Fatton's term for post-Duvalier Haiti is predatory democracy. The forms are in place — parties, associations, a free press, elections held with some regularity — but the actors have never agreed on rules for competing, and each faction believes only it is fit to govern.

What fills that vacancy is a fight over the small number of offices through which public power converts into private wealth. Rival wings of the Lavalas petite bourgeoisie pursue it with armed gangs; everyone with resources has built a security apparatus, so coercion is dispersed among private forces that may escape whoever created them. A negotiated transition protected members of the old dictatorial coalition and installed them where they could veto, leaving authoritarian habits inside the new order.

Appearances mislead, as the Creole proverb has it: Préval held the office while power stayed elsewhere. Fatton stops short of calling the arrangement sealed — opposition, press and peasant organisations still leave openings.