The Economic and Socio-Political Causes of the Transition from Regionalization to Departmentalization in Haiti
The 1970s marked the beginning of concerns about spatial disparities and the rational organization of space in Haiti. The various studies that were conducted during the 1970s and early 1980s highlighted the need for a regional approach to combat spatial disparities through a centralized regional planning policy. However, about six years after the elaboration of the country’s first national regional planning scheme, the regional approach was abandoned in favor of departmentalization following the vote of the constitution of March 29, 1987, which advocates territorial decentralization. This article aims to explain the economic and socio-political causes of the transition from regionalization to departmentalization in Haiti. More specifically, the author argues that a series of events in the global economic and socio-political context of the 1970s and 1980s, combined with an internal economic and socio-political situation, made it impossible to maintain the regional approach as conceived and experienced in Haiti.