Haiti: Government Structure

Haiti's political system is organized as a semi-presidential republic, combining a directly elected president as head of state with a prime minister who serves as head of government. The framework governing this arrangement dates to the Constitution of March 29, 1987, approved by popular referendum in the final months of the Duvalier era but not fully implemented until 1995. Drawing on both American and French constitutional traditions, the document established a system meant to prevent the concentration of power that had characterized earlier decades of authoritarian rule.

The president, elected to a five-year term and eligible for a single nonconsecutive reelection, appoints a prime minister from among members of the parliamentary majority to lead day-to-day governance. Legislative authority rests with a bicameral National Assembly composed of the Senate and the Chamber of Deputies, whose members negotiate laws, budgets, and oversight of the executive alongside the president and cabinet.

Judicial power is organized into four tiers, culminating in the Court of Cassation, Haiti's highest appellate body, below which sit courts of appeal, civil courts, and magistrate's courts. The legal system remains rooted in the Napoleonic Code, later revised under Francois Duvalier's presidency in the mid-twentieth century. In practice, prolonged political instability, contested elections, and periods without a sitting parliament have repeatedly tested this constitutional design, even as its basic institutions remain the formal reference point for governance.