Decentralization and Party Politics in the Dominican Republic

C. Mitchell

• Publisher: Palgrave Pivot
• Year: 2013
• Print ISBN: 9781137353115
• eBook ISBN: 9781137353122
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: American Government
• Index: Social Sciences

Recently in the Dominican Republic, a pro-municipal social alliance pressed for decentralization and politicians yielded, seeking power in three-party competition. This study examines how electoral, financial, and administrative power has been dispersed and suggests innovative strategies to maintain decentralizing momentum.

1

Introduction

Abstract: Political decentralization in the Dominican Republic was initiated between 1994 and 2008: non-concurrent municipal elections were introduced, revenue-sharing for local governments was multiplied by twelve, and the capital city was subdivided. Moreover, a centralizing “Municipal League” was significantly weakened, and Participatory Budgeting was mandated within all towns and cities. There is a causal link between these steps and the existence, between 1986 and 2004, of a three-party system in Dominican national politics. Three-way competition among parties created opportunities for a social-political coalition favoring decentralization to introduce limits on the central state’s power, utilizing the mechanisms of a centralized polity to change and reform it. The topics in the succeeding chapters are outlined.

Mitchell, Christopher. Decentralization and Party Politics in the Dominican Republic. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2014. DOI: 10.1057/9781137353122.

Between 1994 and 2008, the Dominican Republic took a series of significant steps toward decentralizing political power. A constitutional revision in 1994 changed the electoral calendar, establishing a series of municipal and Congressional elections that were separated by two years from the quadrennial presidential contests. These non-concurrent elections (a total of four were held) increased the autonomy and resources of some political leaders at the municipal level. Laws passed in 1997 and 2003 multiplied the flow of central-state subsidies (which then provided most of the finance for local governments) by a factor of 12 in real terms. The capital city, Santo Domingo, was divided in 2002 into five municipios, in an effort to bring city government closer to the citizens’ level. In 2007, a new Law on Municipalities was passed, limiting the power of the Dominican Municipal League (Liga Municipal Dominicana—LMD), a national-level bureau that had acted as a centralizing Ministry of Municipalities. Additional 2007 legislation strengthened a spontaneous movement to implement Participatory Budgeting, obliging Dominican municipalities to formulate some of their construction plans through grass-roots consultation.

These measures to diffuse political power were surprising, both for their character and their brisk pace. To be sure, the country had broken with a long tradition of dictatorship in the early 1960s, and had been ruled by elected civilian politicians since 1966. Yet for 20 of the 28 years that preceded 1994, most authority had rested with a single domineering president, Joaquín Balaguer, and occasional presidents from a rival party had done little during those years to curtail the sweeping influence of the central executive. As late as 1999, an ample comparative study classified the Dominican Republic as one of only two Western Hemisphere nations in which “no decentralizing reforms have been made to date.”¹

Why were power-dispersing measures adopted, in a political system that previously had been famous for its degree of centralization? The main thesis of this book is that an important causal relation exists between Dominican decentralization, on the one hand, and a basic element of the nation’s presidentialist political system, on the other: the structure of the political-party system that prevailed between 1986 and 2004. During that era, three strong and relatively equal parties competed at the national level. This national three-party system tended to create opportunities for certain decentralizing reforms—advances that were being vigorously promoted by a network of diverse pro-municipal (municipalista) interest groups. During the limited period of three-partyism, Dominican parties formed a series of different temporary alliances on municipal issues, opening spaces for increased geographic diffusion of political power.

This research breaks new ground, allowing us to see in detail how a committed and ingenious social movement utilized the very mechanisms of a centralized polity to change and reform it. In addition, our analysis may have more extensive significance, for two reasons. First, the effort to diffuse political power is simply one among a broad set of recent endeavors to reform, deepen, and enrich Dominican democracy. The changing fortunes of the decentralizing movement may help us to understand the prospects for related efforts to foster a more pluralistic, impartial, and responsive political order in the nation. Second, careful analysis of the Dominican experience may contribute both new data and suggestive insights to the comparative study of political decentralization in Latin American nations. Political-party dynamics centered in Santo Domingo may add a new analytic thread to analysts’ understanding of why Latin American parties may—at times surprisingly—endorse spinning off some political decision-making to subnational levels.

In our analysis, we will define decentralization as a process that involves three components: the democratic election of subnational authorities, the diffusion of significant decision-making power to local functionaries, and the increasing control by those officials over adequate resources in order to implement their decisions.² Undoubtedly, decentralization may not be equally profound in its political, administrative and financial aspects, nor equally effective in all fields of public policy. Its progressive expansion is neither inevitable nor irreversible. Instead, decentralization is a process in which political actors—national and municipal—compete in a contest that situates a nation’s pattern of governance at one point, or another, on a continuum between centralization and the sharing of political power with subnational authorities.

Following this introduction, Chapter 2 (after a very brief overview of Dominican history) will describe the public-policy steps, and some organizational initiatives from Dominican civil society, that have favored decentralization since 1994. Chapter 3 contrasts the recent Dominican decentralizing measures with the nation’s entrenched centralist tradition. Dominican centralism is evidenced and perpetuated by the notable administrative and political weakness of the nation’s 32 provinces. Each Dominican municipality must, for the most part, face directly the full power of the central government, without the mediation and pluralism that might be afforded by a robust set of regional political authorities. The challenges that faced municipalistas at the start of the recent decentralization trend will also be illustrated, through a profile of the marginalized Dominican municipality at the start of the 1990s.

Our analysis will continue in Chapter 4, by describing the participants in the Dominican pro-municipal coalition, and how their efforts intersected with the advent of a three-party power constellation after 1986. The municipalista alliance has included Dominican non-governmental organizations, intellectuals, jurists, international aid agencies (especially from Europe), technocrats (contracted either by aid organizations or by departments of the Dominican state), local politicians—and a limited group of politicians with national interests. Some members of the partnership have been motivated by faith in the reformist effects of political decentralization, while others have sought increased political influence. The municipalista community demonstrated, at times, a spirit of common interest, strengthening the impact of such a diverse coalition. We will describe the reasons for the advent of three-partyism, and briefly compare the structure and dynamics of that type of system with those of other party alignments.

Chapter 5 will analyze the tripartite political dynamic that existed between 1990 and 2010, indicating how the mutual relations and calculations among the parties and their leaders offered openings, at nine specific junctures, through which to advance the pro-municipal agenda. An alliance between any two out of the three parties offered the chance to hinder the third competitor, and the price (or theme) of such a combination was, at times, the promotion of municipal priorities. We will see how this type of interaction could augment the voice and the profile of municipalism in the national political debate, while also increasing the funding and autonomy provided by the central state to city and town governments.

In Chapter 6, we will outline how Dominican municipal politics have changed in the past decade, partly under the impact of decentralizing laws and institutional revisions. We will then compare the sequence (among aspects of decentralization) that has marked the Dominican case, with the patterns of power diffusion found in several other Latin American nations. Chapter 7 offers a picture of centralist resistance after 2004, strengthened by the apparent re-establishment, since that year, of a system of two dominant political parties. In this section of the book, we will also review the way in which wide-ranging control over nominations for local and congressional offices continues to strengthen the power of central party and governmental élites.

Comparative concerns will engage our attention in Chapter 8. That section examines two alternative explanations for the Dominican Republic’s unanticipated turn toward political decentralization: the effect of macroeconomic shocks, and possible party interests in bolstering political strongholds at the local level. Finally, Chapter 9 will suggest measures which might advance the Dominican municipalista agenda in the future, as it competes with the well-established preference of the Dominican executive to concentrate all types of prerogatives in its hands.

Notes

  1   Eliza Willis, Christopher da C.B. Garman, and Stephan Haggard, “The Politics of Decentralization in Latin America,” Latin American Research Review, Vol. 34, #1 (1999), p. 9. Panama was also placed in this category.

  2   Alfred P. Montero and David J. Samuels, “The Political Determinants of Decentralization in Latin America: Causes and Consequences,” in idem, eds, Decentralization and Democracy in Latin America (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 2004), pp. 5–9, and Kent Eaton, Politics Beyond the Capital: The Design of Subnational Institutions in South America (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2004), pp. 27–30.

2

Measures and Initiatives Favoring Decentralization, 1994–2008

Abstract: Dominican political history is very briefly summarized, stressing the development and vigor of neo-patrimonial and authoritarian traditions. More detail is provided on the electoral, fiscal, institutional and legislative changes that introduced decentralization in the period 1994–2008. Non-concurrent elections, increases in revenue-sharing, and the establishment of a vigorous federation of municipalities are described. A reduction in the power of a central bureau that had functioned as a controlling Ministry of Municipalities is recounted, together with the advent of Participatory Budgeting in hundreds of Dominican subnational governments.

Mitchell, Christopher. Decentralization and Party Politics in the Dominican Republic. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2014. DOI: 10.1057/9781137353122.

Dominican efforts in pursuit of nationhood and democracy have been long and difficult. Though Santo Domingo was the first substantial Spanish colony in the Americas, it was relatively neglected by Madrid once Cuba and possessions in Central and South America began to be exploited after 1515. In the seventeenth century Spain even lost control of the Western one-third of Hispaniola to France, and the Napoleonic Wars ended Spanish rule in the island entirely. In 1844 a Dominican uprising terminated control by post-revolutionary Haiti, which had extended its domination to the Spanish-speaking segment of Hispaniola. Though subsequent Dominican constitutions called for electoral republics, in practice political life for more than a century tended to be dominated either by feuding regional caudillos, or by harsh and personalistic dictators. The United States occupied the country from 1916 until 1924, and established conditions that favored the tyranny (1930–1961) of Rafael Trujillo Molina, a ruler whose despotic control was seriously compared to European totalitarianism. Trujillo’s 1961 assassination was so welcomed that for many years its anniversary was marked by a religious service of thanksgiving, attended by high government officials, in Santo Domingo’s cathedral.

An upsurge of popular and democratic organizing followed Trujillo’s death almost immediately. In 1962 Juan Bosch, the candidate of a populist and modern mass party, the Partido Revolucionario Dominicano (Dominican Revolutionary Party—PRD), was elected president with 60% of the votes. (The winners of Dominican presidential elections since 1962 are shown in Table 4.1) Rejected by conservative élites, Bosch was overthrown by the military after less than seven months in office. When the succeeding weak conservative junta was challenged by military and civilian rebels 18 months later, the United States intervened in the civil war. US troops withdrew after the 1966 election as president of Joaquín Balaguer, who had served as a principal adviser and functionary of Trujillo. Balaguer shrewdly founded and based his rule in part on a second, more conservative multi-class party, the Partido Reformista (Reformist Party—PR, later PRSC), though he did not permit meaningful elections for 12 years. In the midst of these relatively authoritarian years, Juan Bosch left the PRD in 1973, considering it too accommodationist, founding the initially small and left-wing Partido de la Liberación Dominicana (Dominican Liberation Party—PLD). In 1978 the reinvigorated PRD defeated Balaguer with a moderate candidate, in an election that established the ballot box, rather than manipulation by military and civilian élites, as the only viable route to political power. Following two PRD four-year presidential terms, Balaguer was returned to office from 1986 until 1994, a period of economic decline and social tension.

The recent steps favoring Dominican political decentralization began with a crisis of the presidentialist model (and of the two-party system) that had been established following the Civil War of 1965 and the elections the following year. In the balloting (for all central and local offices) of 1994, a sophisticated fraud was discovered, in which tens of thousands of voters—principally adherents of the PRD and the PLD—were excluded from the official voting roll. The margin of victory of then-president Balaguer, candidate for re-election under the banner of the Reformist Social Christian Party (PRSC), proved to ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• 1  Introduction
• 2  Measures and Initiatives Favoring Decentralization, 19942008
• 3  The Deep Roots and Local Consequences of Dominican Centralism
• 4  A Decentralizing Coalition Finds Political Leverage
• 5  Party Alliances, the Municipios, and Decentralization
• 6  Dominican Decentralization Moves toward Maturity, 19962013
• 7  Pushback against Decentralization, and Its Links with Influence over Nominations
• 8  Assessing Alternative Explanations of Dominican Decentralization
• 9  Pro-decentralization Strategies for the Future
• Bibliography
• Index