Defence ministers and the politics of civil-military labour in Chile: a dialogue with Huntington's The Soldier and the State

ABSTRACT

Defence labour division is a complex process of policy-making where political and military interests collide, most especially, in recently democratised countries. Samuel Huntington’s theoretical concepts, described in his book The soldier and the state (1957) continue to influence the debate over the best approach to assure civilian control of the military, and the potential for civilian connivances with defence labour. This article reviews Huntington’s work to explore the role of the minister of defence, the relationship with the president, the executive cabinet, and the military in post-authoritarian Chile. It discusses the managerial style of the minister according to the three labels offered by Huntington: the spokesman, the business manager, and the policy-strategist. The article challenges Huntington’s prescriptive division of labour in order to understand modern defence governance and some of the fundamental changes to civil-military relations that have occurred since re-democratisation in 1990.

KEYWORDS:

• Defence policy
• civil-military relations
• minister
• armed forces
• developing countries
• Chile

Notes on contributor

Carlos Solar is a British Academy Postdoctoral Fellow at the Latin American Centre in the University of Oxford. His research interests are security governance and political studies. He is the author of Government and Governance of Security: The Politics of Organised Crime in Chile (Routledge, 2018). He has published in the Journal of Strategic Studies, International Politics, Peace Review, Global Crime, Latin American Policy, Democracy and Security and Mexican Studies. He can be contacted through his website: www.carlossolar.com

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

ORCID

Carlos Solar http://orcid.org/0000-0003-4230-3395