The Demos 97 study on political perceptions of Dominicans (La cultura política dominicana: entre el paternalismo y la participación) showed that the political happening that received the highest degree of approval by Dominicans (67.5%) was the win of President Antonio Guzmán, candidate for the Partido Revolucionario Dominicano (PRD) over 12-year President Joaquín Balaguer in 1978. Ironically, the second most approved political happening (53.2%) was the return of Joaquín Balaguer to power in 1986, after eight years of PRD governments. The most rejected political happenings were the street riots in 1984 when the President Salvador Jorge Blanco (PRD) government imposed an economic austerity program recommended by the International Monetary Fund (71.2%) and the invasion by U.S. troops in 1965 to impede the returning to power of democratically-elected President Juan Bosch, who was regarded as a leftist (66.3%). The study was carried out by sociologists Isis Duarte, Ramonina Brea and Ramón Tejada Holguín of the Proyecto para el Apoyo a Iniciativas Democráticas of the Pontificia Universidad Católica Madre y Maestra, and was funded by the U.S. government Agency for International Development.
