Democracy in Latin America
Looking Back Thinking AheadFall 2002
Democracy and the Military
David Scott Palmer
One of the most
dramatic developments in Latin America today is the unprecedented shift
in the nature of politics since the late 1970s. At no time in the history
of the Latin American republics have so many countries established and
sustained electoral democracies without military takeovers.
The military coup is no longer an alternative mechanism for acceding to
power in the region. There were 19 successful coups in the 1960s in Latin
America and 18 in the 1970s, but just seven in the 1980s and only two
in the 1990s. The two coups thus far in the new century lasted just hours,
both aborted by intense international pressure.
Within a single political generation, electoral democracy has become the
norm in almost all of the 20 Latin American nations, imperfect and facing
multiple challenges, to be sure, but seen as legitimate by most citizens
everywhere in the region. One noteworthy change is the unprecedented willingness
of the military in recent years to remain on the political sidelines in
Latin America. How can this extraordinary development be explained?
One answer may be found in the failure by the Latin American militaries,
that took power throughout the region during the so-called ?Third
Wave? of authoritarianism between the 1960s and the 1980s, to accomplish
their political and economic objectives. The long-term institutionalized
military regimes in place in many Latin American countries during these
years found that it was much harder to implement policies than to make
plans. Chastened by their experience as well as weakened and divided,
most were only too glad to return to the barracks ? and stay there.
The end of the Cold War certainly has contributed to this process.
Another is the combination of the debt crisis of the 1980s and the ?lost
decade? of national economic erosion that weakened the military
institutions through reduced budgets and training. The economic crisis
forced them to reassess their historic roles and missions.
From such a reassessment, many Latin American armed forces began to take
on a new mission ? international peacekeeper. Military and police
contingents from 13 countries were serving in the 22 United Nations peacekeeping
and other operations in place in 2000. Among the most active were Argentina
and Uruguay, with 12, Bolivia and Chile, with six, El Salvador with four,
and Brazil and Peru, with three. Such missions can only serve to enhance
the professional stature of the armed forces and help to justify their
continued relevance in the post-Cold War era.
With the establishment of inclusive mass democracy during a period of
economic distress, civilian authorities faced a ?guns OR butter?
situation. They were under great pressure to increase social expenditures,
often at the militaries? expense, thus further weakening the institutional
capacity of the armed forces. While the military establishments were not
bereft, many were not able to modernize.
The terms of negotiation for the transition from military to civilian
rule in several cases served to protect armed forces interests within
civilian rule. In Chile and Ecuador, the military retained a guaranteed
share of copper and oil revenues. In Brazil, the military tinkered with
the electoral mechanisms until it found a formula that provided relative
assurance of moderate civilian rule. Chile?s military leaders also
adjusted electoral provisions to assure selection of sufficient conservative
senators to block constitutional change and formed a National Security
Board that their members dominated and that was not accountable to civilian
authority. In Uruguay, the military protected itself from prosecution
for abuses while in power through legal provisions proscribing such initiatives
under civilian rule.
Short of military takeovers, the armed forces also influenced politics
by building alliances with civilians and influencing politics from within.
One example is Peru?s use of the principle of civilian control in
the 1990s to protect military interests and preserve its privileges.
Haiti and Panama serve to illustrate how egregious military abuse in power
can lead to outside intervention and the decision to abolish the military
altogether. Such initiatives reinforced a parallel campaign by Nobel Peace
Prize recipient Oscar Arias to apply the Costa Rican model of a political
system without a military establishment to other smaller countries of
the region.
In combination, these explanations suggest an emerging new dynamic of
civil-military relations in Latin America in which the armed forces are
coming to accept a different role from that which has prevailed in the
region since independence.
The changes over time in patterns of military expenditures within Latin
America are also revealing. While many changes within individual countries
respond to local or sub-regional security issues, the consistent overall
pattern over the decades has been a progressive reduction in the burden
of military expenditures as a proportion of central government budgets.
These have declined from about 21% in the early 1920s, 19% around 1940,
15% as of 1960, 12% in 1970, and 11% about 1980. The only broad exception
to this trend is the 1980s, when overall military expenditures increased
by over 40%, largely to develop counterinsurgency and counter-drug capacities,
before dropping back to about 10% in 1993 and 9% in 1997. Data for 2000
sugÃgest that this trend is continuing ? eight of the 20 Latin
American countries reduced their military budgets between 1997 and 2000,
three remained about the same, and nine increased.
These recent expenditure patterns, including both police and military, suggest that the armed forces of Latin America no longer in most cases consume a disproportionate share of the budget (Chile, at 17.8% in 1997, Colombia with 19.9%, and Ecuador at 20.3%, are the major exceptions.). This trend appears to suggest one of the beneficial effects of democratic practices and civilian control.
Continued expansion of democratic
practice and its gradual consolidation get a significant boost from the
unprecedented change in the regional and international context of international
agreements. These include the Santiago Accords of 1991 Organization of
American States (OAS) Resolution 1080, the OAS Washington Resolution of
1997, and the Democratic Charter of Lima of 2001. By signing these multilateral
accords, Latin American governments have agreed to give up their long-standing
principle of non-intervention. They now allow a regional body to determine
appropriate measures when democracy is threatened in a member state. The
OAS has invoked one or another of these provisions to respond to internal
political crises in various member countries, including Haiti, Peru, Guatemala,
and Paraguay. Furthermore, the mere presence of these multilateral instruments
has also served as a further stimulus for political elites to work out
their problems without threatening democratic forms. David Scott Palmer teaches
Latin American politics and United States-Latin American relations at
Boston University. His recent writings include "The Military in Latin
America," in Jack Hopkins, ed. Latin America: Perspectives on
a Region, 2nd edition (1998), and, with Carmen Rosa Balbi, "'Reinventing'
Democracy in Peru," Current History (February 2001).
The rapid proliferation of Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs), both
national and international, has also contributed to the consolidation
of democratic procedures. These groups have worked to protect, preserve,
and expand democratic procedures and practices by calling attention to
abuses, protecting human rights, overseeing elections, and generally reinforcing
civilian actors and civil society. They include civil-military groups
and associations of representatives from both sectors that meet regularly
to work through issues and foster mutual understanding. NGO presence and
advocacyhelps to further legitimate the democratic process and to make
government organizations and procedures, including those of the military,
more open and transparent.
While civilian democratic rule now prevails almost everywhere in Latin
America, specific cases illustrate some of the challenges that individual
countries continue to face.
In Venezuela, the election of a military leader associated with a violent
failed coup, Hugo Chávez Frias, introduced a new pattern of military
institutional involvement in activities historically carried out by civilian
or police authorities ? such as crowd control, citizen mobilization,
and public works. The creation of popular militias, the so-called Bolivarian
Circles, is also a distressing development. Chávez and the military
have filled the political space left by the progressive discrediting of
once robust political parties. In Venezuela, the electoral process rather
than the coup has reintroduced the military into politics, posing a new
type of threat to the principle of civilian authority.
The case of Peru reveals a second troubling pattern of civil-military
relations. This is the systematic abuse by an elected government of democratic
procedures and civilian as well as military organizations to ensure continuation
in power. Abuses included a unilateral amnesty for the military and police
for human rights violations, the thwarting of a referendum on an unconstitutional
third successive election of the president, the stacking of judicial and
electoral bodies with government loyalists, and the use of computer machinations
to change the presidential vote count. The civilian regime also resorted
to massive bribery to ensure a congressional majority and manipulated
military and police appointments to ensure compliant armed forces and
an intelligence service that would serve the government by intimidating
the opposition.
Through such measures, the institutional integrity of the military was
severely compromised in ways that contributed to its dramatic failure
to dislodge Ecuador?s forces in the 1995 border war. The intelligence
services were also adversely affected. Consumed by tracking the legal
opposition, they failed to prevent the Tupac Amaru Revolutionary Movement
(MRTA) takeover of the Japanese Ambassador?s residence for four
months in 1996-97.
Civilian democratic forces regained the upper hand in the dramatic political
denouement of late 2000 and brought about the removal of the ?elected?
regime and the arrest of scores of corrupt politicians, military, and
police. However, the damage done to the political and security institutions
of Peru will take years to overcome.
Ecuador?s recent experience suggests a third pattern. Successive
elected presidents were removed by congress and a brief civil-military
takeover that only international pressure kept from becoming the first
successful coup of the 21st century in Latin America. Ecuador provides
an example of sustained electoral democracy, but with a multiplicity of
parties and procedural regulations that virtually ensure political immobility
in combination with a strong armed forces fresh from the military success
of the border conflict with Peru. While civilian rule was quickly restored
in 2000, a well-institutionalized military establishment remains a political
alternative should the civilians falter again. The weight of OAS, United
States, and European Union sanctions is the major force standing in the
way of any unconstitutional takeover by the military in Ecuador.
Argentina?s sad tale may be the limiting case in civil-military
relations. Here the economic crisis of late 2001 and early 2002 led to
the president?s resignation and a revolving door of short-term heads
of state, with early elections now in the offing. Throughout the crisis
the Argentine military, dramatically downsized by elected governments
after its debacle in the Malvinas war and its gross mismanagement and
human rights abuses while in power between 1976 and 1983, played no role.
Here the civilian authorities were forced to try to work out alone some
solution to their country?s problems that appear to be resolvable
only with some accommodation with the international financial community.
Colombia, formally democratic since the late 1950s, reflects a progressive
erosion of central government capacity in the face of economic stagnation,
major drug production, the breakdown of personal security, and generalized
political violence. In this context, the armed forces became less able
over time to carry out its basic mission of protecting the population
and the government. Plan Colombia was designed to reverse this trend by
providing substantial economic and military assistance to enable the military
to increase its capacity to better protect a beleaguered civilian government.
While many of Plan Colombia?s provisions are controversial, the
resources provided appear to be in the process of accomplishing their
goal. The military is now larger and better prepared. Formal democracy
continues, though with the recent election of a hard-liner with a mandate
to restore peace through military initiatives. In Colombia democracy is
trying to survive, and the military at this point is committed to its
protection. There is no question in the Colombian case of a military takeover,
but concerns remain over the likely dynamics of a military-led initiative
to end the violence rather than peace negotiations.
As these specific examples suggest, on balance Latin American democracies
remain troubled, but in place. The dynamics of civil-military relations
vary widely from country to country, but overall the trend continues toward
the continued prevalence of civilian-led government and democratic procedures.
In most countries, the military has accepted its role as subordinate to
civilian authority and is working to redefine its mission within that
context. The financial woes of the 1980s and the market liberalization
initiatives of the 1990s continue to limit the ability of most armed forces
to retain the strong institutional capacity that they developed in earlier
decades, with attendant effects on their commitment to professionalism.
While this could pose a danger for democracy at some point, the regional
and international consensus on the value of civilian elected government
offsets such tendencies.
Nevertheless, the armed forces of the region continue to have several
important roles to fulfill. One is the new focus on international peacekeeping.
Another is the protection of borders still in dispute, both land and sea.
In addition, natural disasters require the military to take on emergency
rescue and civilian support tasks. Finally, counter-drug operations require
armed forces initiatives. As a result, military establishments of the
region can continue to justify their presence and their significance without
recourse to coups. Democracy in Latin America has multiple challenges
to overcome, but in most countries the threat of a military takeover is
not one of them.