Leiv Marsteintredet

Political Institutions and Democracy in the Dominican Republic: a Comparative Case-study Leiv Marsteintredet

This book deals with political institutions and their effect on democracy in the Dominican Republic since 1966. It provides a new analysis of the Dominican democracy, and uses case-study methods to generate new and improve existing theories and concepts. The book develops new measurements of critical concepts such as deadlocks, and horizontal accountability, and provides a thorough discussion of the concepts of democracy, democratisation and the institutionalisation of democracy. Through an analysis of the Dominican regime, author finds, and explains why, the Dominican democracy has been misclassified by much of the comparative literature, and argues that the regime still is not a full democracy. The book then explains why the Dominican Republic never fully democratised. The author finds that while deadlocks did not put the Dominican demoracy in peril, deadlocks tended to increase presidential dominance and lower the level of horizontal accountability, and that the institutions inherited from the 1966 constitution was an obstacle to a virtuous institutionalisation of democracy after 1978.