This period from 1934 to 1957 probably best illustrates Laguerre's thesis. Chapter Five concentrates on how Francois Duvalier neutralized the army by creating a presidential guard, closing the military academy, selectively promoting and retiring officers, and creating a paramilitary organization. There is some confusion in this chapter about the civilian militia and the tonton makout. Laguerre correctly points out that the tonton makout cross the lines between civil and military sectors, and his point about the shifting of the center of civil society toward Duvalier might have been better illustrated by a focus on Duvalier's creation of a civilian militia. Military intelligence is discussed in Chapter Six.
Chapter Seven focuses on corruption.
Eight Laguerre analyzes the brief Leslie Manigat administration in 1988, which is a subtle and complex interpretation of a case study of the coup d'etat and a further example of Laguerre's civil-military thesis. Also necessary for this action, as Laguerre points out, is some support from some sectors of the civil sector. He then considers the predictive value of his model with eight propositions. Laguerre mentions in passing a few events that occurred after Manigat's 1988 ouster, but the book effectively ends in the summer of 1988, robbing Laguerre of the opportunity to illustrate how his model would explain the control exercised by the extraordinarily murderous three-year military regime headed by Raoul Cedras, which was terminated only by the U.S. military takeover of Haiti beginning in September 1994. This book is, of course, must reading for anyone interested in Haiti.