Civil-Military Relations in Post-Sandinista Nicaragua

Abstract

When Nicaragua's Sandinista Revolution ended in 1990 with the electoral victory of an opposition coalition, the Sandinista Popular Army remained under the control of its revolutionary officers. This study examines the subsequent evolution of civil-military relations in postrevolutionary Nicaragua under the governments of Violeta Chamorro (1990-1997) and Arnoldo Alemdn (1997-2002). It then assesses the level of civilian control achieved by combining for the first time Alfred Stepan's widely used military prerogatives indicators with an alternative measurement system recently designed by his ciitic Samuel Fitch. This analysis reveals that the Nicaraguan military has become a nonpartisan force exercising little influence in civilian politics, but it still enjoys wide de facto institutional autonomy and a margin of political independence. The Nicaraguan case falls between the “conditional subordination” and “democratic control” categories in Fitch's civil-military relations typology. Although Latin American armed forces are invariably blamed for most of the difficulties of democractizing civil-military relations in the region, this article concludes by arguing that Nicaragua's civilian political class not its military' leaders-is most responsible for the failure to complete the process of subordinating the armed forces to democratic authority.