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Military Motivations in the Seizure of Power

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 October 2022

Martin C. Needler
Martin C. Needler*
Affiliation:
University of New Mexico
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One of the most characteristic features of political processes in Latin America is the military seizure of power. The phenomenon is extremely complex and a complete understanding of it, if that is ever reached, will have to take into account a variety of causal factors operating over different periods of time, and interacting in various ways. Where a problem is this complex, one is well advised to approach it through a variety of methods, and this has indeed occurred. Some of the standard methods are: 1. To contrast Latin American experience as a whole with that of other areas-the United States, or Western Europe, or Africa-in order to isolate putative causal factors present in Latin American history and tradition but not found elsewhere; 2. To contrast the experience of different Latin American countries, identifying those more prone to military assumptions of power and trying to determine what socioeconomic or other variables correlate with a high propensity to military coups; 3. To examine changes over time in the incidence of coups, in the history of all of the Latin American countries, of a single country, or of a limited group of them, to try to discover the changes in other dimensions associated with changes in the relative frequency of coups; 4. To examine the motives of military officers who stage coups, either as stated by them or as imputed to them by knowledgeable observers.

Type
Research Article
Information
Latin American Research Review , Volume 10 , Issue 3 , Fall 1975 , pp. 63 - 79
Copyright
Copyright © 1975 by Latin American Research Review

References

Selected Bibliography

Note: This bibliography includes both works specifically concerned with military seizures of power and those that deal with coups as part of more general treatments of the military. No attempt is made is to include works on unrelated military questions, such as combat training and equipment, nor general works on politics which may devote a few pages to the military seizure of power.Google Scholar

Journals

Two journals devoted to military questions are of special interest. Estrategia is published in Buenos Aires and edited by General Juan Gugliamelli. Its orientation is nationalist and developmentalist. Armed Forces and Society, which began publication in Chicago in November 1974, is edited by Ivan Dee and a board consisting of Raymond Aron, S. E. Finer, Morris Janowitz, and Jacques Van Doorn for the Inter-University Seminar on Armed Forces and Society. Other journals most often containing articles of relevance are Aportes (now discontinued) and the Revista Latinoamericana de Sociología.Google Scholar

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Studies of Individual Coups

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