I've mentioned identity politics a few times lately, and have been meaning to flesh out the concept in more detail on the site as it is a staple of the PLP's politics, going into overdrive during election periods, but it hasn't been scrutinized in the scheme of a broader political analysis.
A reader recently sent me a paper authored in 2004, which included the PLP's 2003 election campaign in a study entitled "Social Identity, Political Speech, and Electoral Competition".
The incidence of identity politics practiced by the PLP in the 2003 election was described as follows:
Levels of group-based appeals in this election while not intolerant or threatening were nonetheless significant. It was the rhetoric of the incumbent PLP, the party of the plurality group, for which group-based appeals were most evident.18 The PLP reelection campaign was based on emphasizing the party’s accomplishments in government and appeals to racial solidarity. The form of these appeals ranged from implicit messages focusing on the party’s history as an advocate for blacks’ full participation in the political and economic life of the island to explicit messages that instructed voters that casting their ballots was an affirmation of their identity as blacks. The party designated July 24th, the day of the election, “Affirmation Day” and organized several well attended “Affirmation Rallies.”A look at a few examples of the rhetoric at the rallies and in the campaign generally makes it clear that voters were being asked to make an affirmation of their identity with their vote not simply returning an incumbent government to power or making a statement of party loyalty. The party’s leader and the country’s premier Jennifer Smith told the audience at the campaign’s culminating rally that “On November 9, 1998 (date of last election and first PLP win) we liberated ourselves and Bermuda. On July 24, we will affirm that decision” (Greening 2003).
PLP Transport Minister Dr. Ewart Brown rallied the same audience with “We must not go back, we must go forward ... Have you ever heard of any people on the planet who have voted their way back onto the plantation?. . . ” (Greening and Johnson 2003). Smith, in an open letter during the week of the election in one of the island’s most read weekly newspapers, wrote “We brought unprecedented passion to putting the Bermudian identity first, as demonstrated by last year’s inauguration of the trans-Atlantic African Diaspora Heritage Trail . . . When we meet voters on the doorsteps, they look into our eyes and see themselves. This is what sets us apart.” (Smith 2003). These types of appeals were central to the PLP’s campaign strategy and indicate a clearly higher level of group-based rhetoric than what we have already described for recent elections in Belize. This pattern is consistent with the prediction that increasing independents tends to decrease levels of group rhetoric.
The rest of the paper goes into the practice of identity politics in more detail, and is a good read.
You don't need to be a political scientist to know that this was practiced much more aggressively in the 2007 election, and also in the lead-up, primarily as a defence mechanism against the allegations of political corruption leaked in the BHC Police files.
Posted by Christian S. Dunleavy