Domestic military missions in Latin America: Civil-military relations and the perpetuation of democratic deficits

Efficiency And Effectiveness ◽

Basic Services ◽

Military Relations ◽

Abstract Latin American militaries are today in many regards inoperative and obsolete as an instrument of defence. Yet, they seek to maintain their organisational power and privileges. Governments, on the other hand, lack the adequate means to fight criminality, persisting poverty and social inequality. In an apparent win-win situation, Latin American governments have used the military as a wildcard to step in where civilian state capacity falls short, including for urban and border patrols, literacy campaigns and to collect garbage, among many other tasks. The military's manifold internal use has been defended mainly based on pragmatic reasons. We argue instead that the ostensive pareto optimality between militaries and governments has had negative effects for civil-military relations from a democratic governance point of view that takes into consideration the efficiency and effectiveness of how the state delivers basic services across different policy areas.

Coup-Proofing and Civil War

Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Politics ◽

10.1093/acrefore/9780190228637.013.27 ◽

2016 ◽

Cited By ~ 2

Author(s):

Jun Koga Sudduth

Keyword(s):

Civil War ◽

Civil Wars ◽

Civil Conflict ◽

The Other ◽

Rebel Groups ◽

The Future ◽

Face Threats ◽

Military Relations ◽

Political leaders face threats to their power from within and outside the regime. Leaders can be removed via a coup d’état undertaken by militaries that are part of the state apparatus. At the same time, leaders can lose power when they confront excluded opposition groups in civil wars. The difficulty for leaders, though, is that efforts to address one threat might leave them vulnerable to the other threat due to the role of the military as an institution of violence capable of exercising coercive power. On one hand, leaders need to protect their regimes from rebels by maintaining strong militaries. Yet, militaries that are strong enough to prevail against rebel forces are also strong enough to execute a coup successfully. On the other hand, leaders who cope with coup threats by weakening their militaries’ capabilities to organize a coup also diminish the very capabilities that they need to defeat their rebel challengers. This unfortunate trade-off between protection by the military and protection from the military has been the long-standing theme in studies of civil-military relations and coup-proofing. Though most research on this subject has focused primarily on rulers’ maneuvers to balance the threats posed by the military and the threats coming from foreign adversaries, more recent scholarship has begun to explore how leaders’ efforts to cope with coup threats will influence the regime’s abilities to address the domestic threats coming from rebel groups, and vice versa. This new wave of research focuses on two related vectors. First, scholars address whether leaders who pursue coup-proofing strategies that weaken their militaries’ capabilities also increase the regime’s vulnerability to rebel threats and the future probability of civil war. Second, scholars examine how the magnitude of threats posed by rebel groups will determine leaders’ strategies toward the militaries, and how these strategies affect both the militaries’ influence over government policy and the future probability of coup onsets. These lines of research contribute to the conflict literature by examining the causal mechanisms through which civil conflict influences coup propensity and vice versa. The literatures on civil war and coups have developed independently without much consideration of each other, and systematic analyses of the linkage between them have only just began.

The Control-Effectiveness Framework of Civil–Military Relations

Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Politics ◽

10.1093/acrefore/9780190228637.013.1874 ◽

2021 ◽

Author(s):

Florina Cristiana Matei ◽

Carolyn Halladay

Keyword(s):

Law Enforcement ◽

Democratic Governance ◽

Civilian Control ◽

Century Model ◽

Security Sector ◽

Control Effectiveness ◽

Law Enforcement Officials ◽

Military Relations ◽

Civil–military relations—particularly the principles and practices of civilian control of the security sector—have changed significantly since the 1990s as more and more states around the world seek to consolidate democracy. The scholarly focus and the policy that it informs remain stuck in a mid-20th-century model, however. While civilian control remains central, this civilian oversight must, itself, uphold the requirements of democratic governance, ensuring that the uniformed forces are well integrated into the democracy that they are sworn to protect. Moreover, this democratic civilian control also must ensure the effectiveness of the security sector in the sense that soldiers, law enforcement officials, and intelligence agencies can fulfill the range of their missions. Thus, democratic civilian control requires ongoing attention from both the civilian and the military sides.

normally only gradually, and this situation is not universally the case. There is growing understanding of the need for security arrangements which underpin the economic and political co-operation whose value is so clear to most decision-makers. Those who wish to see greater co-operation from the Latin American states in the non-proliferation and arms control fields should attempt to understand these phenomena and make a greater effort to bring the Latin Americans along. The North can help a great deal in educating key members of the civilian elites in these countries about defence matters. This would go a long way to easing some of the issues of civil-military relations mentioned. Showing more transparency ourselves in the working of arms control groupings can help to reduce concerns in these countries about their ability to resist excessive northern pressures if they accept the objectives sought by those countries in such groups. Working with nascent but interested elements of civil society, from universities and research centres for example can help to build the constituency for these objectives in key countries. And efforts to show the military that collaboration does not necessarily mean the end of a legitimate degree of armed forces influence in the security area and more widely in foreign policy, and that arms control does not necessarily imply ruin for them and their families, need to be made and indeed should be more closely studied in order to address these real concerns. There is thus a good deal which can be done. But culture remains formative and vital to states and individuals. These societies are the result of a lived historic experience and only an understanding of the very real security concerns they have will allow us to obtain more support from them in security fields which are, as in the past, still offering great challenges globally and regionally.

Culture and Security ◽

10.4324/9780203044766-12 ◽

2012 ◽

pp. 193-196

Keyword(s):

Latin American ◽

Arms Control ◽

Good Deal ◽

Armed Forces ◽

Decision Makers ◽

The North ◽

Military Relations ◽

The Military ◽

Research Centres

Military Government in Latin America, 1959–1990

Latin American Studies ◽

10.1093/obo/9780199766581-0015 ◽

2011 ◽

Cited By ~ 1

Author(s):

Brian E. Loveman

Keyword(s):

Latin American ◽

Transitional Justice ◽

Armed Forces ◽

Extensive Literature ◽

Military Government ◽

Foreign Policies ◽

The Government ◽

Military Relations ◽

Latin America’s armed forces have played a central role in the region’s political history. This selective annotated bibliography focuses on key sources, with varying theoretical, empirical, and normative treatments of the military governments in the region, from the Cuban Revolution (1959) until the end of the Cold War (1989–1990). The article is limited to those cases in which military governments or “civil-military” governments were in power. This excludes personalist dictatorships, party dictatorships, and civilian governments in which the armed forces exercised considerable influence but did not rule directly. No pretense is made of comprehensiveness or of treating the “causes” of military coups (a vast literature) and of civil-military relations under civilian governments. Likewise, the closely related topics of guerrilla movements during this period, human rights violations under the military governments, US policy and support for many of the military governments, and the transitions back to civilian government (including “transitional justice”) are not covered in depth, but some of the selections do treat these topics and direct the reader to a more extensive literature on these subjects. Long-term military governments, with changing leadership in most cases, controlled eleven Latin American nations for significant periods from 1964 to 1990: Ecuador, 1963–1966 and 1972–1978; Guatemala, 1963–1985 (with an interlude from 1966–1969); Brazil, 1964–1985; Bolivia, 1964–1970 and 1971–1982; Argentina, 1966–1973 and 1976–1983; Peru, 1968–1980; Panama, 1968–1989; Honduras, 1963–1966 and 1972–1982; Chile, 1973–1990; and Uruguay, 1973–1984. In El Salvador the military dominated the government from 1948 until 1984, but the last “episode” was from 1979 to 1984. Military governments, though inevitably authoritarian, implemented varying economic, social, and foreign policies. They had staunch supporters and intense opponents, and they were usually subject to internal factionalism and ideological as well as policy disagreements. The sources discussed in this article reflect that diversity.

Civil–Military Relations during Transition and Post-Democratisation Periods: A View from Southeast Asia

Journal of Current Southeast Asian Affairs ◽

10.1177/186810341703600205 ◽

2017 ◽

Vol 36 (2) ◽

pp. 137-148

Author(s):

Hipolitus Yolisandry Ringgi Wangge

Keyword(s):

Southeast Asia ◽

Transition Period ◽

The Philippines ◽

Democratic Governance ◽

Professional Roles ◽

Civilian Control ◽

Democratic Principles ◽

Military Relations ◽

The civil–military dynamic in Southeast Asia has been a contested issue for years. Although most countries in the region have been undertaken democratic governance, the military role in politics remains relatively unresolved. After having relatively stable civilian governments for over a decade, the Thai military launched another coup in 2014 to topple a democratically elected government. In Indonesia and the Philippines, the military has been moderately controlled by the democratically elected civilian governments, but their professional roles in sustaining democratic principles and values are also questionable. Accordingly, the crucial issues are the role that the military plays in the transition period, such as in Thailand, and the degree to which the military is institutionalised under civilian control in nascent democracies, such as Indonesia and the Philippines. These issues are addressed in the books discussed herein.

The Party in Uniform: Toward a Theory of Civil-Military Relations in Communist Political Systems

American Political Science Review ◽

10.1017/s0003055400189609 ◽

1982 ◽

Vol 76 (4) ◽

pp. 778-789 ◽

Cited By ~ 24

Author(s):

Amos Perlmutter ◽

William M. LeoGrande

Keyword(s):

Division Of Labor ◽

The Other ◽

Political Systems ◽

Stage Of Development ◽

Political Resource ◽

Military Relations ◽

The Military ◽

Over Time

This article is an effort to establish a comparative theoretical framework for the study of civil-military relations in communist political systems. Although the literature on civil-military relations in polyarchic and praetorian polities is theoretically as well as empirically rich, theories of civil-military relations in the field of comparative communism are still at the preliminary stage of development. It is argued that civil-military relations, like all the fundamental dynamics of communist political systems, derive from the structural relationship between a hegemonic Leninist party and the other institutions of the polity. Although the party directs and supervises all other institutions, its political supremacy is necessarily limited by the division of labor among various institutions. The relative autonomy of the military and its relations with the party vary from one country to another and can be described as coalitional, symbiotic, or fused. These relations are dynamic, changing over time in each country in response to contextual circumstances. The role of the military in politics is complex and variegated: on ideological issues, there is usually little conflict between party and army; on issues of “normal politics,” the military acts as a functionally specific elite engaged in bargaining to defend its perceived institutional interests; and in crisis politics, the military is a political resource that various party factions seek to enlist against their opponents.

Patterns of militarism in Israel

European Journal of Sociology ◽

10.1017/s0003975600006640 ◽

1993 ◽

Vol 34 (2) ◽

pp. 196-223 ◽

Cited By ~ 81

Author(s):

Baruch Kimmerling

Keyword(s):

Social Sciences ◽

Present State ◽

The Other ◽

Israeli Society ◽

The Social ◽

Military Relations ◽

Most of the subjects concerned with Israel, such as the location of the military and militaristic culture, are heavily distorted in comparison to other themes prevalant in the discourse and the debates in the social sciences, very much like the other issues linked with the Jewish-Arab conflict and Jewish-Arab relations (Kimmerling, 1992). Ideological and value loaded considerations blur the issue, making even the usage of the term ‘militarism’ in the canonical textbooks a taboo in Israel. The main purpose of this paper is three-fold: 1) to present a brief survey of the present state of the literature on so-called ‘civil-military relations’ in Israel, from which 2) a revision can be made of the overall impact of the Jewish-Arab conflict and the militarization of Israeli society. This will be followed by 3) a reformulation of the effect of militarization on the institutional and value spheres of the Israeli collectivity.

The Soldier and the Changing State

10.23943/princeton/9780691137681.001.0001 ◽

2012 ◽

Cited By ~ 2

Author(s):

Zoltan Barany

Keyword(s):

Developing Countries ◽

Political Change ◽

Armed Forces ◽

Global Scale ◽

Democratic Governance ◽

The State ◽

Policy Recommendations ◽

Military Relations ◽

This is the first book to systematically explore, on a global scale, civil–military relations in democratizing and changing states. Looking at how armies supportive of democracy are built, the book argues that the military is the most important institution that states maintain, for without military elites who support democratic governance, democracy cannot be consolidated. The book also demonstrates that building democratic armies is the quintessential task of newly democratizing regimes. But how do democratic armies come about? What conditions encourage or impede democratic civil–military relations? And how can the state ensure the allegiance of its soldiers? The book examines the experiences of developing countries and the armed forces in the context of major political change in six specific settings: in the wake of war and civil war, after military and communist regimes, and following colonialism and unification/apartheid. It evaluates the army-building and democratization experiences of twenty-seven countries and explains which predemocratic settings are most conducive to creating a military that will support democracy. Highlighting important factors and suggesting which reforms can be expected to work and fail in different environments, the book offers practical policy recommendations to state-builders and democratizers.

Civil-Military Relations in Developing Countries

India Quarterly A Journal of International Affairs ◽

10.1177/097492848904500202 ◽

1989 ◽

Vol 45 (2-3) ◽

pp. 154-192 ◽

Cited By ~ 2

Author(s):

Veena Kukreja

Keyword(s):

Developing Countries ◽

Political System ◽

Armed Forces ◽

The Other ◽

Future Research ◽

The Political ◽

The World ◽

Military Relations ◽

Students of civil-military relations, particularly those in the developing countries, admit having to work on myopic assumptions, meagre data, sloppy conceptualization and inelegant explanations. The relative newness of this area of studies could be one reason for this. The study of civil-military relations in the narrow sense referring mainly to military coups and interventions, has attained importance after World War II. But the study of civil-military relations in the broader perspective of multiplicity of relationships between military men, institutions and interests, on the one hand, and diverse and often conflicting non-military organizations and political personages and interests on the other, has begun to draw academic interest only in the last two decades or so. In the twentieth century, the armed forces, being an universal and integral part of a nation's political system, no longer remain completely aloof from politics in any nation. If politics is concerned, in David Easton's celebrated words, with the authoritative allocation of values and power within a society, the military as a vital institution in the polity can hardly be wished out of participatory bounds, at least for legitimate influence as an institutional interest group with a stake in the political decision-making. The varying roles the military may play in politics range from minimal legitimate influence by means of recognized channels inherent in their position and responsibilities within the political system to the other extreme of total displacement of the civilian government in the forms of illegitimate overt military intervention in politics. This paper seeks to attempt an overview of the existing scholarship on civil-military relations; second, it examines civil-military relations in the world with special reference to major political systems of the world; third, it surveys the literature on civil-military relations in general, and finally, it attempts to develop a general, complex, and hopefully fruitful causal model for analyzing the dynamics of civil-military relations; exploring implications for future research on civil-military relations.

EL PLANEAMIENTO ESTRATÉGICO MILITAR EN ARGENTINA (2003-2013): REFLEXIONES EN TORNO AL GOBIERNO POLÍTICO DE LA DEFENSA

Austral Brazilian Journal of Strategy & International Relations ◽

10.22456/2238-6912.44875 ◽

2015 ◽

Vol 3 (6) ◽

Author(s):

Luciano Anzelini ◽

Iván Poczynok

Keyword(s):

Armed Forces ◽

Defense Policy ◽

Point Of View ◽

The Political ◽

National Defense ◽

Military Relations ◽

The Military ◽

First Time ◽

Core Problem

The national defense policy of Argentina has experienced advances and regressions since the democratic return in 1983. This result has been connected to the dynamics that civil-military relations have inherited from the dictatorial period. The necessity to subordinate the Armed Forces dominated the defense agenda during most part of the democratic period, constituting the core problem of this jurisdiction.The democratic governments implemented various initiatives that underpinned the civil control of the Armed Forces and that also caused, from a normative point of view, what has been characterised as a “basic consensus”. These measures restricted the autonomy of the men in uniform, whether through the demilitarization of civil functions or through the specific delimitation of the martial responsibilities.The habilitation of the spaces required for the exercise of the political administration of the jurisdiction did not necessarily implied, however, that civilians have fully developed this task. The performance of the democratic authorities in the area of defense had its ups-and-downs. At times, these deficiencies were associated to the very restraints of the domestic political conjuncture; at others, they resulted from the planning of the specific agenda of the sector, though.This paper studies the performances of the Ministry of Defense demarches during 2003-2013. The analysis focuses on the conduction of the strategic dimension of the sector; punctually, on the relative responsibilities of the military strategic planning. In this frame, the demarches of ministers José Pampuro (2003-05), Nilda Garré (2005-10) and Arturo Puricelli (2010-13) are resorted to.The temporal cutout of the study object assumes that a battery of unprecedented measures were implemented. For the first time since the return of democracy, for example, an effective debate on the conduction of the strategic dimension of the defense policy was addressed. Nevertheless, for reasons that are object of analysis during this article, the empowerment process of the political conduction survived along with ambiguities and retrogressions that, during the same period, made the absence of solid consensus regarding the results of the sectorial agenda evident.