The only two electoral victories of multi-racial parties in Trinidad and Tobago and in Guyana are analyzed comparatively to determine the conditions of their success in the sharply racially competitive environments of both countries. The argument of the article is that new class formation in the context of "political openings" precipitated the rise of new class-political agendas that were able to promise developmental benefits to a wide section of the population. The new political classes were compositionally "the working population" in Guyana and the "professional middle class" in Trinidad and Tobago, which explains their extremely different developmental proposals.;
