Click here to see a video interview with Emelio Betances. Click here to access the tables referenced in the book. Since the 1960s, the Catholic Church has acted as a mediator during social and political change in many Latin American countries, especially the Dominican Republic, Bolivia, Guatemala, Nicaragua, and El Salvador. Although the Catholic clergy was called in during political crises in all five countries, the situation in the Dominican Republic was especially notable because the Church's role as mediator was eventually institutionalized. Because the Dominican state was persistently weak, the Church was able to secure the support of the Balaguer regime (1966–1978) and ensure social and political cohesion and stability. Emelio Betances analyzes the particular circumstances that allowed the Church in the Dominican Republic to accommodate the political and social establishment; the Church offered non-partisan political mediation, rebuilt its ties with the lower echelons of society, and responded to the challenges of the evangelical movement. The author's historical examination of church-state relations in the Dominican Republic leads to important regional comparisons that broaden our understanding of the Catholic Church in the whole of Latin America.

This book offers an analysis of the formation of the Dominican state and explores the development of state-society relations since the late nineteenth century. Emelio Betances argues that the groundwork for the establishment of a modern state was laid during the regimes of Ulises Heureaux and Ramres. The U.S. military government that followed later

Click here to see a video interview with Emelio Betances. Click here to access the tables referenced in the book. Since the 1960s, the Catholic Church has acted as a mediator during social and political change in many Latin American countries, especially the Dominican Republic, Bolivia, Guatemala, Nicaragua, and El Salvador. Although the Catholic clergy was called in during political crises in all five countries, the situation in the Dominican Republic was especially notable because the Church's role as mediator was eventually institutionalized. Because the Dominican state was persistently weak, the Church was able to secure the support of the Balaguer regime (1966 1978) and ensure social and political cohesion and stability. Emelio Betances analyzes the particular circumstances that allowed the Church in the Dominican Republic to accommodate the political and social establishment; the Church offered non-partisan political mediation, rebuilt its ties with the lower echelons of society, and responded to the challenges of the evangelical movement. The author's historical examination of church-state relations in the Dominican Republic leads to important regional comparisons that broaden our understanding of the Catholic Church in the whole of Latin America."

This book combines a bottom-up and top-down approach to the study of social movements in relationship to the development of constituent and constituted power in Latin America. The contributors to this volume argue that the radical transformation of liberal representative democracy into participative democracy is what colours these processes as revolutionary. The core themes include popular sovereignty, constituted power, constituent power, participatory democracy, free trade agreements, social citizenship, as well as redistribution and recognition issues. Unlike other collections, which provide broad coverage of social movements at the expense of depth, this book is of thematic focus and illuminates the relationships between rulers and ruled as they transform liberal democracy.

This book offers an analysis of the formation of the Dominican state and explores the development of state-society relations since the late nineteenth century. Emelio Betances argues that the groundwork for the establishment of a modern state was laid during the regimes of Ulises Heureaux and Ramon Caceres. The U.S. military government that followed later expanded and strengthened political and administrative centralization. Between 1886 and 1924, these administrations opened the sugar industry to foreign capital investment, integrated Dominican finance into the international credit system, and expanded the role of the military. State expansion, however, was not accompanied by a strengthening of the social and economic base of national elites. Betances suggests that the imbalance between a strong state and a weak civil society provided the structural framework for the emergence in 1930 of the long-lived Trujillo dictatorship.Examining the links between Trujillo and current caudillo Joaquin Balaguer, the author traces continuities and discontinuities in economic and political development through a study of import substitution programs, the reemergence of new economic groups, and the use of the military to counter threats to the status quo. Finally, he explores the impact of foreign intervention and socioeconomic change on the process of state and class formation since 1961.