Open AccessNegotiating Civil‐Military Relations in Post‐Authoritarian Argentina and Chile
Author(s) -
Hunter Wendy
Publication year - 1998
Publication title -
international studies quarterly
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.897
H-Index - 100
eISSN - 1468-2478
pISSN - 0020-8833
DOI - 10.1111/1468-2478.00083
Subject(s) - authoritarianism , negotiation , political science , democracy , power (physics) , latin americans , political economy , human rights , politics , power sharing , officer , sovereignty , privilege (computing) , law , civil–military relations , sociology , physics , quantum mechanics
This article invokes game theory to analyze civilian attempts to push back military influence in two countries where the armed forces have enjoyed strikingly dissimilar levels of power and privilege after the transition of democracy: Argentina and Chile. It finds that civilian governments in both countries have managed to make progress in challenging military prerogatives. But they have made relatively more progress in areas unrelated to human rights. While civilians have had to respect military immunity in the human rights sphere, they have anaged to erode other limitations on popular sovereignty that the officer corps imposed as a condition for leaving power. The resulting accommodation I describe reflects the pragmatic approach to politics that civilian and military leaders have assumed in post‐authoritarian Latin America.