Gerardo Munck takes on the unenviable task of synthesizing the research programs of scholars influenced by Guillermo O’Donnell’s work on “bureaucratic-authoritarian regimes.” Embedded in the vast literature that evolved from the work of O’Donnell, Authoritarianism and Democratization offers a “political institutional model” for “regime analysis” (p. xxiii). It then applies the model to the case of Argentina from 1976 to 1983, followed by brief treatments of the military regimes in Chile (1973-90) and Brazil (1964-85). This is consistent with the “broader aim of the book . . . to provide a sense of regime analysis as a research program” (p. xxiii).
The basic political-institutional model proposed by Munck consists of three phases: bureaucratic-authoritarian regimes seize and attempt to consolidate power (origins); seek to institutionalize the new regime (evolution); and face the challenge of contending power elites and social forces that may prevent or limit their success, leading eventually to succession governments (transition). According to Munck, these regimes, including the Argentine version examined in detail (chaps. 3-6), are uniformly plagued with the problem of representation, the “inability of the military rulers to provide a suitable mechanism for interest intermediation for key societal actors” (p. 184). In Argentina, “the lack of cohesion within Argentina’s military rulers, due to their particular response to the problem of representation,” was compounded by interim institutional arrangements installed after assuming power (p. 167). This dilemma of “interest intermediation” is at the root of the process that eventually ends the bureaucratic-authoritarian governments.
Munck makes explicit that his objectives are theoretical and historical, comparative and idiographic. Balancing these objectives is a difficult task. Munck’s choice is to historicize within the theoretical framework. This decision highlights the tension between comparative political sociology and comparative history. Were Argentina, Chile, and Brazil governed by more-or-less similar “bureaucratic-authoritarian regimes?” Or were they ruled by military governments sustained by complex civil-military coalitions that evolved within distinctive societies differentially influenced by major global events from World War I to die 1980s? If the latter approach is taken, the “stories” told will be different. Understanding the “origins” of the Chilean military government would depend on analysis dated at least from the two military coups of 1924-25 and of the Brazilian military regime from the tenientes rebellion of the 1920s. In Argentina, a more historical approach to “origins” of the military government would begin, at the latest, with the evolution of civil-military relations in the 1920s and the 1930 military coup. Understanding the evolution and “transition” from military to elected governments in these countries would likewise depend on politics, political culture, civil society, and civil-military relations at the time of the military coups as well as the differing international influences on each of these military regimes.
Munck does provide a recognizable historical narrative for Argentina, but the theoretical framework usually prevails over the historical analysis as he returns invariably to the lack of internal cohesion and the problem of representation as the “achilles heel” of the Argentine military government. Munck is partially correct. The Argentine military regime was unable to create a new constitutional foundation for Argentina. It did suffer internal divisions. It did give way to an elected government after failing to consolidate its rule.
However, the contention that the failure to institutionalize bureaucratic-authoritarian regimes, in Argentina and elsewhere, was rooted in the “problem of representation” might be usefully reframed, both theoretically and historically. The military governments and their allies in the period 1960-90 clearly intended to transform the existing political systems and to reshape state-society relations —but not to institutionalize military governments. There is no need to explain their failure to do. As Munck suggests, the military rulers always claimed to favor “democracy” — a democracy with adjectives: “protected,” “restricted,” “tutelary,” or “authoritarian.” In Argentina they failed to devise a new constitutional order; in Brazil they partially succeeded, and in Chile the military’s 1980 Constitution still is in place. Complex national socioeconomic and political histories led to these different outcomes, but the “bureaucratic-authoritarian” framework provides little insight into these different histories.
Understanding the internal divisions in the military regimes, the differences among them, and the different “transitions” in Argentina, Chile, Brazil and other cases requires more history and less “framework.” The lens in the “bureaucratic-authoritarian” frame does not capture many relevant features of the comparative historical terrain. In particular, the framework excludes serious analysis of the historical patterns of civil-military relations, of the coup-makers’ motivations and their professional and institutional concerns, and of the monumental differences between Brazilian politics and society in 1964, Chile in 1973, and Argentina in 1976.
Munck concludes that the bureaucratic-authoritarian regimes uniformly failed in installing “restricted democracy” and also failed in their efforts to install a new authoritarian order—though he acknowledges that Chile’s military rulers were relatively more successful than their Brazilian counterparts (p. 197). Yet Munck’s description of the legacies of the military governments makes this contention arguable. What they shared was the destruction of guerrilla movements and armed insurgents, deradicalization and loss of power for labor movements, movement of socialist and Marxist parties toward social democracy, and the gradual domination of neoliberalism as a common approach to economy and society.
Almost all the declared objectives of the political Right in the 1960s had been realized; almost all the dreams of the Left destroyed. Repression reaffirmed capitalism and, with the demise of the Soviet Union, discredited socialism. What greater victory could the military regimes and their civilian allies have achieved, notwithstanding the cost in lives and human suffering?