Its empirical core consists of four municipal assemblies on which I did fieldwork: those of Playa, an urban municipality in City of Havana Province; Bauta, a municipality on the outskirts of the city of Havana in Havana Province, where agriculture and textile manufacturing are the main economic activities; Cienfuegos, an industrial city 200 miles southeast of Havana in Cienfuegos Province; and Palmira, a small,. rural