As the 29-year Duvalier dictatorship ended in 1986, the emergence of Mouvement Lavalas out of the grassroots organizations of Haiti's poor majority, and election of charismatic priest Jean-Bertrand Aristide in 1990, challenged efforts by Haitian political parties and the U.S. foreign policy establishment to contain the parameters of Haiti's democratic transition. This dissertation examines the politics of Lavalas to determine whether it held a particular conception of democracy that explains the movement's antagonistic relationship with the political parties and U.S. democracy promoters. Using the qualitative methodology of process-tracing outlined in the works of Paul F. Steinberg (2004) and Tulia G. Falleti (2006), this study analyzes primary and secondary sources associated with Aristide and the grassroots organizations across the period of contested democratization from 1986 to 1991, with emphasis on four critical junctures: 1) the rule of the Conseil National du Gouvernement; 2) the government of Leslie Manigat; 3) the military regimes of Henri Namphy and Prosper Avril; and 4) Aristide's 8 months in power before being overthrown on September 29, 1991. This study concludes that there were systematic differences in how Lavalas pursued democracy in Haiti, as contrasted to the political parties and U.S. foreign policy-makers. Evidence indicates that while Lavalas placed emphasis on popular mobilization to challenge Haiti's legacy of authoritarianism, the political parties and U.S. democracy promoters emphasized processes of negotiation and compromise with Haiti's anti-democratic forces. Lavalas was rooted in the long historic struggle of the country's poor masses to, not simply establish procedural democracy, what noted political scientist Robert Dahl calls polyarchy, but to expand the parameters of politics to guarantee the right of all Haitians to participate directly in the process of governing, in order to share more equitably in the distribution of national resources, in what critical scholar William I. Robinson calls "popular democracy."

The objective of this research is to examine the theological ideas and moral vision of Jean-Bertrand Aristide, and to explore how his theology (and theological hermeneutics and ethics) has influenced his politics of solidarity and social activism on behalf of the oppressed and the poor in Haiti in particular, and the wretched of the earth, in general. Through the use of the postcolonial, decolonial, and Liberation Theology paradigms as hermeneutical and theoretical methods of investigation, the project seeks to answer a threefold question: what is the relationship between theology and social activism and transformation in the thought and writings of Jean-Bertrand Aristide? What is the place and function of the community of faith, the poor, the oppressed, hope, and human liberation in the political theology of Jean-Bertrand Aristide? What is the place of (defensive) violence in Aristide’s theology? Our goal in this scholarly investigation is an attempt to provide an answer to these daunting questions above and to explore more fully and intelligently the theology of Jean-Bertrand Aristide. This present study considers Aristide’s democratic and social justice projects and theological reflections and theological intersections in the disciplines of theological anthropology, theological ethics, and political theology, as he himself engages all four simultaneously. The doctoral thesis locates Aristide’s thought and writings within Black intellectual tradition both in continental Africa and the African Diaspora. It establishes shared intellectual ideas and parallelisms, and strong ideological connections between Aristide and Black theologians and thinkers in both continental Africa and the African Diaspora. On one hand, Aristide’s intellectual ideas and political activism should be understood in the context of the struggle for democracy in Haiti; on the other hand, it is suggested the intellectual articulations and propositions of these Black and African thinkers aim at a common vision: the project to make our world new toward the common good. While we do not undermine the problem of violence in Aristide’s theology and political program in the context of Haitian history, the doctoral thesis argues that Aristide’s theological anthropology is a theology of reciprocity and mutuality, and correspondingly, his theological ethics is grounded in the theory of radical interactionality, interconnectedness, and interdependence, and the South African humanism of Ubuntu. It also contends that Aristide’s promotion of a theology of popular violence and aggression in the Haitian society should be understood as a cathartic mechanism and defensive violence aimed at defending the Haitian masses against the Duvalier regime and their oppressors. / Thesis (PhD)--University of Pretoria, 2017. / Dogmatics and Christian Ethics / PhD / Unrestricted