The Transition is Dead, Long Live the Transition:
Bachelet’s Inheritance of Chilean Civil-Military Relations
Gregory Weeks
Department of Political Science
Prepared for delivery at the Meeting of the Latin American Studies
Association,
Feel free to cite approvingly without the author’s permission
The inauguration of Michelle Bachelet in 2006 marked 18 years since the plebiscite that eventually ended Augusto Pinochet’s government, 17 years since the presidential election that followed, and 16 years since Pinochet stepped down as president. Clearly, major political changes took place. Yet from that point forward, observers—from politics, civil society, academia, or the press—have applied the term “transition” to a host of different events, seeking to pinpoint the moment in which Chile can be said to have broken free of authoritarian legacies and established democratic civil-military relations.[1] This paper will argue that analyses of the concept have not addressed systematically the ways in which Chilean political actors view it. Inclusion of those perceptions provides insights into the perceptions of the military’s role in politics and “success” in establishing democratic civil-military relations and addressing the legacies of the dictatorship.
The
academic literature focuses on specific events or benchmarks that denote
passing a threshold that constitutes “transition.” In
Part of the problem of defining the military’s role in Chilean democracy is connected to disagreement about the very question of whether the political system continues to undergo transitions. For many Chileans, especially policy makers, the transition is also viewed in emotive terms, so that events tied to Pinochet, for example, become linked to transition, even when the institutional structures created by the dictatorship remained unchanged.
From a political perspective, the transition itself is a period of relative uncertainty that, once concluded, moves the country forward into a new era of democracy and progress. As Loveman and Lira have noted, previous periods of Chilean political history have similarly been marked by conflict followed by amnesties, pardons, and statements of looking ahead and not living in the past.[2] With regard to civil-military relations, however, the desire to view the transition in such stark terms increases the temptation to consider “la cuestión militar” as complete. Further complicating the matter, however, is that perceptions of those critical moments widely diverge. Thus, Chileans themselves have often disagreed about the boundaries of transition, whether it ended, and thus whither goes the military.
This paper will begin with a discussion of how the literature has defined political transitions, then move to an analysis of how it has been utilized in Chile, focusing on three main points that have been associated with transition: the 1988-1990 period that culminated in the inauguration of Patricio Aylwin as president, the fate of Augusto Pinochet, and the constitutional reforms of 2005. Bachelet inherited a presidential tradition of proclaiming the transition to be over, and has not broken with that established practice. The fact that such a declaration had to be repeated demonstrated that Chileans themselves did not believe it to be true in the past. Some political actors continue to assert that the transition is not complete, believing that “completion” might mean a setback to achieving their particular political goals. Only time will tell if the president too feels the need to repeat it.
Defining “Transition”
Defining the term “transition” has proved difficult, and it is noteworthy that decades of debate have not produced much consensus. It is also a term that is all too often used loosely without offering a clear definition, which adds to the conceptual confusion. The focus on transitions began in earnest in the 1980s as Latin American dictatorships yielded to civilian governments, but found inspiration in a classic article by Dankwart Rustow, who argued that the minimum period for a transition was a generation, and that it could be considered complete when the country reached some thing—ultimately undefined—called democracy.[3]
O’Donnell and Schmitter offered a more definite version as “the interval between one political regime and another.”[4] More specifically:
Transitions are delimited, on the one side, by the launching of the process of dissolution of an authoritarian regime and, on the other, by the installation of some form democracy, the return to some form of authoritarian rule, or the emergence of a revolutionary alternative.
This definition is one of the most measurable, since it centers exclusively on visible political outcomes. Others have used the same parameters, such that postauthoritarian becomes synonymous with post-transition.[5]
A democratic transition is complete when sufficient agreement has been reached about political procedures to produce an elected government, when a government comes to power that is the direct result of a free and popular vote, when this government de facto has the authority to generate new policies, and when the executive, legislative, and judicial power generated by the new democracy does not have to share power with other bodies de jure.[6]
That analysis is also unique in that it acknowledges the perceptions of “transition” within countries, though for the Chilean case it asserts that “if people accept that a transition has been completed when actually it has not, this may indicate that key members of the aspiring democracy have begun to accept nondemocratic constraints as bearable, or, in the worst hypothesis, in some way even useful for the task of governing.”[7] The notion that a political actor might be “wrong” about the transition points, albeit indirectly, to the reality that politicians, military officers, and others may have different perspectives. Rather than labeling their views as incorrect, it is more useful analytically to determine in what ways and why their ideas diverge.
Others have argued that there are two transitions, the first from authoritarian rule to democracy, and the second to a “consolidated” democracy.[8] In the same vein are works that refer to one transition that ends with a consolidated democracy.[9] They yield no more agreement, however, on when those ends have been attained. Further muddying the analytical waters are analyses that combined discussions of two transitions with “post-transition” references.[10]
View of the Transition in
For Chileans, the term is even more amorphous. For politicians it refers in large measure to the notion of a major change of era in terms of the interacting with the armed forces and the past. At times, it can carry clear political connotations, since using the term may be part of an effort to show how effective a given policy change will be. Presidents in particular have a strong incentive to assert that the transition is over. In particular, it sends signals of stability, both domestically and internationally, but it also provides more policy latitude, as the president need not feel pressured to focus on specific issues labeled as unfinished business.
The 1988-1990 Period
There is no consensus about precisely when the transition began, though it can be narrowed down to two different dates. Barton and Murray write that “[f]or most Chileans and foreign observers, the democratic transition began with the 1988 plebiscite,” but it is difficult to generalize too much in this regard.[11] The plebiscite, which asked voters to answer “yes” or “no” to another eight years of rule by Pinochet, launched the negotiations that would culminate in an election and eventual inauguration of a freely elected civilian government. This corresponds to Karl’s assertion that “the dynamics of the transition revolve around strategic interactions and tentative agreements between the actors with uncertain power resources aimed defining who will legitimately be entitled to play in the political game, what criteria will determine the winners and losers, and what limits will be placed on the issues as stake.”[12] In that light, the year and a half between the plebiscite and inauguration should be viewed in terms of determining the political rules of the game, and the transition ended once those rules were set.
The second centers on Aylwin’s inauguration, since it represented the first moment that the country was no longer ruled by the military. For example, the daily La Nación published a special report on the transition in 2006, defining it as the period after Aylwin assumed the presidency.[13]
There are, however, differing views. In his widely read account, Rafael Otano signals the 1984 meeting of the opposition as the start of the transition.[14] At that point, a group of several hundred opponents initiated an agreement to accept the dictatorship’s constitution and work within its rules to change the government. As a result, he defines the end of the transition as the moment at which the constitution was reformed and made more democratic.
There is no agreement about whether
and when the transition ended. President
Aylwin’s conception of transition corresponds to the dominant paradigm in the
academic literature, namely that the transition ended in March 1990 when
Pinochet left power. Every thereafter
was either “post-transition” or “consolidation” of democracy. In his message to Congress in May 1992,
President Aylwin stated that the transition had concluded, since it represented
only the change from authoritarian to democratic government, from abuse of
power to liberty and freedom. For that
he was roundly criticized.[15] Nonetheless, even some scholars agreed at the
time that
From Aylwin’s perspective, declaring the end of the transition was important politically. It constituted a message to the world that Chile was no longer a dictatorship and could therefore be re-embraced, but it was also aimed at Chileans, since he needed to assure a powerful military that the administration viewed the change of government as important in its own right, and that it did not plan to pursue human rights cases aggressively or to denigrate the armed forces more generally.
The debate over whether 1990 marked
the end of the transition also reveals the fact that perceptions do not run
along ideological lines. Even among
those close to Aylwin, such as Andrés Zaldívar, disagreed. He wrote that the transition had begun with
the 1988 plebiscite and would remain “inconclusive” until democratic reforms
were enacted.[17] Genaro Arriagada, an Aylwin advisor, said in
an interview that “there can be no transition” without a resolution of human
rights abuses.[18] With regard to civil-military relations,
there remained high profile limitations on civilian authority, and so the
rationale was that, in line with
On the left, however, there has been no more agreement. Camilo Escalona (a senator from the Socialist Party) argued that the transition had begun with Aylwin’s inauguration, though he agreed that it had not yet finished.[20] Patricio Hales, in 2007 the head of Defense Commission in the Cámara de Diputados and a member of PPD, believed that events after March 1990 should be considered “democratization” instead of transition.[21]
The military’s view was very
similar to Aylwin’s and would not change for nearly 15 years. Its goal was simply to proclaim the
transition over, which would make any future reforms unnecessary. According to future army commander in chief
Juan Emilio Cheyre, the transition should be viewed in constitutional-legal
terms. The first phase was the
suspension and then rewriting of the constitution between 1973 and 1980, and
the second phase was then completed in 1990, as the armed forces could leave
power after having both successfully transformed
From that perspective, civilians in the past had caused the political rupture that led to the military government, and then the armed forces—under the leadership of Pinochet—had rewritten the rules of the political game to ensure present and future stability. The transition ended once those rules were in place, at which time the military left power willingly, and so it carried significant symbolic weight. Any effort to change the rules once again would be going against the transition itself.
The Fate(s) of Augusto
Pinochet
The actions of Augusto Pinochet have commonly been associated with “transition” from 1988 until his death in 2006. As President (then former), Army Commander in Chief (active duty, then retired), Senator (active, then retired) and even home bound prisoner, he was inextricably linked to civilian governments’ relationship with the military, though as his star fell this was limited more just to the army.
The transition was sometimes viewed as tied to Pinochet himself. Foreign Minister José Miguel Insulza argued in 1996 that Pinochet’s eventual retirement from the army would represent “another step in a successful transition.”[24] Eight years later, as Interior Minister, Insulza insisted that there was no reason to talk about transition anymore, but rather the best ways to achieve full democracy (plena democracia).[25]
References to transition surfaced
again in 1997 and 1998 when Pinochet retired from the army and shortly
thereafter was arrested by British authorities.
At the time of his 1998 arrest, a Chilean human rights lawyer noted that
the event “marks a key point in
Interestingly, although Pinochet’s
death may have been cathartic in a sense, it did not occasion new transition
analogies. When asked, Andrés Zaldívar
replied that the transition continued, and would do so as long as there were
pending human rights cases.[28] Long lines of supporters waited at the
Escuela Militar to see his body laying in state, while others celebrated his
passing elsewhere in
In the end, perhaps nothing damaged him symbolically as much as the Riggs Bank scandal, in which evidence mounted that he had embezzled upwards of $27 million from the Chilean Treasury and funneled it into foreign banks. Pinochet had always claimed to be in power for love of his country, and even the opposition granted him that. Once it became clear that he had profited at the nation’s expense, most of his remaining supporters distanced themselves. Gradually, the oft-used phrase “after Pinochet” reflects less immediacy.[29] By the time of his death in December 2006, Pinochet had not been a political force of any sort for years, and aside from periodic depositions, public statements and efforts to bring him to trial, ceased to be a public figure. Thus, his death did not mark a drastic change for transitology.
Constitutional Reform
The
constitutional reforms passed in 2005 revived Chilean transitology yet again,
and have been central to both the
When they finally succeeded the changes were important in both practical and symbolic terms. In the realm of civil-military relations, the reforms eliminated the appointed senators (which included retired commanders in chief from each branch), granted the president the right to fire commanders in chief, ended military control over the National Security Council, and removed the military’s right to protect “institutional order.” All these issues had vexed presidents since 1990, significantly reducing their ability to pursue a range of policies without military interference. Andrés Allamand, a member of Renovación Nacional, said in a 2002 speech that those were the key issues required for the transition to be considered over, though he also included reform of the binomial electoral system.[31] After his election as president, Ricardo Lagos said in an interview that “the transition is going to be fulfilled once we have a constitution where [sic] everybody would agree upon.”[32]
In symbolic terms, the reforms
served to define transition largely in terms of a collection of anti-democratic
laws and constitutional provisions related to the armed forces, similar to the
The reference to catharsis was also linked to declarations made by army commander in chief Juan Emilio Cheyre. Unlike leaders of the other branches, in speeches and in articles Cheyre took institutional responsibility for abuses in the past, a major step forward for any army that had always asserted that reports of detention and torture were exaggerated and attributable only to “rogue” officers.[34] Claudio Fuentes has argued that Cheyre should be viewed as “the general of the military transition.”[35] Thus, the military’s increased willingness to acknowledge the abuses of the past could be seen as part of the overall transition to democracy.
Notably,
President Ricardo Lagos used an international forum in 2005 (a trip to
Australia) to highlight the changes: “twenty years ago there was a national
agreement for the country to become more democratic, fifteen years ago
democratic governments began, and now we can say that the transition in Chile
has concluded.”[36] This signaled to potential economic partners
that
In July 2005, former President Aylwin defended his original thesis, saying that the transition had concluded well over a decade prior. In April 2006, President Bachelet disagreed, saying that the reforms had been key, and that the transition was “complete, but imperfect.”[37] Chilean ambassador to Argentina Luis Maira explained that Bachelet’s was the first “post-transition” government:
This means that hers is the first government that will not have to spend a significant portion of its energies in undoing all that was “tightly tied up,” which was left by the military regime. It will be able to think differently about the use of its time, spaces, and greater freedom to define its own political designs.[38]
The message was that the constitutional reforms had erased
the problematic aspects of military autonomy, and consequently the Bachelet
government need not get distracted from its core policy goals, and that
Simultaneously, the army shifted its position. Where once it had insisted that the transition was long complete and therefore reforms were unnecessary, after those reforms were enacted, its definition of transition mutated into the area of human rights, which remained unresolved.
In 2006, army Commander in Chief Oscar Izurieta argued that the transition was nearly over, but would not be complete until the human rights cases against military personnel were finished:
The only thing that remains pending for us is undoubtedly the number of people that are being processed. When all these processes end, we would soon proclaim the transition definitively completed.[39]
In response to Izurieta, presidential spokesman Ricardo Lagos Weber (son of the former president) said that a pending issue was discovering the fates of the detained-disappeared and to have justice for those committed crimes.[40] The irony is that the military leadership shares with many civilians the notion that pending human rights cases demonstrate the transition is not over, but the former want them to end immediately while the latter want more to proceed. Paradoxically, for each proclaiming the transition to be over would possibly mean accepting that those goals would remain unfulfilled.
The armed forces have continued to
push for an end to such cases, and over time have found political support, most
notably from Presidents Aylwin and Lagos, both of whom
called—unsuccessfully—for time limits on investigations and prosecutions. The way in which this remains a simmering
issue for the military is reflected in retired General Raúl Iturriaga, a high
profile member of the military regime who was sentenced to five years in prison
for kidnapping, but in 2007 issued a statement of protest and went into
hiding. He received little public
support other than from the Group of Retired Generals and General Izurieta
immediately distanced himself and even said publicly that the case was
problematic for the army, but the case shows how the military does not view the
transition as finished.[41]
José Zalaquett, a prominent human rights attorney and member of the “mesa de diálogo” wrote in 2000 that confronting and overcoming the legacy of human rights violations was an integral aspect of the transition.[42] He defined the transition as “processes of political change that tends toward establishing democratic order where before there was none, or reconstructing it after a process of armed internal conflict, dictatorship, or other serious rupture of national co-existence and institutional order.”[43]
This has been described as
“transitional justice.”[44] Only after human rights cases have been
decided can the transition be finished.
According to another member of the Mesa de Diálogo, even as Bachelet
came to office,
Thus, by the time Bachelet took office, there was more consensus than ever that the transition was over. She was also well positioned to make this claim, since she had been Defense Minister and had established positive relations with the armed forces. Her first 18 months in office have been rocky in many ways, with student unrest, a disastrous public transportation plan, shortages of heating oil, and multiple cabinet shufflings, but the problems have been unrelated to the armed forces.
The army—which always took the lead
role in political controversy in the post-1990 period—has also retreated
significantly from emitting political opinions.
For example, roughly coinciding with Pinochet’s return from
Conclusion
Scholars have been debating the
definition and effect of transition for over two decades, but have reached
little consensus. In the Chilean case,
most academic definitions would define the transition as completed. However, the literature almost uniformly
neglects the perceptions of the Chilean political actors themselves, whose
views often deviate significantly from the academic definitions. The definition of “transition” has been
contentious for nearly twenty years in
President Bachelet has avoided referring to the transition, and in those few times has insisted it is complete. This sends signals to international actors looking for political and economic stability, but also raises doubts in the minds of the military leadership and human rights community about her commitment to pursuing a human rights agenda. Interestingly, the military’s own view of the transition has changed in the past decade as its position weakened, especially as a result of Pinochet’s arrest and subsequent legal woes.
Chilean sociologist Tomás Moulián observed that the transition has been declared over so many times that it must never have existed in the first place.[48] In 2007, El Clarín published an editorial asserting that “the transition to democracy has not concluded and neither has it moved forward at all.”[49] Perhaps the main criterion for a finished transition is that no one speaks of the transition in the present tense, and that President Bachelet can reach the end of her term without referring to it again.
[1] Although this
paper will focus and the military and human rights, there are also many works
examining “transition” with regard to women’s rights, the Mapuche, education
policy and other issues of national concern.
[2] Brian Loveman
and Elizabeth Lira. Las ardientes cenizas
[3] Dankwart A.
Rustow. “Transitions to Democracy:
Toward a Dynamic Model.” Comparative Politics 2 (April 1970):
347.
[4] Guillermo
O’Donnell and Philippe C. Schmitter. Transitions from Authoritarian Rule:
Tentative Conclusions about Uncertain Democracies. (Baltimore: The Johns
Hopkins University Press, 1986): 6. See
also Terry Lynn Karl, “Dilemmas of Democratization in
[5] Felipe Agüero,
“Conflicting Assessments of Democratization: Exploring the Fault Lines.” In Felipe Agüero and Jeffrey Stark
(eds.). Fault Lines of Democracy in Post-Transition
[6] Juan J. Linz
and Alfred Stepan, Problems of Democratic
Transition and Consolidation: Southern Europe, South America, and
Post-Communist
[7]
[8] Scott
Mainwaring, “Transitions to Democracy and Democratic Consolidation: Theoretical
and Comparative Issues.” In Scott
Mainwaring, Guillermo O’Donnell, and J. Samuel Valenzuela (eds.). Issues in Democratic Consolidation: The New
South American Democracies in Comparative Perspective (Notre Dame:
University of Notre Dame Press, 1992): 296; Jorge Zaverucha, “The Degree of
Military Autonomy during the Spanish, Argentine, and Brazilian Transitions,” Journal of Latin American Studies 25
(1993): 283-299.
[9] Stephan
Haggard and Robert R. Kaufman. The Political Economy of Democratic
Transitions (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1995): 4.
[10] Rebecca Evans,
“Pinochet in London-Pinochet in
[11] Jonathan R.
Barton and
[12] Karl 1990: 6.
[13] “La transición a la democracia.” La Nación
December 3, 2006.
http://www.lanacion.cl/prontus_noticias/site/artic/20060907/pags/20060907131957.html
[14] Rafael Otano, Nueva crónica de la transición (
[15] For an example
of his continued defense of that speech, see Patricio Aylwin, “El fin de la
transición,” La Tercera July 28,
2005.
[16] Alan Angell,
“The Transition to Democracy in
[17] Andrés
Zaldívar L., La transición inconclusa
(Santiago: Editorial Los Andes, 1995).
[18] Genaro
Arriagada, “The End of the Pinochet Era:
[19] For a
discussion of military prerogatives and negotiations, see Gregory Weeks, The Military and Politics in
Postauthoritarian Chile (
[20] Camilo
Escalona, Una transición de dos caras
(Santiago: LOM Ediciones, 1999).
[21] Interview with
the author, June 19, 2007.
[22] Juan Emilio
Cheyre, “La Fuerzas Armadas y su participación en la transición chilena,” Memorial del Ejército 450 (1996): 90-94.
[23] José Miguel
Piuzzi Cabrera, “Las relaciones cívico militares.” Memorial
del Ejército 450 (1996): 131.
[24] Barry James, “Q&A/José Miguel Insulza, Quiet
Transition in
[25] “Misión y compromiso.” Ministerio Secretaría General de Gobierno
2004
http://www.gobiernodechile.cl/ministerios/curriculum_pdf.asp?cod=0&ver=2
[26] Quoted in
Clifford Krauss, “Chilean Military Faces Reckoning for its Dark Past,” The
[27] Ricardo
[28] Leonardo
Núñez, “André Zaldívar y la muerte de Pinochet: ‘Será un mal recuerdo para
[29] E.g. Silvia
Borzutzky and Lois Hecht Oppenheim (eds.). After
Pinochet: The
[30] Lois Hecht
Oppenheim, Politics in
[31] Quoted in “The
Controversial Legacy of the Chilean Transition.” FRIDE Conference, May 9, 2002.
http://www.fride.org/eng/File/ViewLinkFile.aspx?FileId=166
[32] “Confronting
the Past.” Newshour with Jim Lehrer Transcript, March 2, 2000. http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/latin_america/jan-june00/pinochet_3-2.html
[33] Felipe Agüero,
“”Democracia, gobierno y militares desde el cambio de siglo: avances hacia la
normalidad democrática.” In Robert Funk
(ed.). El gobierno de Ricardo
[34] For an analysis of civil-military relations during
the
[35] Claudio
Fuentes, La transición de los militares
(
[36] “Presidente
Lagos estima que la transición chilena ha concluido.” El
Mercurio July 14, 2005.
[37] “Bachelet: la
transición está completa, pero no es perfecta.”
Radio Cooperativa April 9, 2006.
http://www.cooperativa.cl/p4_noticias/antialone.html?page=http://www.cooperativa.cl/p4_noticias/site/artic/20060409/pags/20060409110743.html
[38] Luis Maira,
“The Outlook for Chile-Bolivia Relations,” Diplomacy,
Strategy & Politics 5 (January/March 2007): 40.
[39] La Nacion
September 20, 2006. http://www.diariolanacion.cl/prontus_noticias/site/artic/20060919/pags/20060919224925.html
[40] http://www.msgg.gov.cl/noticias/ministro/20_09_06.pdf
[41] “Izurieta:
Situación de Iturriaga Neumann ‘complica al Ejército.” La
Nación June 15, 2007. http://www.lanacion.cl/prontus_noticias/site/artic/20070615/pags/20070615124946.html
[42] The “mesa de
diálogo,” or “dialogue round table” refers to a series of meetings between
military officers, human rights lawyers, psychologists, historians, religious
leaders, former government officials, and others, to discuss the pending issues
related to human rights abuses committed during the military government. It first met in 1999, and issued a final
report in 2001.
[43] José
Zalaquett, “
[44] There are many
such examples. On
[45] Brian Loveman
and Elizabeth Lira, “Truth, Justice, Reconciliation, and Impunity as Historical
Themes: Chilke, 1814-2006.” Radical History Review 97 (Winter 2007):
70.
[46] Kathryn Sikkink and Carrie Booth Walling, “The Impact
of Human Rights Trials in
[47] Paul E.
Sigmund, “The Chilean Military: Legalism Undermined, Manipulated, and
Restored.” Revista de Ciencia
Política 23, 2 (2003): 241-250.
[48] Tomás Moulián,
“El cierre de la transición inexistente.”
El Mostrador July 18, 2005.
http://www.elmostrador.cl/modulos/noticias/constructor/detalle_noticia.asp?id_noticia=164022
[49] Rafael
Cárdenas, “Transición a ninguna parte.” El
Clarín de Chile January 11, 2007.
http://www.elclarin.cl/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=5302&Itemid=127