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“Polyarchy in the Dominican Republic”: Jeb Sprague-Silgado on electing the DR’s next President

Paramilitarism and the Assault on Democracy in Haiti

Jeb Sprague-Silgado, is the author of Paramilitarism and the Assault on Democracy in Haiti. His article, “Polyarchy in the Dominican Republic: The Elite versus the Elite,” appeared in NACLA, May 6, 2016:

“In the Dominican Republic, as in many other countries around the Caribbean, the political strategy of leading dominant groups in recent decades has been one of polyarchy—that is to say, the options in democratic elections have been limited to voters selecting between different factions of elites. Since the 1970s, U.S. foreign policymakers, along with an increasingly wide array of UN, EU and other international agency officials have come to promote this approach. If ideological differences can be minimized, with parties differing little on core issues like economic development, then electoral competition is not only unthreatening to dominant interests, but also legitimating to notions of democracy….”

Read the entire article at NACLA: Reporting on the Americas Since 1967

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