[HN Gopher] One island, two worlds (Haiti vs. Dominican Republic)
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One island, two worlds (Haiti vs. Dominican Republic)
Author : marojejian
Score : 50 points
Date : 2025-03-30 18:10 UTC (4 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.economist.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.economist.com)
| marojejian wrote:
| No paywall: https://archive.is/DkjIV
| marojejian wrote:
| To me the core lesson here is the incredible value of stable
| political and economic institutions.
|
| (even after adjusting for the incredible injustice of all the
| external actors, and nature itself).
|
| If you are lucky enough to get such a stable system, it's a high
| priority to defend it. Don't weaken it for marginal improvements
| for your cause.
| hybrid_study wrote:
| that was more or less Jared Diamond's take in his book
| "Collapse". Both countries have struggled historically but the
| DR made better decisions when it came to environment
| conservation, which can be seen as a product of having more
| stable institutions
| TMWNN wrote:
| Relevant: TIL that Haiti has had 23 constitutions since 1801,
| with the most recent being enacted in 2012. At least two have
| declared the country to be an empire. <https://np.reddit.com/r/
| todayilearned/comments/3t5wzt/til_th...>
| Svip wrote:
| That Reddit discussion is from 9 years ago. There is a new
| constitution _possibly_ coming up: https://en.wikipedia.org/w
| iki/2025_Haitian_constitutional_re...
| inglor_cz wrote:
| A presidential system with FPTP in a historically unstable
| country seems ripe for dictatorial abuse.
|
| Turkey is much more stable than Haiti, but Erdogan managed
| to build an authoritarian system centered around him
| anyway, and a constitutional change towards presidential
| system was a crucial step.
|
| Presidential system might work in France and the US, but
| especially in the US the near future of it is still
| uncertain. Trying it in countries that barely hold together
| doesn't seem wise.
| skissane wrote:
| > Presidential system might work in France
|
| France has a semipresidential system, not a presidential
| system - it has both a President directly elected by the
| voters, and a Prime Minister accountable to the
| legislature, with the two having a (somewhat complicated
| and uneasy) division of powers - essentially, the
| President controls foreign relations and the military,
| the Prime Minister controls most domestic policies. It
| works reasonably well when both President and Prime
| Minister are from the same party, it works with more
| acrimony when they are from opposed parties
| (cohabitation), the recent political upheavals in France
| have led more and more to question if it is still the
| right system, or whether France should return to the
| parliamentary system of its Third and Fourth republics -
| but, even at its worst, I think it still works better
| than the presidential system used by the US and much of
| Latin America. The presidential system concentrates too
| much power in a single individual, who is difficult to
| hold accountable, leading to the problem of strongmen
| (caudillos) which have been a plague upon Latin American
| history-and maybe now with Trump the US is starting to
| move in the same direction
| rayiner wrote:
| You're burying the lede, which is that "stable political and
| economic institutions" are that way because of _the people_.
| Not just the people in the institutions, but the people served
| by the institutions. Try reading the constitutions of some of
| these dysfunctional places sometime--there 's nothing wrong
| with the words on the paper.
|
| So your point about whether "you are lucky enough to get such a
| stable system" is inaccurate. It's not luck. People created
| those systems. You can even see how that processed happened,
| deliberately, in recent history in places like Singapore.
| skybrian wrote:
| Sure, there were people who created those systems, but most
| didn't really get a choice in how it happened. Singapore
| seems like a pretty good example of that, too?
| jyounker wrote:
| It's hard to create a stable state when the US, England, and
| France have spent well over a hundred years actively
| undermining your country.
|
| The first half of Behind The Bastard's episode on Baby Doc
| has a pretty good summary:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qTEEokXizd8
| marojejian wrote:
| What about the people in the DR are/were fundamentally
| different from the people in Haiti? and why did these people
| change so dramatically around 1960?
| darksaints wrote:
| The US is on their _second republic_ because the articles of
| confederation failed, and is looking down the barrel of a
| second dissolution as we speak. France is on their _fifth
| republic_ , because _the previous four republics failed_. If
| France's latest success is due to their people, wouldn't that
| contradict their previous failures?
|
| Sure, the people have an outsized influence on the success of
| a nation, but the institutions also shape the people and
| empower some people over others. Can you imagine how much
| differently the US would look if it wasn't founded on slavery
| and oppression? If women didnt have to wait 150 years to
| vote? If we didn't institutionalize a gerrymanderable
| legislative system?
|
| The institutions matter AND people matter, but bad
| institutions empower terrible people.
| kortilla wrote:
| > and is looking down the barrel of a second dissolution as
| we speak.
|
| Where is there evidence of this?
| skissane wrote:
| > France is on their fifth republic, because the previous
| four republics failed.
|
| I don't think that is really fair on France - many of those
| failures were due to defeats in war - for example, the
| Third Republic didn't "fail", it was conquered by Nazi
| Germany - and when it was liberated, the French decided to
| take the opportunity to rewrite their constitution, but I
| think that was a choice rather than something they were
| forced into.
|
| And the Fifth Republic was engineered by de Gaulle given
| the opportunity of the 1958 coup attempt. If de Gaulle had
| unexpectedly died of a heart attack in 1957, the Fourth
| Republic might have survived. Probably the 1958 coup
| attempt would still have occurred even absent de Gaulle -
| but neither its success nor failure would have
| _necessitated_ a rewrite of the constitution (as opposed to
| maybe just some tweaks), although certainly it could have
| resulted in one. Even de Gaulle _didn't have to_ rewrite
| the constitution, he decided he wanted to and was handed
| the opportunity to get what he wanted, but maybe in some
| alternative timeline he didn't feel as strongly about that
| and so the constitutional rewrite never happened
|
| Why didn't the American Civil War result in a rewrite of
| the US constitution? Probably because the Union had a clear
| and convincing victory. If the Union had lost, or if the
| war had turned into a stalemate, much greater odds the US
| constitution would not have survived it - a less-defeated
| Confederacy might have negotiated reintegration into the
| Union subject to a constitutional rewrite; if the
| Confederacy had won and retained its independence, the
| Union might well have decided to write a new constitution
| in response.
| chgs wrote:
| Singapore didn't have any democracy for decades. You can't
| build a nation and a democracy at the same time.
|
| You need the benevolent dictator, then the stability, then
| the slow introduction of government by the people over
| decades.
| H8crilA wrote:
| This is called conservatism. It also shows that Trump and his
| court are not conservatives at all.
| TulliusCicero wrote:
| Hard to see how this could be solved, outside of Haiti being
| "lucky" enough to get one gang leader who defeats the others and
| tries to establish a stable government.
|
| A serious international intervention is basically a non-starter.
| Rich countries would be accused of colonialism and sharply
| criticized for any mistake, other countries in the region don't
| have the money or force capability, and nobody has a real
| motivation to pursue such a thankless task. If I remember right,
| Haitians themselves are pretty iffy on even wanting security
| provided by foreigners (due to history).
| RainyDayTmrw wrote:
| You have to admit, the track record for international
| intervention is extremely spotty. When was the last time that a
| rich country went into a poor country, for non-self-serving
| motivations, and fixed most big issues? I freely admit that I'm
| not a good student of history, but I can't actually think of
| one.
| brcmthrowaway wrote:
| Aus intervention in East Timor.
| galfarragem wrote:
| Australia had oil interests in the region.
| adamnemecek wrote:
| UK intervention in Sierra Leone in 2000.
| nindalf wrote:
| You've made the requirements impossible to satisfy when you
| added "non-self-serving motivations". The world is relatively
| small and disasters have ripple effects. Almost any action a
| country takes will either help or hurt them. Since the people
| in charge will mostly try to take actions that help their
| country, they look self serving now.
|
| A sibling comment mentioned the Australian intervention in
| East Timor. I can easily dismiss that by saying "well the
| Australians have a vested interest in a stable neighbourhood.
| They're just self pricks looking out for themselves". This
| statement would be technically correct but also pretty
| meaningless in this discussion.
| TulliusCicero wrote:
| > for non-self-serving motivations
|
| That's a gotcha if I've ever seen one. Why would self serving
| motivations be a disqualifier? Not to mention, you can
| basically argue that it's always self serving motivations no
| matter what.
|
| That said, yeah things are more likely to go badly than to go
| well. Nation building is hard; the allies were able to reform
| Japan and (West) Germany because while they had evil states,
| the states were at least functioning. It seems easier to
| improve governments morally than functionally.
| rayiner wrote:
| Germany and Japan had highly functional states for
| centuries--in the case of Japan, over a millennium--before
| the allies installed democracy. Not only that, those places
| had _cultures_ that had long internalized administration
| and rule of law even if people couldn 't vote on those
| systems.
| broken-kebab wrote:
| Germany as a single state emerged only at the second half
| of XIX. You may argue that those multitude of German
| states which existed before still count, but how more
| functional each of them were compared to e.g. Khmer
| Kingdom is an open question. What is 'functional' to
| begin with? I probably would agree that there should be
| some sort of pre-requisite for a working democracy, but
| your theory of a 'functional state' (at least as I can
| derive it from your commentaries) feels a bit too raw so
| far
| throwup238 wrote:
| Functional means it has some form of bureaucracy that can
| collect taxes on the productive population and use that
| to do state things, usually provide for the defense of
| that population against internal and external threats.
| The actual system of government is irrelevant and in many
| cases the state itself survives even radical political
| change. What matters is whether it has the resources to
| actually exert authority.
|
| Haiti lost its functional state when the French
| colonialists fled en masse after the 1804 massacre. Due
| to racism, they were the only ones allowed in those
| positions so when they left Haiti, it was left with no
| one qualified to fill those positions. Since the
| population were transplanted slaves, they had no tribal
| traditions to fall back on. Without a continuity of
| bureaucracy it was left hobbled to this day. Since the
| state can't afford to police the population, these gangs
| fill the void because they can use force to collect taxes
| (in the broadest sense because usually this takes the
| form of business shakedowns and roadblocks that they use
| to extract money from the population).
| pcwalton wrote:
| What? This is totally ahistorical. The Meiji era (the
| beginnings of what we might call a modern Japanese state)
| didn't start until 1868. Before that, Japan was feudal
| with wars happening all the time. Quoting from Wikipedia
| about the infamously-chaotic Sengoku period in the 1400s
| [1], which was just one of _many_ turbulent times prior
| to the Meiji period:
|
| > The period saw a breakdown in the traditional master-
| servant relationship between a lord and his vassals, with
| many instances of vassals rebelling against their lords,
| internal dynastic conflict over lordships within noble
| families (in which vassals would take sides), and the
| installation of figurehead lords by cadet branches of
| noble families.[3] The period was also marked by the
| loosening of samurai culture, with people born into other
| social strata sometimes making a name for themselves as
| warriors and thus becoming samurai.
|
| > [W]eariness of war, socioeconomic unrest and poor
| treatment by aristocrats provoked the wrath of the
| peasant class. Farmers, craftsmen, merchants and even
| villages would organize uprisings (known as "ikki")
| against the ruling class. An extraordinary example is the
| Kaga Rebellion, in which the local ikki had staged a
| large-scale revolt with the support of the True Pure Land
| sect (thereby establishing the term ikko ikki) and
| assumed control of the entire province of Kaga.
|
| Whatever post-Heian, pre-Meiji Japan was, it was not an
| orderly, harmonious society.
|
| [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sengoku_period
| raincole wrote:
| Japan had a limited democracy where only tax-paying males
| could vote until their prime minister got assassinated. Way
| before WWII.
| mitthrowaway2 wrote:
| Big issues are by nature hard to fix, but perhaps major UN
| peacekeeping efforts count, like Rwanda or Kosovo?
| legitster wrote:
| Taiwan, Philippines, Egypt, South Korea. Arguably India, but
| there was so much bad mixed with the good.
|
| The Caribbean is a special case though where there are lots
| of miraculous turnarounds because tourism is so lucrative.
| paleotrope wrote:
| What are these examples? Taiwan and South Korea could be
| argued that Japanese colonialism and authoritarian states
| are the reason they are successful today. Philippines was
| an important Spanish trade colony for a few hundred years.
| None of these were non self serving. As for Egypt are you
| talking about the Ptolmaics?
| rodgerd wrote:
| > South Korea
|
| The West supported an brutal military dictatorship in South
| Korea for decades. South Korean democracy is the result of
| internal struggle by the South Korean people.
| walrus01 wrote:
| > The West supported an brutal military dictatorship in
| South Korea for decades. South Korean democracy is the
| result of internal struggle by the South Korean people.
|
| I mean, the US was a huge supporter of Suharto in
| Indonesia as the "less bad" option to the thread of
| communism, and Mubarak in Egypt as an alternative to the
| worse option of a Islamic Brotherhood run state, or
| possibly something even more deeply Soviet aligned. I
| don't think there is any "lesser evil" warlord to pick in
| Haiti right now and prop up above any of the others.
| emmelaich wrote:
| You have to have _some_ self-serving motivation to make it
| worthwhile.
|
| If you're just intervening because you're charitable and
| nice, then things will be mismanaged and messed up.
|
| Like the UN peacekeepers raping and spreading cholera in
| Haiti.
| rayiner wrote:
| Western countries are fundamentally confused about how
| democracy works, and they actively harm developing countries in
| their ignorance. Democracy in modern Europe was preceded by
| centuries of "the divine right of kings." European countries
| had functional _states_ long before they had democracies.
|
| But the west today tries to build democracy in countries that
| lack any state to begin with (e.g. Afghanistan) or in countries
| where they have destroyed the state (Iraq, Syria). They hassle
| or intervene in developing countries with authoritarian
| governments (e.g. Bangladesh, Philippines, etc.) while
| overlooking their own histories.
| jimkleiber wrote:
| I wonder if there's a cultural element to it: do people
| support democratic processes in their families,
| neighborhoods, companies, etc? If not, I imagine it might be
| hard to top-down enforce democracy.
| guelo wrote:
| Support for democratic institutions and the rule of law has
| gone down in USA thanks to the MAGA movement. Is that
| cultural?
| mopenstein wrote:
| That's democracy working as intended. If you don't like
| it, get 50% + 1 of the population to do what you want.
| esafak wrote:
| No, it's not, it's a weakness of democracy, otherwise you
| can 'democratically' enable any act, including aborting
| democracy. There have to be guardrails.
| mopenstein wrote:
| So democracy only works when the outcome is one of which
| you approve?
| esafak wrote:
| Yes, like sustaining democracy. I'm not a moral
| relativist, and don't condone allowing democracy to be
| wielded against itself. Nor would I tell the truth to an
| axe-wielding murderer asking me for directions, pace
| Kant. There is no grand philosophical paradox here; you
| just have to apply some commonsense.
|
| Would you be okay living in a democracy whose majority
| voted to harm you?
| mopenstein wrote:
| If the outcomes of every vote are only valid based on
| whether or not you personally approve, you don't want a
| democracy, you want to be dictator. Or, at the least,
| have a sham system where it appears that the people's
| will is prevailing.
|
| If the will of the people is to end their current form of
| government and vote accordingly, how is that not
| democracy working as intended?
|
| And the entire world living under any form of democracy
| already live in systems that voted to harm its citizens!
| Taxation is theft by coercion!
| esafak wrote:
| Taxation is not theft, it is an obligation of living in a
| civilized society. Without a government funded by taxes,
| your country won't even be long for this world. Another
| country that has its act together will take over yours
| and you'll be having this philosophical debate from the
| comfort of your new country.
| rayiner wrote:
| So you're using "democracy" to mean the opposite of what
| "democracy" means?
| esafak wrote:
| I don't think so. Democracy can mean many things, and I
| don't live or want to live in a direct democracy, if
| that's what you're thinking of:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Types_of_democracy
| skissane wrote:
| > I wonder if there's a cultural element to it: do people
| support democratic processes in their families,
| neighborhoods, companies, etc?
|
| I don't think that's right - although some on the left have
| advocated "industrial democracy" or "workplace democracy",
| it has by and large failed to take off - many democratic
| countries it doesn't really exist (beyond rare exceptions),
| and even those which have some semblance of it (e.g. works
| councils in the EU) it is in practice rather toothless,
| comparable to the powerless "advisory" legislatures
| established by some Middle Eastern monarchies
|
| Families don't function democratically-the parents
| negotiate things between themselves and the children don't
| really have a choice in it until they get old enough to
| leave the family home and fend for themselves.
|
| My neighbourhood isn't a democracy - yes we have an elected
| local government but it covers a much larger population and
| territory than just our neighbourhood. Even if one's
| neighbourhood has something like a "homeowners
| association", that's usually timocratic (government by
| property owners) not democratic (government by the people)
| since renters don't get to vote, adult dependents of
| homeowners don't get to vote, a couple may jointly own a
| home but they get only one vote not two, some wealthy
| person owns five homes so they get five votes, etc (and
| sometimes even weighted voting, so rather than one property
| one vote, more expensive properties may give you more votes
| than cheaper ones)
| rayiner wrote:
| There's definitely a cultural element to it! Many of my
| family members--college educated people from Bangladesh,
| many of them living for decades in Canada and Australia--
| have been celebrating the overthrow of the democratically
| elected government in Bangladesh. The result of that was
| replacing a somewhat authoritarian, but legitimately
| elected and quite popular,[1] government with a military-
| backed government nobody elected,[2].
|
| Democracy doesn't come from reading books, it starts with
| what parents say to their small children. I'm a Bangladeshi
| married to a founding stock American. My wife was steeped
| in democracy from the beginning. As a kid, she attended
| mainline Protestant churches run by elected members of the
| congregation, and her dad participated in local government
| and civic organizations. This is so different from the
| relationship Bangladeshis have with their communities.
|
| [1] About 70% approval according to one western
| organization's polling from 2023:
| https://www.cfr.org/blog/new-bangladesh-survey-hasina-
| remain....
|
| [2] https://foreignpolicy.com/2025/02/05/bangladesh-
| interim-gove...
| cjbgkagh wrote:
| Democracy in its current form of universal suffrage has only
| existed for a relatively short period of time and has a very
| different character to the long histories of democracies
| which had restricted suffrage.
| throwaway48476 wrote:
| Hispaniola is the most excellent way to remove environmental
| factors explanations.
| areoform wrote:
| There are uncomfortable truths in the world, and Haiti's story is
| one of them.
|
| After the slaves revolted and gained independence in 1804, the
| state was embargoed. Haiti's first president, Alexandre Petion,
| offered paying the value of the lost _land_ to the French
| government.
|
| Simultaneously, they reached out to the British and offered
| favorable trade terms to them. But a slave revolt was seen as
| untenable at the time and the British agreed to allow France to
| pursue "whatever means possible, including that of arms, to
| recover Saint-Domingue and to subdue the inhabitants of that
| colony."
|
| Around the same time, Haiti tried to ally itself with the US,
| offering its ports + favorable trade. The US also sided with the
| French against the former slave colony.
|
| Facing military invasion, in 1825, they agreed to pay indemnity
| for the value of the slaves lost by the French government for a
| total of 150 million francs. As they couldn't pay the amount in
| lump sum, Haiti was forced to enter into unfavorable loans with
| the United States and France to pay the slavery debt. Around 80%+
| of GDP was used to pay foreign debt By the late
| 1800s, eighty percent of Haiti's wealth was being used to pay
| foreign debt; France was the highest collector, followed by the
| German Empire and the United States
|
| Non-payment wasn't an option. In 1903, Haiti accused the capital
| institutions France had set up for debt extraction within Haiti
| of fraud. That threat led a coalition of private entities who
| owned the bonds, working with the US State Department, to use the
| US military to invade the former state.
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_occupation_of_Ha...
|
| Haiti didn't pay off its debts until 1947. For reference, Joe
| Biden was 5 years old when Haiti finally paid off this slavery
| debt.
|
| As the overwhelming majority of the state's economic output was
| sapped by this debt, Haiti lacked the ability to invest in itself
| until the end of WW2.
|
| Post-WW2, Haiti went through decades of political turmoil and
| never achieved political stability.
|
| Haiti's present cannot be judged without the weight of this past.
| And it's future cannot be charted without accounting for it.
|
| Of course, the place that was invaded at the drop of a hat and
| deprived of resources never learned to build civil institutions
| and non-corrupt governance. Fixing this probably requires a lot
| of close study to develop very specific interventions to change
| Haiti's culture and help it prosper.
| welder wrote:
| I follow this guy https://www.instagram.com/sean_haiti
|
| I'm in the DR right now and some locals are worried about the
| violence in Constanza spreading but most are just going about
| their lives. The DR is the least stressful country int he world
| after all.
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