Organizational and Institutional Dynamics in Haiti: The Dominance of a Continuous and Self-Reproducing Makeshift Arrangement. Paths for an In-Depth Study

The paper starts from the observation that, since the second half of the 1980s, organizational and institutional dynamics in Haiti have been increasingly unable to provide basic services to the population. It gives examples such as the lack of effective public hygiene services, the functioning of the lycées and long queues at the tax directorate offices.

The first part traces a precarious historical legacy: the weight of colonization, the consequences of the US military occupation, the financial crimes of the Duvalier regime and the damage of neoliberalism. The second part describes the continuous, self-reproducing makeshift arrangement, in which individual responses to precarious conditions become instituted collective responses. The third part proposes ways out, arguing that transforming state apparatuses requires progressive parties and ethical-political commitments to break with this arrangement.