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A Military Coup is a Military Coup … or is it?

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  10 November 2009

Liisa North  and
José Nun
Liisa North
Affiliation:
York University
José Nun
Affiliation:
University of Toronto
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Abstract

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Type
Review Article/Synthèse Bibliographique
Information
Canadian Journal of Political Science/Revue canadienne de science politique , Volume 11 , Issue 1 , March 1978 , pp. 165 - 174
Copyright
Copyright © Canadian Political Science Association (l'Association canadienne de science politique) and/et la Société québécoise de science politique 1978

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References

* The Military and the Problem of Legitimacy

Gwyn Harries-Jenkins and Jacques van Doom, eds.

Beverley Hills: Sage Publications, 1976, pp. 207

Soldiers in Politics: Military Coups and Governments

Eric A. Nordlinger

Scarborough: Prentice-Hall, 1977, pp. xiii, 219

Civilian Control of the Military: Theory and Cases from Developing Countries

Claude E. Welch, Jr., ed.

Albany: State University of New York Press, 1976, pp. xii, 337

1 “[W]e believe it is necessary to avoid using the so-called ‘grand theories’ of political science as organizing frameworks” (Editor's Foreword, ix). Note that the issue is not only avoiding the presentation or discussion of those theories (comprehensible within the objectives of the series), but avoiding their use as “organizing frameworks.” This is an intriguing proposition. It takes us back to the old disputes between “theoreticians” and “practical men,” and to Keynes' well-known observation: every “practical man,” in the final analysis, is the disciple of a dead “theoretician.”

2 To dismiss all doubt on the issue, see for example: Miro, R. M. Cifuentes y, “La democratizatión del ejército en el pensamiento de Mao Tse Tung,” Revista de la Escuela Superior de Guerra (Buenos Aires, July-August, 1971), 25–33Google Scholar.

3 For the problematic of peripheral or dependent capitalism, see, for example, the works of Paul Baran, Celso Furtado, and Samir Amin.

4 The preceding paragraph states: “Because American policy-makers subscribe to the democratic egalitarian, libertarian, constitutional tenets of liberalism, they generally prefer open, competitive regimes headed by civilians to authoritarian military regimes. American military assistance to non-Western countries has been undertaken partly to ward off military intervention” (9). The only example presented by Nordlinger refers to the Kennedy administration's pressure for “a return to constitutional forms” on the Peruvian military government in 1962. It might have been worthwhile also to mention that the following year the same administration instigated the fall of Ydigoras in Guatemala to prevent the probable electoral triumph of Arévalo.

5 To appreciate the extent and importance of this “training,” analyzed and documented in a number of works, see for example: Klare, Michael T., War Without End: American Planning for the Next Vietnams (New York: Vintage Books, 1972)Google Scholar. The Report of the US President's Committee on Military Assistance recommended that the Military Assistance Programme should be enlarged so as to “prepare Latin American officers to lead, administer and act.” The Programme should also provide “the opportunity to explain the dynamics of American society and to discuss which of the elements could be transferred to the trainee's country.” See Case, R. P., “El entrenamiento de militares latinoamericanos en los Estados Unidos,” Aportes (1976), 52Google Scholar.

6 “Theoretical ideologies” are defined as “ideological systems which ‘function’ (that is, they are socially accepted) as scientific practice” (Castells, Manuel and Ipola, Emilio de, “Practica Epistemologica y Ciencias Sociales …,” Revista Latinoamericana de Ciencias Sociales [Santiago, 1972], 138)Google Scholar.

7 Therborn, Göran, “What Does the Ruling Class Do When It Rules?” The Insurgent Sociologist 6 (1976), 5CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

8 Schneider, Ronald M., The Political System of Brazil (New York: Columbia University Press, 1971), 103Google Scholar.

9 For an analysis of Brazilian populism, see Francisco Weffort's contribution to Horowitz, Irving L. (ed.), Masses in Latin America (New York: Oxford University Press, 1970)Google Scholar. As Furtado states: “Unlike political movements supported by class or sectional interests with definite objectives, populism aspires to negotiate with the masses on the basis of promising them satisfaction of their immediate desires, regardless of the long-term consequences” (“Political Obstacles to Economic Growth in Brazil,” in Veliz, Claudio [ed.], Obstacles to Change in Latin America [London: Oxford University Press, 1965], 157Google Scholar). By the mid-fifties, this strategy of political integration was becoming increasingly ineffective.

10 See Stepan, Alfred, “The New Professionalism of Internal Warfare and Military Role Expansion,” in Stepan, Alfred (ed.), Authoritarian Brazil (New Haven: Yale University Press 1973), 47–65Google Scholar.

11 Similarly in dealing with Chile, Nordlinger, despite all the evidence pointing to an all-encompassing political crisis, writes: “The defense of corporate interests was at least as important as opposition to Allende's reformist and progressive policies in motivating the coup [of September, 1973].” Moreover, apart from the fact that this simplistic judgment obscures the internal conflicts which took place within the Chilean armed forces before and after the coup, it distorts at least one of the sources on which Nordlinger bases his argument. We are referring to the article by Michaels included in the Welch volume, which concludes: “[o]n II September, [1973] the Chilean officer corps proved the importance of class loyalties, which transcended all efforts of the government to win them over with economic concessions” (307, emphasis added).

12 When Nordlinger looks at the intrinsic “instability of military regimes,” as opposed to the civilian, he commits two sins of omission. First, he compares the duration of the military regimes in some countries with civilian regimes in other countries. He forgets to carry out the comparison within a single country, a comparison which might have provided some clues for understanding some of the structural reasons for that instability. Second, he does not say anything about certain recent projects for the institutionalization of military rule for the long run: Brazil and Chile are cases in point.

13 This should not surprise anyone familiar with the literature on job satisfaction. In fact, there are “differences in the satisfactions experienced by people with the same job characteristics. Such differences arise not only because people evaluate similar ‘objective’ job characteristics differently, but also from differences in what people seek to obtain from their work” (Kalleberg, Arne L., “Work Values and Job Rewards: A Theory of Job Satisfaction” American Sociological Review 42 [1977], 125)CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Mutatis mutandi, officers may not only hold different opinions concerning, for example, budgetary allocations; they may also perceive their careers in terms of different personal projects.

14 This should be sufficient to indicate that in responding to Nordlinger's reductionist arguments, we do not want to throw out the baby with the bath water.

15 Poulantzas, Nicos, “Les transformations actuelles de l'Etat, la crise politique et la crise de l'Etat,” (30), in Poulantzas, Nicos (ed.), La crise de l'Etat (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1976), 19–58Google Scholar.

16 See Stepan, “The New Professionalism,” passim. To provide an example, military and national interests were defined in a significantly different manner by the officers who took power in Peru in 1948 and in 1968. Sometime during that twenty-year span, agrarian reform and the partial nationalization of foreign enterprises became part of military and national security doctrine. Nordlinger's “framework” does not permit us to understand those changes. And to conclude by identifying post-1968 Peru as an example of “progressive modernizing” military rule which exhibited “an indirect, sophisticated strategy in defense of corporate interests” (181) involves, among other things, totally disregarding precisely the acute political conflicts within the officer corps.