Political Institutions and Democracy in the Dominican Republic

This book deals with political institutions and theireffect on democracy in the Dominican Republic since1966. It provides a new analysis of the Dominicandemocracy and uses case-study methods to generatenew and improve existing theories and concepts. Thebook develops new measurements of critical conceptssuch as deadlocks and horizontal accountability andprovides a thorough discussion of the concepts ofdemocracy democratisation and theinstitutionalisation of democracy. Through ananalysis of the Dominican regime author finds andexplains why the Dominican democracy has beenmisclassified by much of the comparative literatureand argues that the regime still is not a fulldemocracy. The book then explains why the DominicanRepublic never fully democratised. The author findsthat while deadlocks did not put the Dominicandemoracy in peril deadlocks tended to increasepresidential dominance and lower the level ofhorizontal accountability and that the institutionsinherited from the 1966 constitution was an obstacleto a virtuous institutionalisation of democracy after1978.