Development and dependency in the Dominican Republic

The Dominican economy as it has evolved is unbalanced and fragile. Although impressive advances have been made in the last 20 years in industrialisation and economic diversification, the country remains heavily reliant on foreign, mainly US, companies, markets and suppliers. The most promising developments have occurred in the political sphere. If the country's newly legitimate political institutions fail, however, to protect the population from foreign pressures, the republic may yet revert to its earlier patterns of anarchy and tyranny