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The Dominican Grassroots Movement And The Organized Left, 1978–1986, Emelio Betances

Sociology Faculty Publications

Through their struggles for better services, grassroots movements played a large role in the process of democratization and construction of social citizenship in the Dominican Republic. The modern grassroots movement, especially in relation to the uprising of April 1984, challenged the government's neoliberal policies and opened the way for the emergence of an independent movement that confronted both left-wing parties and organized labor. However, because the gains from expanding social citizenship remained limited in the face of the Dominican state's inability to formulate socio-economic policies, the movements at best posed a worthwhile goal that Dominican society may revisit in the …