Conditions of military contestation in populist Latin America

ABSTRACT

Latin America experienced recurring episodes of populism, and of military reaction against populists, during the twentieth century, frequently ending in coups d’état. In the twenty-first century, military coups appear to have died out even as populist regimes returned during the third wave of democracy. This paper examines military contestation in populist regimes, both left and right, and how it has changed in the contemporary period. Combining fuzzy set Qualitative Comparative Analysis of Latin American presidencies (1982–2012) and four focused case analyses, we find that military contestation in contemporary populist regimes is driven by radical presidential policies that threaten or actually violate the institutional interests of key elites, among them the military, which in turn is facilitated by the interplay of political, social, economic, and international conditions. Counterintuitively, two of these conditions, the presence of rents and regime capacity for mass mobilization, operate in theoretically unexpected ways, contributing to military contestation.

KEYWORDS:

• Civil–military relations
• military
• coup d’état
• populism
• Latin America

Acknowledgements

We thank the editors of Democratization and two anonymous reviewers for their comments and suggestions.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes on contributors

David Kuehn is research fellow at the Institute of Political Science at Heidelberg University, Germany. He is coordinator of the Working Group “Civilian Control of the Military” of the European Research Groups on Military and Society (ERGOMAS). His research focuses on democratization and authoritarianism, civil-military relations, and social science methodology.

Harold Trinkunas is a Senior Research Scholar and Associate Director for Research at the Center for International Security and Cooperation at Stanford University. He writes on foreign policy and security in Latin America, as well as on ungoverned spaces and terrorism finance. He is co-editor of Ungoverned Spaces: Alternatives to State Authority in an Era of Softened Sovereignty (Stanford University Press, 2010) and Aspirational Power: How Brazil Tries to Influence the International Order and Why It So Often Fails (Brookings Press, 2016).

ORCID

David Kuehn http://orcid.org/0000-0003-2593-0194

Notes

1. Mares and Martínez, Debating Civil–Military Relations in Latin America.

2. Knight, “Populism and Neo-Populism in Latin America, Especially Mexico;” Roberts, “Populism, Political Mobilizations, and Crises of Political Representation.”

3. Nun, “The Middle-Class Military Coup;” Loveman, The Politics of Antipolitics.

4. Pion-Berlin, “Latin American Civil-Military Relations?;” Norden, “Latin American Militaries in the 21st Century.”

5. Roberts, “Latin America’s Populist Revival.”

6. Powell and Thyne, “Global Instances of Coups from 1950 to 2010.”

7. Norden, “The Making of Socialist Soldiers.”

8. Jaskoski, “The Ecuadorian Army.”

9. “Bolivia Dismisses Hundreds of Protesting Soldiers.”

10. Roberts, “Latin America’s Populist Revival,” 5.

11. Houle and Kenny, “The Political and Economic Consequences of Populist Rule in Latin America.”

12. Stepan, Rethinking Military Politics, 68.

13. Finer, The Man on Horseback, 86; Ben-Meir, Civil-Military Relations in Israel, 25.

14. Stepan, Rethinking Military Politics; Zagorski, Democracy vs. National Security; Arceneaux, Bounded Missions.

15. Feaver, Armed Servants, 58–68.

16. Stepan, Rethinking Military Politics, 128–9.

17. Trinkunas, Crafting Civilian Control of the Military in Venezuela; Pion-Berlin and Trinkunas, “Civilian Praetorianism and Military Shirking during Constitutional Crises in Latin America;” Rittinger and Cleary, “Confronting Coup Risk in the Latin American Left;” Diamint, “Latin America and the Military Question Reexamined;” Norden, “The Making of Socialist Soldiers;” Mares, “The United States’ Impact on Latin America’s Security Environment.”

18. Mudde, “The Populist Zeitgeist.”

19. Rittinger and Cleary, “Confronting Coup Risk in the Latin American Left;” Norden, “The Making of Socialist Soldiers.”

20. Mainwaring and Pérez-Liñán, Democracies and Dictatorships in Latin America.

21. Weyland, “Clarifying a Contested Concept.”

22. Trinkunas, Crafting Civilian Control of the Military in Venezuela; Rittinger and Cleary, “Confronting Coup Risk in the Latin American Left.”

23. Weyland, “Clarifying a Contested Concept;” Roberts, “Populism, Political Conflict, and Grass-Roots Organization in Latin America.”

24. Roberts, “Populism, Political Mobilizations, and Crises of Political Representation.”

25. Pion-Berlin and Trinkunas, “Civilian Praetorianism and Military Shirking during Constitutional Crises in Latin America.”

26. Pion-Berlin, Through Corridors of Power; Hunter, Eroding Military Influence in Brazil; Serra, The Military Transition. While all populists might have the goal to do away with existing institutions and rule by decree or mass rallies, in practice they will be affected to some extent by the existing institutional framework, for example, if there is a strong legislature, a powerful and autonomous Supreme Court, and/or lively media landscape. Consequently, populists will differ in the degree to which institutions constraining their room for political maneuver remain effectual after their taking office.

27. Hunter, Eroding Military Influence in Brazil; Mainwaring and Pérez-Liñán, Democracies and Dictatorships in Latin America.

28. Diamint, “Latin America and the Military Question Reexamined.”

29. Limiting our analysis to the 1982 to 2012 period has substantive and pragmatic reasons. Pragmatically, 1982–2012 is the period captured by the Houle and Kenny dataset, and in contrast to the earlier period relatively reliable and comparable data is available for all cases. Substantively, there is wide-spread consensus that the neo-populist regimes that emerged during/after the third wave in Latin America have different origins, are based on different mechanisms of support, and thus might have different effects on military contestation. Consequently, we do not believe that left-censoring our case selection introduces bias, but rather ensures unit homogeneity across our sample.

30. Houle and Kenny, “The Political and Economic Consequences of Populist Rule in Latin America;” Coppedge, “A Classification of Latin American Political Parties,” 9. Coppedge defines political candidates as “personalist” if they are members of parties “that base their primary appeal on the charisma, authority, or efficacy of their leader,” they run as independents, or are supported by “[u]nusually heterogeneous electoral fronts formed to back a candidate.”

31. Kyle and Reiter, “Dictating Justice: Human Rights and Military Courts in Latin America;” Pion-Berlin and Trinkunas, “Civilian Praetorianism and Military Shirking during Constitutional Crises in Latin America;” Pion-Berlin, Esparza, and Grisham, “Staying Quartered Civilian Uprisings and Military Disobedience in the Twenty-First Century.”

32. Center for Systemic Peace, “Coups d’Etat, 1960–2015.”

33. Cruz, Keefer, and Scartascini, “Database of Political Institutions Codebook, 2015 Update (DPI2015).”

34. Mainwaring and Pérez-Liñán, Democracies and Dictatorships in Latin America, 201.

35. World Bank, “World Databank.”

36. Ragin, Redesigning Social Inquiry: Fuzzy Sets and Beyond.

37. Coppedge et al., “Varieties of Democracy (V-Dem) Dataset 6.2.”

38. Ibid.

39. Schneider and Wagemann, Set-Theoretic Methods for the Social Sciences.

40. Duşa and Thiem, QCA: A Package for Qualitative Comparative Analysis. R Package Version 1.1-4.

41. Ragin, Fuzzy-Set Social Science.

42. Ragin, Redesigning Social Inquiry: Fuzzy Sets and Beyond, 160–75.

43. Schneider and Rohlfing, “Combining QCA and Process Tracing in Set-Theoretic Multi-Method Research.”

44. Hunter, “Continuity or Change?”

45. Corrales and Penfold-Becerra, Dragon in the Tropics.

46. López Maya, “Venezuela: Hugo Chávez y el Bolivarianismo.”

47. Trinkunas, Crafting Civilian Control of the Military in Venezuela.

48. Corrales, “Using Social Power to Balance Soft Power.”

49. Monaldi, “Oil and Politics in Venezuela.”

50. Corrales and Penfold-Becerra, Dragon in the Tropics.

51. Trinkunas, Crafting Civilian Control of the Military in Venezuela.

52. Ruhl, “Post-Coup Honduras.”

53. Peetz, “De Hacendado a Revolucionario?”

54. Ruhl, “Honduras Unravels.”

55. Ibid.

56. Ibid.

57. Meyer, “Honduras: Background and U.S. Relations.”

58. Martí i Puig, “The Adaptation of the FSLN;” Colburn and Cruz, “Personalism and Populism in Nicaragua.”

59. Anderson and Dodd, “Nicaragua.”

60. Seelke, “Nicaragua.”

61. Perla Jr and Cruz-Feliciano, “The Twenty-First-Century Left in El Salvador and Nicaragua.”

62. Ruhl, “Civil-Military Relations in Post-Sandinista Nicaragua.”

63. Colburn and Cruz, “Personalism and Populism in Nicaragua.”

64. Feinberg, Miller, and TrInkunas, “Better Than You Think.”

65. Dugas, “The Emergence of Neopopulism in Colombia?”

66. Avilés, Global Capitalism, Democracy, and Civil-Military Relations in Colombia; Richani, Systems of Violence.

67. Dugas, “The Emergence of Neopopulism in Colombia?”

68. Basedau and Lay, “Resource Curse or Rentier Peace?”

69. Pion-Berlin and Trinkunas, “Civilian Praetorianism and Military Shirking during Constitutional Crises in Latin America.”

70. Pierson, “Big, Slow-Moving, and … Invisible.”

71. López Maya, “Venezuela: Hugo Chávez y el Bolivarianismo.”

72. Kuehn and Lorenz, “Explaining Civil-Military Relations in New Democracies.”

73. Pion-Berlin, Through Corridors of Power.