Latin America and the Armed Forces Microsite

"The democratic consolidation of the armed forces in southern Latin America. In the 1980s, what Huntington (1994) called ""the third wave of democratisation"" took place in Latin America. With the passing of time we have seen that all the indicators ratifying democratic consolidation are now established, though doubts still exist as to whether the armed forces -which illegally govern many of these countries- have satisfactorily made the transition to democracy. In the 1970s, Spain underwent its own transition to democracy, and the suspicion that the armed forces generated then were -generally speaking- comparable to those of South America. 

Through an analysis of the Spanish case, Narcís Serra (2002) articulated a theory about what guidelines should be laid down for the armed forces in the transition to democracy. It begins with legislative changes and the withdrawal of the armed forces from the rest of the administrations, and then continues with government control of defence policy, the technical improvement of the professional soldier and the specific definition of their missions, and culminates in the social involvement of troops in defence and new types of missions -mainly peacekeeping operations and providing aid in disaster scenarios. In the first few years of this century, three empirical research studies were carried out in Spain -all with a European comparative scope- which focused on (i) the democratic influence of the armed forces through the new constitutional framework and its subsequent legal development, (ii) the will to democracy and the consequence adoption of the civil supremacy of future officialdom and sub-officialdom, and finally, (iii), the transformation of political police forces and/or military or militarised independent security agencies into intelligence services at the service of the political decision-makers, and not involved in control or repression of the population. 

This research project attempts to apply the scientific methodology of these three Spanish projects to Argentina, Brazil, Chile and Uruguay. This will enable researchers to determine scientifically whether the democratic consolidation of these armed forces has been achieved, and what kinds of future challenges have yet to be tackled within the legislative framework, in terms of the socialisation of the components of the armed forces and of the structuring of their intelligence services."