Politics of the Dominican Republic

A friend of mine asked me to go vacation in the Dominican Republic during Easter, but I am going home instead. This did, however, get me to thinking about the Dominican Republic, this seemingly random country that most Americans know little about other than the fact that it's a tourism-friendly island in the Carribean.

I decided to look up some information about it and found out some neat information on http://www.dominicanrepublic.com/.


Here's an excerpt on politics:

"The Dominican Republic has a long history of political instability which includes many revolutions, coups d'Ètat, barracks revolts, and insurrections, as well as social and political breakdowns. Its last revolution took place in April of 1965. Since then, governments have been systematically elected every four years, and the political climate has been at rest.

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, because many in this group are also interrelated by blood or marriage. It is a small country, with only one main city. Politics are 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 as important, and therefore, 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. "


The family plays such a part in the politics of the Dominican Republic that they make it a point to mention that one must first understand the structure of the family. I think it's interesting that even in politics, the ties within Latin American families is conspicious and significant.