Abstract

This chapter discusses the obstacles to progress in democratic civilian control of the military in Latin America. It examine the challenges and opportunities facing democratic civil-military relations in three tiers of countries: consolidated democracies with attention deficits; struggling democracies at risk of being overwhelmed by criminality; and populist regimes sliding into authoritarianism. It argues that even in the most stable and prosperous democracies, civilian ‘attention deficits’ persist despite both normative and policy reasons to overcome them. In the upper-middle income consolidated democracies of the region, such as Chile, the problem remains mostly one of civilian inattention. In the second tier are largely smaller countries close to the main routes of international drug trafficking from the northern Andes through Central America and the Caribbean into the United States and Europe, which experience much more immediate security threats from organised crime and drug trafficking. Finally, there is a third set of states in the region in which the rise of elected populist leaders has led in some cases to the erosion of democracy, and where a combination of weak checks and balances and military quiescence created permissive conditions under which nascent authoritarian regimes consolidated their authority. The chapter’s conclusion considers the past and future of democratic civil-military relations, considering the findings from contemporary Latin America.