The missions of contemporary Latin American Armed Forces and the necessary revision of the theory about democratic consolidation

Abstract

Until the late twentieth century, military intervention and coups in Latin American politics had been constant. But over the last decades the region has undergone a process of unprecedented democratic consolidation. In this paper, we examine the discrepancies between the historic progress of democracy in Latin America and the conditions that prevailing literature identified as necessary to achieve it one or two decades ago. Democracy as a political system has been consolidated in the region without having fulfilled the conditions regarding civil-military relations. The authoritarian threat has not diminished by a drastic change of behavior within the armed forces - the key element of the theory of democratic consolidation-. It was the drastic reduction in power and influence of civil political right elites and the authoritarian tendencies what allows the consolidation achieved.