[go: up one dir, main page]
IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/wbk/wbrwps/6049.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

The political economy of the middle class in the Dominican Republic : individualization of public goods, lack of institutional trust and weak collective action

Author

Listed:
  • Sanchez, Miguel Eduardo
  • Senderowitsch, Roby
Abstract
This paper tries to uncover some of the hidden factors behind poor public service delivery in the Dominican Republic. By looking at three sector cases, education, health and electricity, it is possible to observe that in this setting of low quality of public services the"middle class"is opting out from the system and adopting private solutions to collective problems. The combination of this opting out behavior with low levels of institutional trust, especially among"middle class"members, fragmented interests and clientelism, among other factors, results in weak collective action and lack of effective demand for improvements in service provision. Some of the tentative policy options to break this sub-optimal equilibrium are i) to build capacity in civil society organizations and help them forming a pro-reform coalition, ii) reduce the gap between the middle class and the poorer by trying to improve the provision of public goods and enlarging the welfare state, and (iii) increase transparency mechanisms and introduce e-government formulas in order to optimize the allocation of public resources.

Suggested Citation

  • Sanchez, Miguel Eduardo & Senderowitsch, Roby, 2012. "The political economy of the middle class in the Dominican Republic : individualization of public goods, lack of institutional trust and weak collective action," Policy Research Working Paper Series 6049, The World Bank.
    • Handle: RePEc:wbk:wbrwps:6049
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www-wds.worldbank.org/external/default/WDSContentServer/WDSP/IB/2012/04/24/000158349_20120424091546/Rendered/PDF/WPS6049.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Birdsall, N. & Graham, C. & Pettinato, S., 2000. "Stuck in the Tunnel: Is Globalization Muddling the Middle Class?," Papers 14, Brookings Institution - Working Papers.
    2. Easterly, William, 2001. "The Middle Class Consensus and Economic Development," Journal of Economic Growth, Springer, vol. 6(4), pages 317-335, December.
    3. Besley, Timothy & Coate, Stephen, 1991. "Public Provision of Private Goods and the Redistribution of Income," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 81(4), pages 979-984, September.
    4. North, Douglass C. & Wallis, John Joseph & Webb, Steven B. & Weingast, Barry R., 2007. "Limited access orders in the developing world :a new approach to the problems of development," Policy Research Working Paper Series 4359, The World Bank.
    5. Luis F. Lopez-Calva & Nora Lustig, 2009. "The recent decline of inequality in Latin America: Argentina, Brazil, Mexico and Peru," Working Papers 140, ECINEQ, Society for the Study of Economic Inequality.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Jaime Aristy-Escuder & Maynor Cabrera & Blanca Moreno-Dodson & Miguel Sánchez-Martín, 2016. "Fiscal Policy and Redistribution in the Dominican Republic," Commitment to Equity (CEQ) Working Paper Series 1347, Tulane University, Department of Economics.
    2. Sandra Martinez-Aguilar & Alan Fuchs & Eduardo Ortiz-Juarez & Giselle Del Carmen, 2017. "The Impact of Fiscal Policy on Inequality and Poverty in Chile," Commitment to Equity (CEQ) Working Paper Series 1346, Tulane University, Department of Economics.
    3. Jaime Aristy-Escuder & Maynor Cabrera & Blanca Moreno-Dodson & Miguel Sánchez-Martín, 2016. "Fiscal Policy and Redistribution in the Dominican Republic," Commitment to Equity (CEQ) Working Paper Series 47, Tulane University, Department of Economics.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Oasis Kodila-Tedika & Simplice A. Asongu & Julio Mukendi Kayembe, 2016. "Middle Class in Africa: Determinants and Consequences," International Economic Journal, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 30(4), pages 527-549, October.
    2. David Tschirley & Thomas Reardon & Michael Dolislager & Jason Snyder, 2015. "The Rise of a Middle Class in East and Southern Africa: Implications for Food System Transformation," Journal of International Development, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 27(5), pages 628-646, July.
    3. Simplice A Asongu & Sara Le Roux, 2019. "Understanding Sub-Saharan Africa’s Extreme Poverty Tragedy," International Journal of Public Administration, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 42(6), pages 457-467, April.
    4. María Edo & Walter Sosa Escudero & Marcela Svarc, 2021. "A multidimensional approach to measuring the middle class," The Journal of Economic Inequality, Springer;Society for the Study of Economic Inequality, vol. 19(1), pages 139-162, March.
    5. Walter Sosa-Escudero & Sergio Petralia, 2011. "Anatomy of Distributive Changes in Argentina," Chapters, in: Werner Baer & David Fleischer (ed.), The Economies of Argentina and Brazil, chapter 10, Edward Elgar Publishing.
    6. Michael A. Clemens & Claudio Montenegro & Lant Pritchett, 2016. "Bounding the Price Equivalent of Migration Barriers," Growth Lab Working Papers 67, Harvard's Growth Lab.
    7. Alain Desdoigts & Fernando Jaramillo, 2020. "Bounded Learning by Doing, Inequality, and Multi-Sector Growth: A Middle-Class Perspective," Review of Economic Dynamics, Elsevier for the Society for Economic Dynamics, vol. 36, pages 198-219, April.
    8. Kantis, Hugo & Federico, Juan & Trajtenberg, Luis A., 2012. "Latin American Middle-Class Entrepreneurs and their Firms: A Regional View and International Comparison," IDB Publications (Working Papers) 4041, Inter-American Development Bank.
    9. Berrou, Jean-Philippe & Clément, Matthieu & Combarnous, François & Darbon, Dominique & Fauré, Yves-André, 2020. "Anatomy of the Brazilian middle class: identification, behaviours and expectations," Revista CEPAL, Naciones Unidas Comisión Económica para América Latina y el Caribe (CEPAL), April.
    10. Martin Ravallion, 2012. "Why Don't We See Poverty Convergence?," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 102(1), pages 504-523, February.
    11. Simplice A. Asongu & Sara le Roux, 2018. "Understanding Sub-Saharan Africa’s Extreme Poverty Tragedy," Research Africa Network Working Papers 18/012, Research Africa Network (RAN).
    12. Florencia Torche & Luis F. Lopez-Calva, 2013. "Stability and Vulnerability of the Latin American Middle Class," Oxford Development Studies, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 41(4), pages 409-435, December.
    13. Ravallion, Martin, 2010. "The Developing World's Bulging (but Vulnerable) Middle Class," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 38(4), pages 445-454, April.
    14. Simplice A. Asongu & Nicholas M. Odhiambo, 2021. "Income Levels, Governance and Inclusive Human Development in Sub-Saharan Africa," Applied Research in Quality of Life, Springer;International Society for Quality-of-Life Studies, vol. 16(1), pages 71-103, February.
    15. Huynh, Phu. & Kapsos, Steven., 2013. "Economic class and labour market inclusion poor and middle class workers in developing Asia and the Pacific," ILO Working Papers 994822963402676, International Labour Organization.
    16. Alberto Batinti & Joan Costa‐Font, 2020. "Do economic recessions “squeeze the middle class”?," Economics and Politics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 32(3), pages 335-355, November.
    17. Martin Ravallion, 2013. "The Idea of Antipoverty Policy," NBER Working Papers 19210, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    18. Abebe Shimeles & Mthuli Ncube, 2015. "The Making of the Middle-Class in Africa: Evidence from DHS Data," Journal of Development Studies, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 51(2), pages 178-193, February.
    19. David Tschirley & Thomas Reardon & Michael Dolislager & Jason Snyder, 2015. "The Rise of a Middle Class in East and Southern Africa: Implications for Food System Transformation," Journal of International Development, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 27(5), pages 628-646, July.
    20. Simplice Asongu & Joseph Nnanna, 2020. "Inclusive human development in sub-Saharan Africa," Journal of Enterprising Communities: People and Places in the Global Economy, Emerald Group Publishing Limited, vol. 14(2), pages 183-200, May.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Health Monitoring&Evaluation; Public Sector Expenditure Policy; Population Policies; Public Sector Economics; Political Economy;
    All these keywords.

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:wbk:wbrwps:6049. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Roula I. Yazigi (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/dvewbus.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.