¹ Pye, Lucian W. (ed.), Communications and Political Development (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1963)Google Scholar; and La Palombara, Joseph (ed.), Bureaucracy and Political Development. (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1963)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

² Janowitz, Morris, The Military in the Political Development of New Nations (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1964)Google Scholar.

³ Deutsch, Karl W., “Social Mobilization and Political Development,” this Review, 55 (09, 1961), 493–514Google Scholar; Russett, Bruce M.et al.World Handbook of Social and Political Indicators (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1964), esp. pp. 294–298Google Scholar.

⁴ Two exceptions to the general lack of attempts to relate static and dynamic factors in a systematic way are the very fine article by Gino Germani and Kalman H. Silvert entitled “Politics, Social Structure, and Military Intervention in Latin America,” European Journal of Sociology, 2 (1961), 62–81CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Schmitt, Karl M. and Burks, David, Evolution or Chaos: Dynamics of Latin American Government and Politics (New York: Praeger, 1963)Google Scholar.

⁵ This article forms part of a larger work currently in progress. I wish to thank the Horace H. Rackham Graduate School of the University of Michigan for the Faculty Summer Research Fellowship which enabled me to begin work on this subject, and the Harvard Center for International Affairs for the appointment as Research Associate which is enabling me to bring it to completion. I also wish to express my gratitude to Walter C. Soderlund, a doctoral candidate at the University of Michigan, whose research is reflected in the statistical data reported here.

⁶ A series of such pairs of mutually contradictory hypotheses drawn from the literature is neatly formulated by Lyle N. McAlister in his contribution to Johnson, John J. (ed.), Continuity and Change in Latin America (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1964), pp. 158–159Google Scholar. Some authors point out the evidence that various mutually opposed tendencies exist without attempting to subsume them in some general formulation. This is Johnson's own approach: see his The Military and Society in Latin America (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1964)Google Scholar, Introduction and Chapter IX; and also that of Horowitz, Irving, “United States Policy and the Latin American Military Establishment,” The Correspondent, Autumn 1964Google Scholar. Lieuwen reconciles opposing tendencies by means of positing cycles in which a set of trends in one direction is succeeded by a countervailing set; see his Arms and Politics in Latin America, rev. ed. (New York: Praeger, 1961)Google Scholar, esp. Chapter V.

⁷ Edwin Lieuwen discusses the relation between the depression and military intervention in “Militarism and Politics in Latin America,” in Johnson, John J. (ed.), The Role of the Military in Underdeveloped Countries (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1962)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

⁸ It should not be thought that economic conditions always worsen as a result of a coup. At least as commonly, in the writer's experience, conditions improve as business confidence shows an upsurge after a coup, which normally occurs without appreciable economic dislocation and typically removes a government regarded as incompetent.

⁹ McAlister argues in favor of this “revisionist” approach, which regards military intervention as chiefly a response to functional imperatives rather than as an expression of willful selfishness, in “Changing Concepts of the Role of the Military in Latin America,” The Annals (07 1965), pp. 90–92Google Scholar.

¹⁰ Jijón, Admiral Ramón Castro, quoted in the Diario Las Américas (Miami), 05 28, 1964Google Scholar. For a detailed account of the creation of an interventionist frame of mind on the part of the military, see Chapter V of my Anatomy of a Coup d'Etat: Ecuador, 1963. Johnson gives an example from Brazil of public incitement of the military to revolt by civilians on p. 124 of his The Role of the Military in Developing Societies. Finer discusses the interventionist mood in Chapter 5 of The Man on Horseback.

¹¹ For one such case of which the author has personal knowledge, see Anatomy of a Coup d'Etat: Ecuador, 1963, p. 19.

¹² This is also Lieuwen's view: “On the balance, the armed forces have been a force for the preservation of the status quo; their political intervention has generally signified, as it does today, a conservative action….” Lieuwen, Edwin, “The Military: A Force for Continuity or Change,” in TePaske, John and Fisher, Sydney N. (eds.), Explosive Forces in Latin America (Columbus: Ohio State University Press, 1964), p. 77Google Scholar.

¹³ It is the conclusion of Lieuwen's, insightful Generals Vs. Presidents (New York: Praeger, 1964), pp. 101–107Google Scholar, that the last factor mentioned has been the crucial one in the recent coups.

¹⁴ Successful insurrections took place during the period in Argentina: June 1943, February 1944, September 1955, and March 1962;

Bolivia: May 1936, July 1937, December 1943, July 1946, May 1951, April 1952, and November 1964;

Brazil: October 1945, August 1954, November 1955, and April 1964;

Colombia: June 1953 and May 1957;

Costa Rica: March 1948;

Cuba: March 1952 and January 1959;

Dominican Republic: September 1963;

Ecuador: August 1935, October 1937, May 1944, August 1947, November 1961, and July 1963;

El Salvador: May 1944, October 1944, December 1948, October 1960, and January 1961;

Guatemala: July 1944, October 1944, June 1954, and March 1963;

Haiti: January 1946, May 1950, and December 1956;

Honduras: October 1956 and October 1963;

Nicaragua: June 1936;

Panama: October 1941, November 1949, and May 1951;

Paraguay: February 1936, August 1937, June 1948, January 1949, September 1949, May 1954;

Peru: October 1949 and July 1962;

Venezuela: October 1945, November 1948, and January 1958.

¹⁵ Janowitz, Morris, The Professional Soldier (New York: Free Press, 1964)Google Scholar.

¹⁶ Medina Echevarría states flatly that the officers seizing power today “come, practically without exception, from hard-working middle-class families”; Echevarría, José Medina and Higgins, Benjamin, Social Aspects of Economic Development in Latin America (UNESCO: Paris, 1963), vol. II, p. 88Google Scholar.

¹⁷ The evidence for these developments is summarized by Lieuwen, Edwin in Chapter 5 of Arms and Politics in Latin America, rev. ed. (New York: Praeger, 1961), pp. 122–153Google Scholar. If one thought solely in terms of these factors, as some authors do, regarding military political activity exclusively as being “pushed” by pressures internal to the military, rather than being also “pulled” by the demands of the total political situation, then it would be logical to expect these changes to result in greater professionalism and technicism, reducing military involvement in politics, and in greater sympathy with the lower classes, rendering such involvement more progressive in orientation. Although several authors have assumed viewpoints of this type, they do not appear substantiated by the evidence cited above.

¹⁸ The concept of “weight” is discussed below.

¹⁹ This set of dynamics is of course not peculiar to Latin America. Classic occupants of the role of “swing man,” with local variations, have been Naguib in Egypt, Gilrsel in Turkey, Aguiyi-Ironsi in Nigeria—or even de Gaulle in France.

²⁰ “Man in the News,” New York Times, 04 6, 1964Google Scholar. Typographic errors in the original have been corrected.

²¹ See Whitaker, Arthur, Argentine Upheaval (New York: Praeger, 1956)Google Scholar; Lieuwen, , Generals vs. Presidents, pp. 10–25Google Scholar; Rowe, James W., The Argentine Elections of 1963: An Analysis, (Washington: Institute for the Comparative Study of Political Systems, n.d.), pp. 11–18Google Scholar; Snow, Peter G., “Parties and Politics in Argentina: The Elections of 1962 and 1963,” Midwest Journal of Political Science, 9 (02, 1965), 1–36CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

²² See Generals vs. Presidents, pp. 69–85; and Peterson, Phyllis, “Brazil: Institutionalized Confusion,” in Needler, Martin C. (ed.), Political Systems of Latin America (Princeton: Van Nostrand, 1964), pp. 473–477Google Scholar.

²³ See General vs. Presidents, pp. 26–36; and Needler, M. C., “Peru Since the Coup d'Etat,” The World Today, 02, 1963Google Scholar.

²⁴ In one variant of this situation, the provisional president may save his own personal position by switching sides at the last minute and adopting the program of the “hard liners,” if the forces they can marshal seem decisive. This tactic was adopted by Castelo Branco in early 1966.

²⁵ I have discussed it in “United States Recognition Policy and the Peruvian Case,” Inter-American Economic Affairs (Spring, 1963)Google Scholar.

²⁶ (New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1959).

²⁷ To be considered “dictatorial,” a government:

(1) Had to be not an avowedly provisional regime holding office for 36 months or less;

(2) Had to come to power, or remain in power after the conclusion of the constitutionally prescribed term of office, by means other than a free and competitive election; or rule in clear disregard of constitutionally guranteed liberties.

²⁸ The idea of approaching the problem in this fashion was suggested to the author by Schneider's, Ronald article “The U. S. in Latin America” in Current History for 01, 1965Google Scholar.