The Dominican Practice of PB
According to Juan Castillo, a Fundación Solidaridad,33 expert on the topic of citizen participation in the DR and PB, beginning in the 1990s, CSOs, NGOs and citizen participation in general took a new shape in the DR. These initial steps included the creation of neighborhood councils. This emergence of citizen participation was the result of substantial reforms to education and labor as well as DR’s transition to a new democracy after strongman Joaquín Balaguer’s exit from power. Before the 1990s the degree of integration of civil society depended largely on a mayor’ willingness to encourage such associations or on internal characteristics of a given community. The people’s participation in budget and investment decisions was not structured, and mostly negligible. Nowadays, however, such citizen involvement is seen as a right of citizenship and civil society, and no politician would ever pronounce himself against this sort of participation. However, Castillo believes that there is usually a disconnect between politicians’ discourse and reality, a claim that finds support in my observations from the case studies to be presented later.