Vatican City Seek

Haiti : The Failures Of Governance *Georges A. Fauriol*, 2006-09-05 HAITI,  the second-oldest independent nation in the Western Hemisphere, celebrated its bicentennial in 2004 and had little to show for it. Discovered by Columbus in 1492 during his first voyage to the Americas, the nation has since then experienced all shades of development—except that of effective modern political and economic management. This dysfunctional character of Haitian political dynamics, an absence of conscious economic policymaking, and decayed social institutions has also triggered an unhappy and at times tragic record of interaction with the external world. Most recently this has played itself out in several episodes, first as a result of the collapse of the Duvalier dynasty in 1986, then in the context of U.S. military intervention to return President Jean-Bertrand Aristide to power, and again in 2004 to manage a messy transition in the wake of an abrupt conclusion to Aristide's second presidential term. Born out of the economic excesses of slavery and the political violence of the French Revolution, Haiti emerged in 1804 as an independent nation. Its economy in ruins and its population exhausted, it began its career as a modern nation without any foreign friends. In fact, its early status as an outcast among the community of nations further increased its vulnerability to both internal and external threats. At the beginning of the twentieth century this overlap of threats ultimately generated direct U.S. political and military administration (1915–1934). Since 1986 the difficulties experienced by Haiti's development process has introduced into the life of the nation an almost continuous engagement from the international community, notably the Organization of American States, the United Nations, key governments (the United States, France , and Canada), and an extensive NGO and humanitarian community. Despite these misfortunes Haiti has not lost the basic features of its national character. Its roots lie in a hybrid of French eighteenth-century colonialism, African culture, a marginal brand of Catholicism, and the aftereffects of the United States ' strategic sweep in the Caribbean region. Indeed, the African cultural and spiritual features have remained almost unaltered for a majority of the population since they were first imported in the seventeenth century. The vitality of this primarily rural environment has survived in the face of economic adversity and the unusual lack of interest of the political leadership in the process of national development. Roughly the size of the state of Maryland, Haiti occupies the western third of the island of Hispaniola, which it shares with the Dominican Republic. It lies at a crossroads of trading passages and strategic interests— Cuba lies to the immediate west across the Windward Passage, the open waters of the Atlantic Ocean bound Haiti on the north, and the Caribbean Sea lies to the south. Haiti remains ethnically and culturally distinct, being 95 percent black and the only independent French-speaking nation in the Western Hemisphere. With an estimated average per capita gross national product (GNP) income of about $250, Haiti is also the poorest country in the region. In fact, a 52 percent literacy rate and a life expectancy of fifty-five years rank Haiti near the bottom on a global basis. A mountainous topography coupled with a failing agricultural program and land-management neglect have not only concentrated the country's estimated nine million people into the nominally fertile 28 percent of the country but also in recent years accentuated the flows of out-migration. Revenues from a few odd agricultural and mineral exports and collapsed offshore manufacturing and tourism sectors have limited economic impact, leaving much of the workforce on the margins of economic life. Haiti's surplus talent keeps leaving for other shores—including the United States , where the current population of Haitian origin is estimated to be about 1.2 million. An indeterminate portion of the economy is dependent on contraband and drug trafficking. Study of the Haitian experience is frustrating. The most charitable characterization of Haiti's public administration is that the government has been at its relative best when pursuing a policy of benign neglect—leaving most of Haiti 's peasants to their own autonomous devices. A very small and generally urbanized political and economic elite has for the most part directed priorities at maintaining its own fragile status quo and in sustaining a limited enclave of export-oriented commercial activity. Some writers speak of a kleptocracy, or predatory state, and of the politics of squalor. Some allude to the colonial or self-colonized character of the Haitian society.Others borrow from development literature and assess Haiti in the context of a transitional society. The arrival on the political scene in the late 1980s of a radical populist political priest, Jean-Bertrand Aristide, gave currency to new notions of governance, in this case deliberative democracy. This implied a political leadership inclined to override institutional intermediaries found in mainstream western democracies, such as parliaments and political parties. Instead, more recent characterizations of Haiti imply disappointment and speak of a failed state. What, in fact, is a viable characterization of Haiti's politics and development process? *The Decay of the State* The Caribbean entered the historical record of the European world in 1492, the year Columbus discovered Haiti. Some three hundred years later Haiti fought its way to independence from France in 1804. In between there flourished a plantation colony characterized by extraordinary wealth and deep social and racial divisions. Few factors have had a more dramatic impact on today's Caribbean polities than their transformation some three hundred years ago from small colonies of settlement into economic dependencies of European powers. The environment of sugar and slaves came crashing down in Haiti in the late eighteenth century. Saint-Dominique, as Haiti was then known, was the crown jewel of France's overseas empire. But the importation of over eight hundred thousand African slaves created an untenable socioeconomic milieu. Open racial and color conflict was set in motion with the violent explosions of the French Revolution after 1789, and what followed was the Haitian Revolution of 1789–1804, which ravaged the country to the core. In the bloody confusion blacks, lighter-skinned mulattoes, and whites built complex alliances and were helped along by the intervention of British, Spanish, and, naturally, French forces. After independence in 1804 the early Haitian leaders faced the traditional patterns of nineteenth-century power politics. As a smaller state Haiti was treated as an _object_ of policy, if dealt with at all. A spiritual heir to the French Revolution, it also provided a serious challenge as the first non-European postcolonial state in the modern world. According to diplomatic historian Rayford Logan's characterization, Haiti started out as a power and enigma, turned into an anomaly, became a threat, and ultimately was an outcast among the nations of the earth. 2 Lacking any viable institutions, Haiti initially evolved a remarkable collection of powerful personalities who shaped the nation's _style_ of governance— authoritarian, personalist, anchored in coercive power: Jean-Jacques Dessalines (1804–1806), Haiti's first emperor and efficient exterminator of the whites in Haiti ; Henri Christophe (1807–1820), Haiti's first crowned king; Alexandre Pétion (1807–1818), Haiti's first president for life; and Jean-Pierre Boyer (1818–1843), who ruled over an increasingly crippled nation. At mid-century another extraordinary figure appeared—Faustin Soulouque (1847–1859), later Emperor Faustin I. He ordered a general massacre of the mulattoes, led the country in several abortive campaigns into the neighboring Dominican Republic, and further precipitated Haiti's deterioration. By the dawn of the twentieth century Haiti was in debt to French, German, and U.S. financial interests. France had underwritten all external loans between 1825 and 1896 and owned the National Bank. The Germans held the trading sector.Most imports came from the United States, and after 1900 U.S. influence expanded into banking. The 1915 U.S . intervention in Haiti was the result of severe disarray in that country's politics—suffice it to say that the degeneration of Haitian politics had indeed attained a new plateau. Of the twenty-two presidents who served between 1843 and 1915, one finished his term in office, three died a natural death while in office, one was blown up with the presidential palace, another one was probably poisoned, one was hacked to pieces, and one resigned. The fourteen others were overthrown. The sorry state of Haitian finances was also perceived by Washington as a Trojan horse for European intervention in the Caribbean . The _object_ of the U.S. action was not to expose Haiti to U.S. exploitation but to promote Haitian political stability, financial rehabilitation, and economic development. Yet Haiti remains one of the United States' least successful interventions. True, a minimum of financial order was established, debt was reduced, and the administration infrastructure was improved, but U.S. presence did not lead to democratic virtues or greater management capabilities among the Haitian elite. Violent anti-U.S. feelings triggered a review of U.S. policy in 1930. Faced with similar problems in Nicaragua, President Hoover and his successor, Franklin D. Roosevelt, were determined that the United States would exit from Haiti's tropical imbroglio as quickly as possible. Following the 1915–1934 U.S. period were twenty years during which Haitian governance slowly decayed under the weight of presidential excesses. This period came to an uninspired end with the 1957 elections that brought François Duvalier to power.What ensued was a harsh family rule that was to last until his son's downfall in 1986. This has in turn been followed by a succession of failed attempts at democratic governance, at considerable cost to Haiti and the international apparatus supporting the efforts. This _frame_s what might now be termed the Aristide Presidencies: this begins with his election in late 1990, his ouster in September 1991 and the international isolation (1991–1994) of the ensuing military regime, a UN-mandated and U.S.-led military intervention (September 1994) leading to Aristide's return to office in October 1994, the election of his designated successor in late 1995 and the subsequent political paralysis (1997–2000), the reelection of Aristide in late 2000, and his departure in late February 2004, replaced by an interim regime operating under a UN mandate and a commitment for new elections by the end of 2005. This is obviously unfinished business. *The Character of Society* More than in any other country in the Western Hemisphere, the structure of Haitian politics underscores the isolated and traditional character of the country's society. Formal ideology is not a particularly useful component in explaining the course of Haitian developments. The character of the polity is therefore best assessed by a review of the following factors: religion, the nation's rural-urban bifurcation, cultural values, and the Haitian society's worldview. Religious institutions are numerically and culturally important in the Caribbean, but in Haiti established churches have been to a degree displaced or absorbed by indigenous cults and practices derived from tradition and folklore. Although marginal in much of the region (the Rastafarians in Jamaica, for example), Voodoo in Haiti has been enriched by both Christianity and ancestral African rites for over three centuries to provide Haitians with a great emotional outlet. Basic to Voodoo is the ancestral past and its impact on the present. There is a fatalism in its cosmos that does not leave much room for shaping the present or the future. Nature and humans contend with each other in a process forwarded by appeals to the many spirits who control all forces. An individual struggles to survive within an essentially static hierarchy. This defensive character of Haitian religious culture has intermixed with the country's unique historical experience. The product of slavery and of harsh colonial conditions, the very origins of modern Haiti were fixed in a rejection of the white race, if not entirely of the culture that it represented. That viewpoint took its toll on the Haitian psyche. Although French and modernizing sociopolitical influences engaged the minute portion of the nation represented by the elite, the vast majority of the population remained tied to the slave experience and its eradication with the revolution of 1804. More African and Creole than French, more illiterate than literate, and historically more isolated than any other country in the Caribbean, Haitian culture has to a degree generated an enduring demoralized attitude regarding the nation's potential. This fact has been made more acute by the exploitative preferences of the two sectors of Haitian society that might have taken the country out of its long dead-end run: the mulatto (lighter-skinned) minority, historically associated with the country's commercial activity, and the black elite, representing a politically governing class. The ensuing geographical separation of the elite from the masses and of the urban population from the rural one has had significant political and social implications. Accounting for perhaps 70 percent of the population, the peasantry has been excluded from national decisionmaking. The fact that national debates take place partly in French, a language that the vast majority of the population does not speak or read, underlines the fissures in Haitian political dynamics. The heart of Haiti is its inner country—rural, poor, and dedicated to basic agricultural production. Long periods of isolation have made this part of Haiti a conservator of African traditions, and the traditional milieu is still the dominant environment of Haiti today. Roughly 80 percent of the population is made up of peasants who speak Creole and no French, are essentially illiterate, and live in social conditions reminiscent of past centuries; Voodoo is a spiritual influence despite the strong presence of Catholic and Protestant churches. What has made life bearable for the average Haitian is the fact that government has historically not intruded into their lives. After 1957 the Duvalier regimes modernized notions of government by introducing a more formal and occasionally brutal local security presence. Disbanded in the 1990s, neither law enforcement nor much of a local administrative presence has reasserted itself. The growth of a corrupting drug trafficking economy has further eroded the capacity of local government to address economic, social, and security needs. The other world of Haiti is built primarily around the capital and a few secondary towns. It is not only urban but also coastal in character. If the nation has developed any capital wealth since independence, this is where it is to be found. An urbanized and somewhat cosmopolitan elite has dedicated itself to trading as opposed to developing a national economy. This community includes the mulatto economic elite in a historically uneasy association with the black political classes *Institutional Patterns* The absence of a viable political development process has stunted the growth of socioeconomic and political interest groups normally found in a modernizing society. Likewise, the weakness of Haitian institutions has for the most part made it very difficult for the process of change to be channeled toward productive ends. Government administration has constituted a center of influence, if for no other reason than that it has represented the source of jobs, money, gifts, and public favors—if not outright access to the national treasury. The urbanized sector for the most part consists of a docile, lower-middle class of Haitian society. Unionization, paralyzed under the Duvaliers, has not been a factor despite the limited rebirth of a trade-union movement in recent years. At its most senior echelon the public sector has included the lucky few who have had access to corrupt government patronage emanating from the presidential palace. The Catholic Church's influence has rivaled that of the government. After the 1860s the church fulfilled an important educational mission and provided isolated communities with the rudiments of continuity and _link_age to the outside world. Not surprisingly, the spiritual and political worlds have occasionally overlapped. As recently as the 1960s François Duvalier pushed through a Haitianization of the clergy, also reviving age-old frictions regarding appointments of the church hierarchy in Haiti. As elsewhere in the region, the clergy is split between conservative and liberal contingents. The Catholic Church played a decisive role in the 1986 ouster of Jean- Claude Duvalier. Under pressure from the Vatican, the Church pulled back from a formal political role, but its engagement continued to be the conduit through which human rights and other sociopolitical concerns were exposed. The grassroots or Ti Legliz movement in the 1980s that was the basis for Aristide's arrival to power in 1990 created splits within the Church hierarchy and more generally within Haitian society. More recently the expanding grassroots involvement of evangelical Protestant denominations has translated into political movements at the national level and might affect a landscape historically dominated by the Roman Catholic Church. Born out of revolutionary violence, Haiti never succeeded in constructing the structures of a civilian society capable of minimizing the rule of force. As a result, consolidation of political power in the hands of strongmen made the armed forces the institutional pillar of society. Part of Haiti's history is the story of competing mercenary bands ( cacos) and peasant groups ( piquets) fighting a ragtag government military. The trend was partially reversed after 1915 during the U.S. occupation led by U.S. Marines. Ironically, the most visible product of this period turned out to be the Garde d'Haiti—later transformed into Haiti's armed forces. They remained by default the only organization with a national political reach and a semblance of institutional cohesion. With the Duvalier regime's collapse in 1986 the military inherited political control and promptly made an even bigger mess of things. The army was ultimately disbanded by Aristide in late 1994, and in a return to the past replaced by a national police. The rapid politicization of the police in the late 1990s failed in removing the use of force from the Haitian political scene. This is what had happened after the first U.S. intervention in 1915. Worse yet, the intersection of a politicized police and the impact of drug trafficking created new pressures of their own. By most accounts the collapse of the Aristide government in 2004 was due to the increasing power and autonomy of renegade police and former military elements and the infiltration of these into the higher echelons of Haiti's government leadership. Haiti 's low level of political participation has generated few alternative institutions. Not only has the economic poverty of the nation centralized national authority into a minute urban constituency, but the cumulative ravages of crises since the 1980s have also undermined the reservoir of political leadership. The political party structure, anchored more by personalities than viable agendas, is weak and not likely to change quickly in a society used to authoritarian rule. Likewise, modern social or political pressure groups typical of democratic environments (for example, human rights organizations, local community interests, women's groups, students, labor unions, the media) have found limited space to prosper. The small modern business community has remained cautious or sometimes co-opted by changing political winds. Yet in the growing vacuum created by a decade of crisis and paralysis civil society in general and portions of the private sector in particular have increased their political profile. This became evident in the lead-in to the collapse of the second Aristide presidency in 2004. Another pressure group with a potential role is Haiti's large exile community, limited for now to being a source of political money as well as economic investment through remittances. *From Duvalier to Aristide* The Duvalier era began in 1957 (Papa Doc became president for life in 1964) during a period of political confusion that included the collapse of the previous government (Paul Magloire), violence, and fraudulent elections. François Duvalier was the product of a movement toward a return to black culture and of a political resurgence that took hold during the U.S. occupation (1915–1934). In the 1920s a Haitian intellectual class had begun to evolve a potent political racialism derived from a reevaluation of the country's African tradition. This racialism initially evolved into a conception associated with the French-African negritude movement, which entailed a belief in the distinctive character of an African environmental heritage and a rejection of the superiority of European culture.As a form of cultural decolonization, it was later elaborated by Haitians, including François Duvalier, into a rationale of black political power, which through the early 1970s constituted the _frame_work of government control. Who was François Duvalier? The person who held such a spell over Haitian affairs after 1957 was a soft-spoken physician and part-time ethnologist. A black, or noir, by Haitian standards, Duvalier had four children, including one son, Jean-Claude (later to be known as Baby Doc). Unlike many of his colleagues in Haitian history François Duvalier was never a military man and, as a result of his writings, he was perceived as something of an intellectual. These characteristics confounded most observers and political opponents and initially misled the United States. In practice, the Duvalier years were characterized by brutal political control, corruption, income inequalities, illiteracy, and environmental degradation, and compounded by brain drain. A shrewd autocrat, he ruthlessly suppressed opponents that were or appeared to challenge his authority. The influence of the mulatto elite was eroded, the political power of the Roman Catholic Church was reduced by allowing the government to have a say in the nomination of the Haitian church's leadership (which until then had been essentially French), and the army was purged and brought into line. A powerful paramilitary organization ( Volontaires de la Securité Nationale,VSN)—the famed Tonton Macoutes (TTMs)—was established to protect the regime and enforce its directives. Confounding most predictions, Jean-Claude Duvalier (Baby Doc) did initially show some durability after taking over in April 1971 following his father's death. An unknown quantity when he assumed office at age nineteen, his contact with the outside was limited by a closed environment of presidential advisers, family members, and security guards, and most notably his dynamic and controversial wife, Michèle Bennett, daughter of a mulatto business family. What was ultimately termed an economic revolution operationally implied greater solicitation of economic assistance from major donor countries (United States , France, Canada) and a consortium of international and private lending agencies. Yet the authoritarian and often aimless nature of Haitian governance ultimately led to Duvalier's downfall in 1986. Duvalier faced Catholic Church militancy and declining support from Washington . The ensuing mobilization of the population was sanctioned during a visit by Pope John Paul II in 1983. The pope's references to injustices and the need for a more equitable society were seen as an indication of the Church's intent to champion change and take on an active political role. U.S. policy also shifted gradually, beginning with the Carter administration's emphasis on human rights followed by a broader global theme of freedom and democracy under the Ronald Reagan presidency. Likewise, Haiti became a matter of interest in the halls of the U.S. Congress. This was driven by public awareness resulting from the drama of Haitian refugee flows in the early 1980s as well as the political mobilization of segments of the African American political community on behalf of Haiti's struggles. The collapse of the Duvalier regime began in November 1985 with a series of spontaneous riots in Gonaives that turned into a major anti-government protest. The regime's ineptitude, coupled with the army's understandable reluctance to confront these street demonstrations with deadly force, led to the government's collapse and Duvalier's departure on board a U.S. military transport plane for exile in France on February 6, 1986.What followed was not, however, what either the Haitians or the international community had expected. Governmental authority passed to the military-led Council of National Government for a transition period of unspecified length, led initially by General Henri Namphy. The ensuing near-anarchy subdued only when it fi- nally appeared that the interim regime was planning for elections. U.S. foreign aid flows increased, as did support from other donors. Some progress was even achieved in stabilizing the economy. But the foundations upon which this stability was constructed were dangerously weak. International policy designs for a democratic society were projected into the future without attention to the near-term process on the ground in Haiti. The first casualty was the bloody elections of late 1987, halted in the first hour of balloting by armed thugs _link_ed to the army and Duvalierist allies. A truncated election was scheduled for January 1988, in which Leslie Manigat won the presidency. This unstable situation received little international support, and Manigat was overthrown in June. The political situation unraveled further as Namphy returned as head of the government, but in September he himself was pushed aside by General Prosper Avril. Avril governed from a position of declining authority; the balance of power within the military was upset (with a coup that nearly succeeded in April 1989), and the patience of the international donor community had begun to wear thin. Avril's reluctance to move toward elections led to the regime's collapse in March 1990 and opened the way for a process that resulted in elections in December 1990. By an overwhelming majority Haitians chose a charismatic ordained priest, Jean-Bertrand Aristide, as president in what was regarded by most observers as the nation's first modern election. The 1990 elections presaged a period of intermittent euphoria as well as a succession of spectacular failures that has lasted well into the new century in what might now be termed the Aristide Presidencies. *The Aristide Presidencies* *and Global Politics* Aristide is a powerful political persona and by all accounts the principal variable in Haiti since 1990. Born in Haiti's south and brought up in Catholic schools, he early acquired a rapport with Haiti's large and overwhelmingly poor population. He speaks their social and political language and has been able to convey a message of hope. This has been coupled with vivid images of change clearly directed at the elite, encapsulated most dramatically by Lavalas, the cleansing flood. In Aristide's powerful words, the latter will bring his fellow countrymen from misery to poverty with dignity. Aristide is a survivor, having escaped death several times since the late 1980s. A very complex personality, he displays an almost mystical vision of his country. What began as a liberation-theology-_base_d political movement anchored in Port-au-Prince's slums was catapulted into national prominence in the late 1980s at a time when the nation's military leadership was providing neither stability nor growth. Often accused of holding a questionable commitment to the western-_base_d notions of representative democracy, Aristide sprang into the 1990 elections late in the game. The 1990–2005 period includes three presidential elections, two won by Aristide (1990 and 2000) and another won by a close ally (René Préval in 1995). The period also is composed of two constitutional interruptions (late 1990 and early 2004), both involving Aristide. This underscores the uncertain verdict of Haiti's steps toward democratic governance, let alone coherent management of national policy issues. It also suggests the deep chasm that now _frame_s Haitian political dynamics and the unique role played by Aristide in this regard. In 1990 Aristide was chosen by the Haitian electorate to achieve justice, address the concerns of Haiti's poor, and provide a clear break with the recent Duvalier era. He survived an early coup attempt and seemed to be reestablishing some level of national confidence and peace, but within eight months was ousted in a coup whose causes continue to be debated.Whether it was the army's paranoia, Aristide's inflammatory rhetoric, or the pockets of violence directed at the opposition, the crisis that ensued has continued in varying ways for over a decade. Aristide was succeeded in 1995 by his protégé, René Préval, who in the end governed weakly but concluded a complete five-year mandate. A major impediment was the inability of the government and the national assembly to work together to pass laws, approve budgets, or sign off on appointments (notably for prime minister), all of which led to political paralysis and a festering crisis that previewed tensions during the next cycle of elections in 2000. The hopes triggered initially by Aristide's election in 1990, the near-crusade for his return in 1994, and the succession of Préval were mostly disappointed by zero-sum political dynamics. The distrust between Aristide's Lavalas movement and the rest of the political community not only deepened but in turn brought about conflict within Lavalas. This generated break-away groups and ultimately formed the basis of an enlarged political opposition. By the late 1990s some of Aristide's early allies had become his opponents. As predicted, Aristide returned to office in early 2001 following elections the previous year whose credibility was questioned by the international community, notably the OAS in the case of the May 2000 parliamentary races.What was a serious but manageable dispute instead triggered a deepening mistrust among Haitian political actors, as well as with the international community. Diplomatic mediation by the OAS failed, and by 2003 the political atmosphere between the Aristide government and multiple opponents had deteriorated close to the point of no return. Pockets of violence erupted, with some of Aristide's tactical allies turning against him and aligning themselves with an assortment of gangs, former military, and renegade police. In tandem, increasingly large segments of Haiti 's urban civil society began to mobilize against Aristide. The ensuing standoff in early 2004 was broken under pressure from Paris and Washington. Facing a violent rebellion, Aristide left the country, ultimately to exile in South Africa. The backdrop to these domestic dynamics is a never-ending cycle of ultimately unproductive external interventions. Following the September 1990 coup Aristide went into exile, first to Venezuela, then the United States, from where he returned in October 1994. This period was anchored by an increasingly tough economic and diplomatic embargo of Haiti to strangle what became known as the de facto military-led regime. This came to an end in September 1994 with a U.S.-led and UN mandated military intervention. Almost ten years later the international community once again intervened in the wake of a rebellion against Aristide's second presidency. An initial joint U.S.-French-Canadian diplomatic and military initiative midwifed a transition to an interim government led by Gerard Latortue, whose mandate was to hold elections by late 2005. This intervention was ultimately folded into a UN mandate operating under the Charter's more forceful Chapter 7 terms of reference and a multinational military and civilian police force with a majority Latin American composition. Throughout the Cold War Haiti generally stayed away from Third World politics and most North-South disputes, and in this respect alone differed from that of its English-speaking Caribbean neighbors. Yet one constant that remains is Haiti 's relationship with the United States. Successive U.S. administrations have been disposed to reassess ties with Haiti, and periods of cooperation have followed. In retrospect, much of this has been built on exaggerated expectations in Washington and suspect political foundations in Haiti itself. The record is one of economic downturn and troubles with foreign aid, intervals of political upheaval and refugee crises, bouts of bloody violence, and a gradual internationalization of Haiti's problems. *Haitian Challenge* Notions of establishing a modicum of democratic governance have turned out to be a long-term and frustrating campaign. Neither Haitian leadership nor various international actors have had very realistic conceptions of what is involved. This led, for example, to a succession of electoral exercises (1987, 1990, 1995, 1997, 2000) whose imperfections cumulatively resulted in the 2004 collapse of Haitian governance and a further narrowing of Haiti's political options. Haiti's limited modern civil society and nongovernmental organizations have gotten squeezed also by a socioeconomic environment dominated increasingly by corruption and violence. The extensive international financial commitments (over $1 billion) promised upon Aristide's return in 1994, and undergirding a remarkable goodwill in the development assistance community toward Haiti, were either wasted or went unused.To compound matters the collapse of government economic development policies in the late 1990s gave further prominence to the influence of narcotics trafficking and contraband trade in all forms. The intersection of political and economic instability with organized crime and a dramatic decay of already fragile national institutions has been an unhappy outcome to the hopes of a democratic transition. A nation in desperate socioeconomic condition with almost no track record of purposeful government faces limited choices. Haiti has a reservoir of individual skills and political acumen, but the challenge lies in the pooling of these human resources and the development of relevant economic and political organizations. Although there are egalitarian and cooperative features in the nation's peasant environment, Haiti's traditional political culture and linguistic bifurcation are profound obstacles to the development of a modern democratic government. In addition, the dubious interest of portions of the elite in collaborating in the economic, political, and cultural integration of the nation renders near-term national development problematic at best. Given all this and the nation's catastrophic social and ecological collapse since the late 1980s, any future Haitian government faces a daunting task. Quasi-humanitarian concerns are likely to predominate, and fears of political crisis will continue to attract external interest. This is particularly true for Washington , whose vision of regional Caribbean strategic interest has been amplified by a concern that any crisis in Haiti will affect the United States directly through refugee flows. Foreign governments and agencies will therefore continue to set priorities in the hope of generating a basis for technocratic development and socially relevant and politically responsible governance in Haiti . The degree to which Haiti's political culture, leadership, and decayed institutions have learned from the frustrations of the past decade represents the fragile basis upon which Haiti's future is to be built.