Rethinking Historical Factors: Military and Political Transitions in South America

Abstract

As South American dictatorships fade into the past, analyses regarding their military legacies have increasingly diverged and disagreed. The purpose of this article is to introduce a factor that has yet to be fully incorporated into these accounts, one that has usually been viewed as less useful in examining political transitions, namely historical military legacies. The study of the military's role in transitions has been hampered by an overemphasis on short‐term factors, which in turn has resulted in unexpected empirical outcomes and the stalling of theory‐building. Only analyses combining “mode of transition” and historical legacy will adequately explain the persistence of both military autonomy and civilian rule.