Haiti: The Need to Move Toward a Federal, Decentralized and Deconcentrated System by Department

The article argues that Haiti's unitary and centralized regime has not answered persistent instability, deep territorial inequality and weak governance, with power concentrated in Port-au-Prince and other regions marginalized. It finds the historical basis for a federal system in the five pre-colonial indigenous caciquats of the island and in the division between the north under Henri Christophe and the south under Alexandre Pétion after 1806.

The author proposes a federal model that respects the ten departments. Each department would have separate institutions, budget, development policy and assembly, and would send at least 15 percent of its gross revenue to the central state. Each would send 2 or 3 senators to a federal Senate and have a departmental vice-president. The three mayors per commune would give way to one elected executive mayor, and the communal section administrative councils (CASEC) would be abolished. The author presents this as a modern reappropriation of Haitian history and calls it a structural necessity.