Authoritarianism and Democratization: Soldiers and Workers in Argentina, 1976–1983

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Description

Military rule in Argentina from 1976 to 1983 used to be a classic case of bureaucratic authoritarianism. This book now presents for the first time in English a close have a look at that country’s experience, providing new information on legal and institutional aspects of the Argentine regime and the intricate interaction between military rulers and trade unionists, whilst offering a model for the study of regimes in general.

Integrating insights from quite a lot of literature, Gerardo Munck advances a novel conceptual framework for the study of political regimes and regime change. He follows the life cycle of regimes from founding through consolidation to demise, identifying critical explanatory factors and showing how challenges faced by governing elites in one phase impact subsequent political developments.

In explaining Argentina’s experience with bureaucratic authoritarianism, Munck provides a compelling account of why that country’s military rulers were only partially successful in designing a new institutional order and why they sooner or later fell, in a precipitous and out of control manner, from power. He attributes their failure to the military’s lack of cohesion and opposition to their initiatives, and shows that either one of these factors were reinforced by the interim institutional arrangement the military created. He particularly shows how the exclusion of labor, a sign of military power, unwittingly undermined the military rulers, preventing the successful institutionalization, and in the end precipitating the collapse, of bureaucratic authoritarianism.

Munck’s comparison of the Argentine case with Chile from 1973 to 1990 and Brazil from 1964 to 1985 in the concluding chapter provides a further test of his theoretical model, whilst his analysis of the development of democracy in Argentina after 1983 demonstrates how important the legacies of authoritarian rule were. His study makes a very important contribution to our understanding of both regime development and a critical period of Argentine history.

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