Poverty, Social Budget and Governance: The Dominican Case (Hypotheses, Notes, and Comments)

Abstract

The author centers here on a specific aspect of the complex process of change that began in the early eighties in Dominican Republic and other nearby countries: the decreasing life quality that came with the process of adjustment and economic liberalization, as well as the political effects of this decrease. The article first refers to the Dominican State's 1980-1991 economic policies, emphasizing management of its social budget. It then presents a brief overview of poverty, specially in urban centers, and later offers some critical considerations in order to assess poverty as a problem of governance, by discussing its illusions and tangles. Finally, the author asks: Why do the poor appear on stage as objects of explicit social policies precisely when government assistance is less able to maintain the social budget directed towards them? Notorious among the arguments developed to answer this question, is one that considers poverty as a potential seat of ungovernance.