The Political Systems of the Region

Abstract

The oligarchy, the plantocracy or the metropolitan state have controlled the political systems of the region and assured the continuance of policies — economic, cultural, social and political — which benefit them, in spite of periodic challenges to their power. Nevertheless, the dynamics of regional politics, in the course of the last thirty years especially, has meant a reorganization of the state to take into account the internal changes which have occurred in the region and also as a result of external pressures. In Chapter 2, we looked at class structure in the region. In this chapter we examine in detail some of the different ways dominant groups have established control over the state apparatus. In particular, we look at examples of the oligarchic militarized state (El Salvador and Guatemala) and the personalist dictatorship (Haiti and the Dominican Republic). But dictatorship, in different guises, is not the only form of organizing the state in the region. In fact, an almost bewildering variety of political systems has developed in the Caribbean Basin. In particular, the region comprises the only area of the so-called Third World where representative democracy has developed alongside brutal, militarized regimes.