Negotiating Civil-Military Relations in Post-Authoritarian Argentina and Chile

Abstract

This article invokes game theory to analyze civilian attempts to push back military influence in two countries where the armed forces have enjoyed strikingly dissimilar levels of power and privilege after the transition of democracy: Argentina and Chile. It finds that civilian governments in both countries have managed to make progress in challenging military prerogatives. But they have made relatively more progress in areas unrelated to human rights. While civilians have had to respect military immunity in the human rights sphere, they have managed to erode other limitations on popular sovereignty that the officer corps imposed as a condition for leaving power. The resulting accommodation I describe reflects the pragmatic approach to politics that civilian and military leaders have assumed in post-authoritarian Latin America.