Continuity or change? civil-military relations in democratic Argentina, Chile, and Peru
Have the armed forces maintained their influence in Latin America's new democracies? Or has the reinstallation of free political competition diminished their political clout? Have overbearing militaries tightly constrained popular sovereignty? Or have democratic responsiveness and accountability extended into wider spheres of political life and reduced military influence? These questions are of crucial importance for the future of the fledgling civilian regimes in the region.1 Scholars adhering to a modes-of-transition perspective expect a high level of continuity in military clout. Following Alfred Stepan, they focus on the fact that Latin American militaries usually maintained control over the democratization process and therefore managed to extract from resurgent democratic forces important institutional prerogatives, such as extensive representation on national security councils and other decision-making bodies with broad political responsibilities, to shield themselves from civilian control, to keep watch over civilian forces, and to interfere in many arenas of democratic politics.2 The modes-of-transition argument thus expects persistent military influence based on institutional structures that are frozen into place during the regime transition.