10 - The military in politics

Summary

Few political institutions or social groups in Latin America have attracted as much sustained scholarly interest as the military. The corpus of academic literature consists mainly of studies of institutional, behavioural and cultural aspects of the armed forces as political actors. To a lesser extent, the corpus also contains institutional military histories as well as sociological studies of the military organizations as social groups.

The focus of this bibliographical essay is primarily on academic literature dealing with the domestic political role of Latin American military establishments. Conventional military histories that deal with the military institutions exclusively in their military personae - the Chaco War, the Brazilian Expeditionary Force, and, more significantly, the Falklands/Malvinas War - are not included. Also excluded are the institutional histories and biographies officially sanctioned by the various military establishments themselves. Official military publications and in-house journals comprise a corpus of literature quite distinct from academic studies. For a superb academic analysis of the official corpus of military literature in Latin America and elsewhere, see Frederick M. Nunn, The Time of the Generals: Latin American Professional Militarism in World Perspective (Lincoln, Nebr., 1992). This exclusion, however, does not cover books written by military personnel in their individual capacity, such as academic works and autobiographies.