Bras. Political Sci. Rev.2011;5(1):153-64.
Armed Forces in South America: The Ambivalent Dynamics of Civil-military Relations in the Context of the New Democracies
DOI: 10.1590/1981-3885201100010007
Time for democracy for all
Maria Celina D’Araujo’s book is an original and coherent contribution on democracy and the achievements and difficulties of the South American, especially Brazilian, Armed Forces in accepting that differential treatment which has granted them corporative privileges is not appropriate under democracy, and that the past, present and future actions of the Armed Forces should be monitored through public rules and institutions as they are set up. The book has non-linear structure which identifies the profound ambivalences that surround the difficult civil-military coexistence in the context of the young South American democracies. This is the first key point of the book.
A second key issue is political change. It is highly likely that political scientists and International Relations scholars still have great difficulty in keeping up with political change that occurs in the region as a whole. This is evident from their attempts to understand the emergence of new leaders who challenge concepts such as populism or neo-populism, once valid for the “eager masses” in search of messianic leaders. D’Araujo’s book is a modern contribution which, without ignoring the contribution of categories bequeathed by Latin American social sciences (such as the category of corporatism), is creative in producing new concepts to understand the nature of the political changes at work.
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