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Military Coups and Military Rule in Latin America - Robert H. Dix, 1994
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Military Coups and Military Rule in Latin America

Robert H. DixView all authors and affiliations
Volume 20, Issue 3
https://doi.org/10.1177/0095327X9402000307

Abstract

Contrary to the prognostications of authors writing as late as 15 years ago, both military coups and direct military rule in Latin America are shown to have undergone a sudden, sustained, region-wide decline following a notable upsurge during the 1970s. Rather than with changing levels of socioeconomic development, the explanation lies substantially with the legacy of military rule itself, including the military's association with economic failure, the disaffection of the military's business allies, the attendant "learning experiences" of civilian politicians, and, not least, the factionalization and loss of professionalism of the military itself, as well as an anti-authoritarian international climate. The impact of such causes could fade with time, thus leading to a renewal of direct military rule. There are some signs, however, of the emergence of a more institutionalized form of military involvement than in the past, one which entails an explicit political role for the military within otherwise democratic polities, but falling short of direct rule, in a kind of a post-national security state.

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1.
1. Eric Nordlinger, Soldiers in Politics: Military Coups and Governments (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1977), 207; based on data in Robert Putnam, "Toward Explaining Military Intervention in Latin American Politics," World Politics (October 1967): 109.
2.
2. Nordlinger, Soldiers in Politics, 210; see also Douglas A. Hibbs, Mass Political Violence: A Cross-National Causal Analysis (New York: John Wiley, 1973), 189.
3.
3. Howard Wiarda, Critical Elections and Critical Coups: State, Society and the Military in the Processes of Latin American Development (Athens, Ohio: Ohio University Center for International Studies, 1978), 43; based on data in Warren Dean, "Latin American Golpes and Economic Fluctuations, 1823-1966," Social Science Quarterly (June 1970): 70-80.
4.
4. Egil Fossum, "Factors Influencing the Occurrence of Military Coups D'Etat in Latin America," Journal of Peace Research 4 (1967): 228-51.
5.
5. Putnam, "Toward Explaining Military Intervention," 103. By the index of MI (Military Intervention) Putnam means a rating assigned to each country for each year, based on the extent of military intervention in the life of the country for that year (p. 89). The rating scale runs from 0 (the military is essentially apolitical) to 3 (in which the military, or a military leader, rules directly and civilian actors are reduced to being supplicants of the military). Putnam's ratings are necessarily judgmental, as are mine in Table 3; to enhance consistency I have attempted to follow Putnam's rating criteria (pp. 89-90) as closely as possible.
6.
6. Dean, "Latin American Golpes," and Martin Needler, Political Development in Latin America: Instability, Violence, and Evolutionary Change (New York: Random House, 1968), 40-42. It should be noted that authors differ in their definition of coups. Thus Dean includes all "irregular" acts, including popular revolts, that depose incumbent governments, while both Fossum and I include only military coups. Indeed, even deciding whether a coup has occurred is by no means always clear-cut. Similarly, Needler includes some nonmilitary regimes in his definition of dictatorship.
7.
7. Paul W. Zagorski, Democracy vs. National Security: Civil-Military Relations in Latin America (Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner, 1992), 1.
8.
8. Military disengagement here means the end of full or direct military control or rulership, but not necessarily (or even usually) the end of any military participation or influence in politics.
9.
9. Another partial qualification to such a statement applies to Bolivia; its attempt at a return to civilian rule in 1979 was brought to an end by a military coup in July 1980. However, by late 1982 it had returned to civilian rule and has maintained it since. Peruvian President Alberto Fujimori's auto-coup in April 1992 falls outside our time-frame and in any case did not, strictly speaking, entail a reinstatement of military rule.
10.
10. There were, however, no coups during the years 1926-29 and again from 1938 through 1942; see Fossum, "Factors Influencing the Occurrence of Military Coups," 243-4.
11.
11. See Putnam, "Toward Explaining Military Intervention," 103.
12.
12. See Needler, Political Development in Latin America, 40-42. Although Needler's definition of dictatorship is different from Putnam's MI (see note 6, above), it is in fact a more inclusive term.
13.
13. Military control or rule is defined as a score of 3, using Putnam's criteria.
14.
14. For comparisons see Putnam, "Toward Explaining Military Intervention," 103.
15.
15. See Needler, Political Development in Latin America, 41.
16.
16. Fossum's "Factors Influencing Military Coups" and Putnam's "Toward Explaining Military Intervention," were, generally, among them. However, Putnam found that, if the effects of social mobilization were removed (it is highly correlated with economic development), economic development itself turns out to be positively correlated with military intervention (pp. 94-97).
17.
17. Guillermo A. O'Donnell, in his Modernization and Bureaucratic Authoritarianism (Berkeley: Institute of International Studies, University of California, 1973), in fact argues the obverse, i.e., that at least beyond a certain point, greater economic development leads to bureaucratic authoritarianism.
18.
18. See Robert H. Dix, "Latin American Democracy 1960/1990," Political Science Quarterly (forthcoming); see also the tables in the appropriate annual editions of the World Bank, World Development Report (New York: Oxford University Press).
19.
19. Talkuder Maniruzzaman calls attention to the fact that military withdrawals, as well as military coups, are associated with deteriorating economic conditions, particularly those relating to international trade; see his Military Withdrawal from Politics (Cambridge, Mass: Ballinger, 1987), especially pp. 185-89 and 213.
20.
20. Fossum, "Factors Influencing Military Coups," 237, and Needler, Political Development in Latin America, 61-62.
21.
21. The World Bank, World Development 1991, 182. It should be noted that the Bank's regional calculations include the non-Latin American states of the Caribbean.
22.
22. Ibid., pp. 204-205, and, for Nicaragua, various issues of Latin American Weekly Report (London). There are no data for Cuba.
23.
23. Latin American Weekly Report, 26 March 1992, 9, and Latin American Economy and Business (London), April 1992, 14.
24.
24. World Bank, World Development Report 1991, 189 and 250-51.
25.
25. For appraisal of the relationship between economic crises and the legitimacy of military regimes see Gordon Richards, "Stabilization Crises and the Breakdown of Military Authoritarianism in Latin America," Comparative Political Studies 18 (January 1986): 449-85.
26.
26. This is not to say that those whose businesses or industries highly reliant on high tariff walls and other protective policies of the state have not been hurt by the new dispensation.
27.
27. Catherine M. Conaghan and Rosario Espinal, "Unlikely Transition to Uncertain Regimes? Democracy without Compromise in the Dominican Republic and Ecuador," Journal of Latin American Studies 22 (1990): 564. By the same token, the authors note, democracy is viewed as an institutional arrangement worthy of loyalty only if it provides access to decision-makers and preferential policies (564).
28.
28. Guillermo O'Donnell, "Substantive or Procedural Consensus? Notes on the Latin American Bourgeoisie," in The Right and Democracy in Latin America, ed. Douglas A. Chalmers, et al., (New York: Praeger, 1992), 4. Several other chapters in this volume contain allusions to this general point.
29.
29. For a more extended discussion of this point, see Zagorski, Democracy vs. National Security, chap. 5.
30.
30. Charles G. Gillespie, "The Reconsolidation of Democracy in Uruguay: Politics as Usual or Learning from Mistakes?" Paper prepared for the meeting of the Latin American Studies Association, San Juan, Puerto Rico, September 1989, p. 16.
31.
31. In this connection see Alfred Stepan, Rethinking Military Politics (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1988), especially chaps. 2, 3.
32.
32. The Brazilian experience between 1974-85 was especially noteworthy in this regard.
33.
33. However, scholars who have in the past examined such a possible contagion effect for coups have found it to be slight to none; see Putnam, "Toward Explaining Military Intervention," 102-103, and Fossum, "Factors Influencing the Occurrence of Military Coups," 238-44.
34.
34. For an extended exploration of United States efforts at promoting or opposing democracy over time in Latin America see Abraham Lowenthal, ed., Exporting Democracy, 2 vols. (Baltimore: The John Hopkins University Press, 1991).
35.
35. For a more extended discussion see Dix, "Latin American Democracy."
36.
36. See, e.g., Zagorski, Democracy vs. National Security, 18; see also Latin American Weekly Report, 18 June 1992, 8, for discussion of one of possible such group of junior officers in Uruguay, and comparisons with Argentina and Venezuela.
37.
37. Augusto Varas, ed., Democracy Under Siege: New Military Power in Latin America (New York: Greenwood Press, 1989), 1-2.
38.
38. For a thorough discussion of military autonomy see David Pion-Berlin, "Military Autonomy and Emerging Democracies in South America," Comparative Politics 25 (October 1992): 83-102.
39.
39. Zagorski, Democracy vs. National Security.
40.
40. Ibid., chap. 5, has a good discussion of this point; see also Varas, Democracy Under Siege, and Stepan, Rethinking Military Politics, chap. 6.
41.
41. Torcuato di Tella, Reflections on the Argentine Crisis: Are We at the End of an Epoch? (Washington, D.C.: American Enterprise Institute Occasional Papers, January 1982). Di Tella argues that it was necessary to make certain institutional changes in order to restore Argentine democracy on a more stable basis than before. Among these was the establishment of "an additional power, emanating from the armed forces that would exercise some veto function" (20). See also Zagorski, Democracy vs. National Security, chap. 8 ("Reform of the State").
42.
42. World Bank, World Development Report 1991, 224-25; Zagorski, Democracy vs. National Security, 85. An exception was Peru, where the military budget increased as a percentage of GDP in the early post-transition years in face of a significant guerrilla threat.
43.
43. Cf. the trenchant analysis of Daniel H. Wolf, "ARENA in the Arena: Factors in the Accommodation of the Salvadoran Right to Pluralism and the Broadening of the Political System," LASA Forum 23 (Spring 1992): 10-18.
44.
44. For a fuller discussion see Pion-Berlin, "Military Autonomy."
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