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Dominican Republic POLITICAL DYNAMICS
The System of Dominican Politics
The Dominican Republic's long history of political
instability had included many revolutions, coups d'état,
barracks
revolts, and pronunciamientos (insurrections
accompanied
by declarations of disagreement with the existing
government), as
well as social and political breakdowns. Coups and
revolutions
are among the easiest political phenomena to measure
systematically. When a country has had so many, one must
conclude
that they are a regular, normal part of the political
process.
Therefore, it is not the case that Dominican politics are
unsystematic.
Politics in the Dominican Republic functions on a
smaller and
less formal scale than politics in the United States.
Sometimes
it seems that everyone in the Dominican Republic who
counts
politically knows everyone else who counts; many in this
group
are also interrelated by blood or marriage. It is a small
country, with only one main city. Politics is therefore
more like
old-fashioned United States county politics. In this
context,
family and clan networks, patronage systems, close
friendships,
the bonds of kinship, personal ties, and extended family,
ethnic,
or other personal connections are as important as the more
formal
and impersonal institutions of a larger political system.
The
Dominican Republic has large-scale organizations, such as
political parties, interest groups, professional
associations,
and bureacratic organizations, but often the informal
networks
are at least as important. They are, in addition, the
features
that are the most difficult for outsiders to penetrate and
to
understand.
To comprehend Dominican politics, therefore, one must
understand first of all the family networks: who is
related to
whom, and how and what (if anything) these family ties
mean. One
must also understand the social and the racial
hierarchies, who
speaks to whom and in what tone of voice, who sees whom
socially,
and what these social ties imply politically. One must
know about
past business deals and associations, whether they were
clean or
"dirty," and what each family or individual knows or
thinks about
associates. One must understand where the different
families
"fit" in the Dominican system, whether they are old rich
or new
rich, their bloodlines, what they share politically, and
what
pulls them apart. Many of these family and clan
associations and
rivalries go back for generations.
Family and personalistic associations overlap and
interact
with the institutions of a more modern political system in
all
sorts of complex ways. For example, what goes by the name
of a
political party actually may turn out to be the
personalistic
apparatus of a single politician or family; or a certain
office
within the government bureaucracy may turn out to be the
private
preserve of a single family or clan. In order to
understand
Dominican politics, one must comprehend these complex
overlaps of
traditional and modern institutions and practices, of
family and
clan-based politics, and of modern political
organizations.
Data as of December 1989
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