Although there has been much to boast about in advanced countries regarding e-commerce as a viable business strategy, many doubt its application to developing countries. Several papers examine individual case studies from advanced developing countries but few have presented a systemic focus on the ecosystem of an e-commerce sector, and even fewer on small island developing states (SIDS) such as the Caribbean, and those often lack a comprehensive awareness of the sector, and/or are dated. The central aim of this conceptual paper therefore is to address this lacuna by discussing the importance of understanding the broader political, social, cognitive, and economic issues and their implications and applications inherent in the development of an e-commerce sector. From this, the main objective will be to conceptualize an e-commerce strategy for their development. To realize this main aim, the article leverages a historical comparative perspective that critically examines causal analysis, experiences, and iterative processes gleaned over time from a structured analytical comparison of several national and regional case studies to conceptualize the factors and conditions under which e-commerce may contribute to, and can be adopted for development. As its main objective, the paper then presents a policy framework of recommendations guided by mutually

This conceptual article discusses the opportunities and challenges presented for e-government and e-governance in the Anglophone Caribbean. However, although an understanding of the issues inherent in these phenomena is crucially important, particularly for the governance systems of small island developing states (SIDS) in the Caribbean, in practice, such ideas have become little more than meaningless sound bites with little practical application. This is so not least because their complexity is often misunderstood and/or inappropriately unacknowledged as potential new directions by the general political science discipline and by policy planners. Furthermore, the foundational debate on information and communication technologies (ICTs) and their impact on governance and the wider implications for development remains muted and/or ignored owing to the theatrical commotion in other "pressing" aspects of Caribbean political life. By extension, when attempting to highlight to the international community the impact these new technologies pose to these small societies, perhaps because they are objectified by the global media as peripheral "idyllic" regions and not considered as innovative in ICTs or in development, they are excluded from analysis in major academic journals. This article therefore provides those who work within these areas a space for exposing their ideas to a wider international arena. That arena covers political scientists in the Caribbean academy who believe that the intellectual transactions of political science should revolve around more "pressing" problems such as electoral politics, the hackneyed regional integration project, the often dusted-off historical events and their implications for the present, naïve calls for the dismantling of the inherited British Westminster/Whitehall System of government even though its harshest critics have often significantly benefitted from its institutional arrangements, or some other social constructivist issue. For several social science scholars within the Caribbean, e-government and e-governance and their progenitor technology and politics do not warrant an investment in intellectual effort and are therefore ignored or marginalized by many. A review of the political science degree programs at the three campuses of the 603106S GOXXX10.

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The use of social media is becoming a feature of political engagement in the Caribbean. This article investigates factors associated with digital and conventional political participation in Jamaica, Trinidad & Tobago, Guyana, Surinam and Haiti using 2012 AmericasBarometer dataset. Based on logistic regression, attitudinal factors positively associated with digital political participation are: political understanding, support for democracy, conventional political participation, and internet usage. Digital political action is less likely for the politically tolerant. Engagement in protest is positively associated with digital political action, signing petition, greater levels of education, being male but less likely for those who use the internet. These findings demonstrate that digital political action and conventional political participation are mutually reinforcing.