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Overview
Military Politics and Democracy in the Andes challenges conventional theories regarding military behavior in post-transition democracies. Through a deeply researched comparative analysis of the Ecuadorian and Peruvian armies, Maiah Jaskoski argues that militaries are concerned more with the predictability of their missions than with sovereignty objectives set by democratically elected leaders.
Jaskoski gathers data from interviews with public officials, private sector representatives, journalists, and more than 160 Peruvian and Ecuadorian officers from all branches of the military. The results are surprising. Ecuador’s army, for example, fearing the uncertainty of border defense against insurgent encroachment in the north, neglected this duty, thereby sacrificing the state’s security goals, acting against government orders, and challenging democratic consolidation. Instead of defending the border, the army has opted to carry out policing functions within Ecuador, such as combating the drug trade. Additionally, by ignoring its duty to defend sovereignty, the army is available to contract out its policing services to paying, private companies that, relative to the public, benefit disproportionately from army security.
Jaskoski also looks briefly at this theory's implications for military responsiveness to government orders in democratic Bolivia, Colombia, and Venezuela, and in newly formed democracies more broadly.
Product Details
ISBN-13: | 9781421409078 |
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Publisher: | Johns Hopkins University Press |
Publication date: | 08/15/2013 |
Pages: | 322 |
Sales rank: | 726,915 |
Product dimensions: | 5.90(w) x 9.00(h) x 1.00(d) |
Age Range: | 18 Years |
About the Author
Table of Contents
Acknowledgments ix
Acronyms and Abbreviations xiii
1 Military Mission Performance in Latin America 1
Challenges to Security and Democratic Civil-Military Relations in the Andes 3
Explaining Military Mission Performance in Democratic Latin America 5
Case Selection: A Focus on the Army in Peru and Ecuador 18
The Data 20
Overview of the Analysis 20
2 Civil-Military Relations in Democratic Peru and Ecuador 23
High Constraints on Peru's Military 24
Low Constraints on Ecuador's Military 30
3 Army Mission Performance in Post-Transition Peru and Ecuador, 1980s-1990s 37
Sovereignty before Policing 37
Deviations: Contradictions in Missions and Sovereignty Neglect 50
Alternative Explanations 56
4 Mission Constraint and Neglect of Counterinsurgency: Peru since 2000 58
Staying in the Barracks 58
Insecurity in Sendero Zones 59
Predictions of the Legitimacy, Professionalism, and Resource Maximization Hypotheses 64
Army Inaction 73
Restrictions on Army Autonomy 83
Contradiction through Mission Constraint 83
The Source of the Senior Cohort's "Need" for Autonomy 92
Neglect of Counterinsurgency as a Way to Maintain Predictability for Patrols 97
Return to Assertive Counterinsurgency 102
Narrow Mission Beliefs and Minimal Police Work 105
5 Mission Overload and Neglect of Border Defense: Ecuador since 2000 115
Neglecting a Porous Border while Policing the Interior 116
Insecurity in Northern Ecuador 116
Predictions of the Legitimacy, Professionalism, and Resource Maximization Hypotheses 124
Assertive Policing 133
Overwhelming Security Responsibilities 140
Policing to Avoid Obsolescence 140
Contradiction through Mission Overload 150
Managing the Contradiction 155
The Contradiction Escalates 157
Alternative Explanations: Revisiting Legitimacy 161
6 Battalions for Hire: Private Army Contracts in Peru and Ecuador 165
Resource-Hungry Army Units 166
Local Client Influence 168
Limits to Client Influence 181
7 Comparative Perspectives on Military Mission Performance 184
Colombia: Tolerance of Policing amid Ongoing Insurgency 185
Venezuela: Mission Loss, Organizational Trauma, and Rejection of Police Work 194
Bolivia: Policing despite Organizational Trauma 198
Extreme Executive Control: Trends in Venezuela and Bolivia 202
Reflections on Assigning Militaries to Conduct Police Work 205
Appendix. Field Research Methodology 207
Notes 215
References 249
Index 281
What People are Saying About This
Jaskoski’s extraordinary field work and primary sources make this book unlike any work in Latin American civil-military relations in the past thirty years. It is an empirical tour-de-force.
Jaskoski’s extraordinary field work and primary sources make this book unlike any work in Latin American civil-military relations in the past thirty years. It is an empirical tour-de-force.—J. Samuel Fitch, University of Colorado at Boulder
This is an important book for students of Latin America and for those of the military in general. For the first, it opens the black box of the military as an institution in an unprecedented way. We come to understand the military not as a political actor but as an organizational one. For military-oriented scholars, it provides a fascinating perspective on why soldiers might end up doing little of their supposed main missions and opt for organizational predictability rather than for effective performance. Anyone interested in post-conflict transitions or state capacity should read it.—Miguel Angel Centeno, Princeton University
All too often, analysts of Latin America pay insufficient attention to the region’s armed forces unless democracy itself is at immediate risk. This well-researched book represents a significant and welcome exception to this tendency. In an instructive and novel comparison, Jaskoski investigates the factors that shape the military’s mission performance in Peru and Ecuador. Her analysis serves as a powerful reminder of why the study of the armed forces remains crucial in the contemporary period.—Wendy Hunter, The University of Texas at Austin
All too often, analysts of Latin America pay insufficient attention to the region’s armed forces unless democracy itself is at immediate risk. This well-researched book represents a significant and welcome exception to this tendency. In an instructive and novel comparison, Jaskoski investigates the factors that shape the military’s mission performance in Peru and Ecuador. Her analysis serves as a powerful reminder of why the study of the armed forces remains crucial in the contemporary period.
This is an important book for students of Latin America and for those of the military in general. For the first, it opens the black box of the military as an institution in an unprecedented way. We come to understand the military not as a political actor but as an organizational one. For military-oriented scholars, it provides a fascinating perspective on why soldiers might end up doing little of their supposed main missions and opt for organizational predictability rather than for effective performance. Anyone interested in post-conflict transitions or state capacity should read it.