4. The Falklands–Malvinas War and transitions to democracy in Latin America: the turning point of 1979–82
The commemoration of the 30th anniversary of the Falklands– Malvinas War (April–June 1982) saw the intensification of the polemic surrounding the circumstances and consequences of the war, particularly in Argentina: the conflict’s intimate connection with the military dictatorship, the place in history of the young conscripts summoned to defend the patria and of their military leaders and the link between defeat in this conflict and the recovery of democracy in 1983 were all subject to renewed discussion. Conducted against the backdrop of Argentina’s vociferous assertion of claims to sovereignty and Britain’s pointed silence on the matter, the then current positions of the British and Argentine governments were subject to intense debate and revealed deep divisions, no longer between the opposing nations but within Argentina itself.1 The content of this debate paves the way for a reconsideration of the transition to democracy in both Argentina and surrounding countries. This article establishes a dialogue between history and political science, disputing the homogeneity of the concept of the ‘third wave’ of democracy to describe the dissolution of authoritarian regimes in Latin America; and instead proposes a distinction between the recuperation of democracy prior to and following the period between 1979 and 1982, divided precisely by the outbreak of war. Moreover, the revision of the Argentine case offers the opportunity to reconsider substantial questions relating to the transition which, despite having lost their previously central position and urgency over time (and in light of the triumph of the pro-democratic ‘ethos’), remain to a large degree unanswered and still represent an underlying influence on the configuration of these democracies in the present day. These substantial questions can be summarised in three areas of enquiry:
• The reasons behind the return of democracy in Latin America in the 1980s;
• The effect of the international context and external influences on political change within Argentina and other Latin American countries in this period;
• The relationship between the type of transition and the subsequent development of the emerging democracy in each case; and the potential long-term impact of this transition on the present-day form of democracy.
In 1986, David Rock and Suzanne Avellano analysed the return to democracy in Argentina as follows:
It is difficult to depict the Argentine elections of 1983 as part of a broader transition from authoritarian towards democratic systems throughout Latin America. The election has no simple connection to the current political transition in Latin America which, as an outgrowth of the debt crisis, calls to mind the domino-like spate of political changes that occurred between 1930 and 1933 and from 1944 to 1946. Argentina’s return to constitutional government in late 1983 was its fourth such transition in the previous twenty-five years, the most recent expression of a long-established cycle of alternating military regimes and civilian representative governments. In general, simplified terms, these shifts from one form of government to the other have occurred as a result of economic breakdowns arising from balance-of-payments crises. True to the pattern, the latest transition in Argentina reflects the failure of the economic program of the late 1970s, which led to the economic collapse of 1981 and the country’s subsequent foreign debt crisis. In 1982 as the crisis loomed, the military regime made a final, desperate effort to consolidate its dwindling authority by occupying the Malvinas/Falkland Islands. The failure of this adventure left the regime with no option but to abdicate and schedule elections (Rock and Avellano, 1986, p. 189).
More than thirty years have passed since this text was written, leading us to ask what we have learned in the intervening years. We can assess whether Rock and Avellano’s judgement is accepted by the majority of scholars today and explore what can be said about the link between the Argentine transition and the ‘third wave of democracy’ from the viewpoint of the present. We can ask whether the time that has passed allows us to produce an interpretation that is more informed, better documented and more impartial; or whether, instead, the debates over memory and the wide range of versions circulating in the public sphere render reconstruction a more complex enterprise and obscure our understanding of this nebulous past. Finally, we can interrogate the influence of intellectual and academic output on the dismantling of the authoritarian regimes and the establishment of the present-day democracies.
In order to account for the recuperation of democracy across much of Latin America between the end of the 1970s and the start of the 1990s, at least three possible explanatory paradigms have been advanced:
1. The theory of agency or ‘interaction’ outlined in Transitions from Authoritarian Rule, a work complied by Guillermo O’Donnell, Philippe C. Schmitter and Laurence Whitehead, the second part of which is dedicated exclusively to the study of Latin America (O’Donnell, Schmitter and Whitehead, 1986, pp. 15–329). The influence of this work on our conceptualisation of democratic transition has been both extraordinary and long lasting; and yet, despite the detailed country-by-country analysis it contains, its editors do not seek primarily to explain the causes of transition, but rather to explore its outcomes (as the text’s subtitle attests). The editors centre their theoretical framework on what was happening at the time of writing and what could happen in the future, leaving aside consideration of the past. This is not due to lack of knowledge on the subject but to the fact that the study seemingly does not aim to establish causal connections between past and present, seeking instead to record and account for the political change taking place at the time. Broadly speaking, the interpretative framework of this seminal work does not emphasise the ‘why’ but the ‘how’. The international context and other external factors are not ignored (in fact Whitehead dedicates a chapter to the topic) (Whitehead, 1986, pp. 3–46), but they are relegated to a secondary plane. The actors allocated most importance are the internal political agents, particularly the elites, who are considered as the driving force behind regime change. It is this perspective that informs the ‘theory of agency’ which shapes the work’s interpretation, including its focus on outcomes and the uncertainty surrounding the results of this process of ‘institutional engineering’ (Diamond, Linz and Seymour, 1989).2
2. The second interpretative paradigm stems from Huntington’s concept of the ‘third wave’ (Huntington, 1991). In essence, this perspective does not contradict the suppositions of the previous ‘interactionist’ interpretation, but grounds them in the historical process. Employing the concept of ‘wave’ in order to explain how democracies come into being, this theory offers a vision over the long term (with three waves – three historical moments – considered in strict chronological terms). This vision introduces international factors (which, for Huntington, are crucial to understanding the withdrawal of the authoritarian regimes); and its focus in some way ‘universalises’ the interactionist theory, endowing it with worldwide implications. From its opening pages, The Third Wave displays a clear ideological stamp: written in the midst of the collapse of communism, it proclaims the superiority of the ‘liberal democracy’ embodied by the United States.
3. The third option stems from an emerging area of study undertaken by historians which is slowly beginning to erode some of the conclusions so solidly established by the preceding theories. In a revision of Latin America’s political traditions, Alan Knight recognises the fundamental role played by the national elites in the last wave of democratisation, although he nuances this statement by highlighting that these same elites and the wealthy were initially in favour of the dictatorships (in order to contain the left-wing ‘threat’) and only supported the return of democracy in the light of changing circumstances. Knight also provides a warning about the type of democracy that was implemented:
Before we get too self-congratulatory, however, we should recall that democratization processes have typically been ‘padlocked’. […] Indeed, in recent years the ‘padlocks’ have tended to get thicker and more unpickable. That is to say, recent military withdrawals from rule have been accompanied by policies designed to remove the original reasons for military intervention (radicalism, Marxism, ‘economic populism’, militant unionism, peasant mobilization, threats to the army as an institution). Indeed, it has even been suggested that recent scholarship on democratization […] both embodies and endorses this ‘padlocking’ process. According to Paul Cammack (2000, p. 405), ‘O’Donnell and Schmitter […] make perfectly clear (as do Linz and Stepan) that they choose to stress elite strategy over structure because democracy will only work if the capacity of the left and working-class forces to shape it is limited’; hence, Cammack concludes, their ‘neutral contribution to political science’ is, in fact, ‘a highly ideological intervention in contemporary politics’ (Knight, 2001, p. 176 and footnote 60).
In line with these assertions, Knight highlights that ‘bottom-up’ public pressure was a negligible factor in the recent Latin American processes of democratisation. His analysis also stresses the inconsistencies in the behaviour of influential international actors:
The US – the primary external actor – welcomed the Brazilian and Chilean coups; but later exerted pressure for a return to democracy. US thinking in this sense roughly paralleled that of domestic elites: authoritarian rule was preferable to supposed chaos or communism; but a moderate padlocked democracy was preferable to either, in terms of both normative values and practical politics (Knight, 2001, p. 178).
More recently, Paul Drake has described the wave of ‘neoliberal democracies’ established across Latin America as a democratic ‘tsunami’ (Drake, 2009, pp. 201–43). Yet Drake recognises the difficulty of explaining why these neoliberal regimes were able to establish themselves so firmly despite the mediocrity of their results. His interpretation provides a different configuration of the local and international factors highlighted by the theories outlined above. Whilst accepting that national actors played a crucial role, Drake emphasises the absence of drastic changes (whether cultural, economic or institutional) at the heart of Latin American societies which would explain this sudden democratic turn. In order to resolve this enigma, Drake underlines two significant considerations:
The biggest change in thinking about democracy was the emphasis on its intrinsic value as a set of institutions and procedures rather than outcomes. Many Latin Americans moved away from popular democracy toward protected democracy, or at least closer to the U.S view of democracy as essentially a way to organize governance (Drake, 2009, p. 215).
As this judgement suggests, the brutal human rights violations, the errors in the management of the economy and other examples of misconduct by the military had rendered a more moderate idea of democracy acceptable, providing it put an end to the period of dictatorship. Second, and perhaps most importantly:
Under the aegis of economic and political neoliberalism, protected democracies prevailed over popular democracies in terms of mass mobilization and benefits (…) At least up to the 2000s, it seemed that so long as civilian and military élites agreed that protected democracies were desirable, almost regardless of other variables, those democracies could persevere, despite their shortcomings (Drake, 2009, pp. 214–5).3
But it is to international factors that Drake attributes the greatest importance, organising these under four subheadings: economics, imperialism, ideology and the domino effect. Drake’s insistence on both the impact of the economic crisis of the 1980s and the movements of powerful international actors (the United States, the Vatican, the European Economic Community and the USSR) echoes the argument put forward by Huntington. However, Drake’s perspective departs from that of the US political scientist in one crucial point: his narrative of the influence of the United States recognises a far more complex political landscape:
In this latest period, the Unites Sates played a contradictory role. Until the late 1980s, the Cold War kept the United States sympathetic to anti-communist dictators and leery of less vigilant democrats. After supporting military dictatorships in the 1960s and early 1970s, most infamously in Brazil and Chile, Washington championed human rights and democracy under President Jimmy Carter in the late 1970s. The Colossus of the North tried to take some credit for the surge of democratization in the 1980s and 1990s […] However, in most cases, Washington essentially played a reactive role (Drake, 2009, pp. 211–2).
In response to this range of interpretations, the section below explores the impact of international factors, including the ambiguous actions of the United States, on the evolution of the Falklands–Malvinas War and its effects on both Argentine politics and the international context.
The influence of external factors: lessons from the Argentine case
The circumstances of the Falklands–Malvinas War display substantial differences from other types of military intervention or conflict that set in motion processes of transition, such as in Greece and Portugal (to take examples from the third wave, but the cases of Germany and Japan could be included if we adopt a broader focus). In Argentina, the full spectrum of the political classes, from left to right, supported the war and gave their enthusiastic approval to the armed forces’ action in defence of national sovereignty. Strictly speaking, the Falklands debacle not only tarnished the military, but also damaged the credibility of the nation’s political leadership as a whole.4
To return to the apparently self-evident but problematic connection between ‘defeat in the Falklands’ and the ‘recovery of democracy’, it is essential to note that the end of the war did not bring about the fall of the dictatorship but instead produced a political earthquake that opened a deep crater: crucially, the way in which that vacuum would be filled was unresolved. Yet it must also be recognised that if the war had occurred three or four years previously, it would have taken place within a very different international context. Before discussing these changes, it is worth making two observations about the meaning of the term ‘international context’ within the perspective outlined in this article:
1. The understanding of this term here departs from the vision that purports a clear separation between ‘internal factors’ and ‘external or international factors’ (a separation implicit in both the ‘interactionist’ and third-wave theories), adopting instead a focus akin to that proposed by Fernando Pedrosa in his study of Socialist International in Latin America (Pedrosa, 2009). Instead of two clearly delineated categories, Pedrosa outlines a history of interactions between transnational actors, reflecting a patchwork of reciprocal, although unequal, influences.
2. References to the ‘international context’ here allude to at least three dimensions: the geo-political situation, the international economic conditions and status of the financial markets (in the capitalist world) and the ‘spirit of the age’, meaning both the principles, ideologies and political imaginaries governing international relations and the margins of action that are affected by material and symbolic factors.
Following on from the first of these points, this article contends that the events of the period 1979–82 profoundly altered, in a very short space of time, several key aspects of the international context. The promotion of democracy and human rights by the Carter administration (from 1977), the election of Pope John Paul II and his crusade against communism, beginning with his native Poland (1978), the Nicaraguan Revolution (1979), the Iranian Revolution (1979), the election of Margaret Thatcher in the United Kingdom (1979), the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan (1979), the electoral victory of Ronald Reagan in the United States (1980), the coup d’état in Poland (1980), the Falklands– Malvinas conflict (April–June 1982) and the Mexican debt crisis (August 1982) were defining episodes in the fabric of the period.5
The impact of this explosion of events in the space of four short years shaped profound differences between the transitions that took place before and after the date that concludes the period (1982). From this starting point, this article questions the homogeneity of Huntington’s third wave: despite the powerful nature of this metaphor, the wave did not break at the same time or in the same way on different shores. Within Latin America, the transitions to democracy in the Dominican Republic, Ecuador, Peru and even Bolivia (perhaps the most ambiguous case: a ‘transition within a transition’) were not driven by the same forces or subject to the same conditions as the return to democracy in Argentina, Uruguay, Brazil, Chile or Paraguay. The Central American countries can be considered a separate group, but one more closely allied with the post-1982 transitions than those that took place prior to this date.6
In short, if we consider external influences as dynamic processes in constant interaction with other (internal) factors, rather than as fixed circumstances to be taken into account, the dynamic of the democratic wave is substantially altered. This article proposes the events of the period of 1979–82 as a dividing line between two types of transition. Until 1979 the Soviet threat to the capitalist system remained a potent force; and, moreover, the crisis of free-market capitalism in 1973 had boosted the attractiveness and plausibility of an alternative to a system that Marxist theorists considered condemned to founder. In this context, it seemed logical to imagine and fight for a version of the socialist model. In other words, the left (whether armed or not) was still synonymous with the idea of revolution (as demonstrated in the cases of Nicaragua and El Salvador). However, in the period following the conclusion of the Falklands–Malvinas War (June 1982) and the outbreak of the debt crisis immediately afterwards (August of the same year), the image of the Soviet Union as an imminent threat had faded; Thatcher and Reagan’s ‘conservative revolution’ presented itself as an effective and audacious means of both reinvigorating capitalism and defeating communism; and the explosion in the level of external debt across Latin America was interpreted as sounding the death knell of the developmentalist model of import substitution, considered to be in urgent need of replacement. As far as revolutionary utopianism was concerned, in the wake of the brutal repression of these ideals in the 1970s the flourishing of democracy that spread from country to country removed this as a realistic political option.
The typology of transitions: the transitional matrix and its conditioning factors
Despite the overwhelming consensus that Argentina’s transition to democracy was caused by the collapse of the military dictatorship, brought about in turn by defeat in the Falklands, this affirmation appears to rest less on a detailed examination of the facts and more on the limited range of options offered by the typology of transitions developed by political science. Perhaps the most sophisticated classification is that presented by Share and Mainwaring (Share and Mainwaring, 1986), who distinguish between three different situations: transition through ‘regime defeat’, through ‘transaction’ or through ‘extrication’. In the first case described by these authors, transition is brought about by an external military defeat or a severe internal crisis that shatters the regime (such as in Germany and Italy after the Second World War, Greece and Portugal in the 1970s, or Argentina after its defeat by the British). Under this type of transition, the regime loses all negotiating capacity, unlike in the other two cases. In a ‘transition through extrication’ the weakening of the authoritarian government forces it to liberalise the regime and move towards democracy, retaining some capacity to influence the transition process (such as in Uruguay and Bolivia). Finally, in the ‘transition through transaction’ the elites of the authoritarian regime retain enough power to guide the change towards a ‘tutelary democracy’, such as in Brazil or Chile. Although Share and Mainwaring place Argentina in the first of these three categories, it is worth reconsidering whether the Argentine transition can truly be considered an example of ‘regime defeat’. In a sense, the Argentine case can be placed partially in all three categories outlined above and at the same time in none. An expert on the topic – a specialist in political communications – provides a careful explanation of this hybrid character:
The Argentine transition oscillates between a total rupture with the military regime and a certain continuity, in the sense that there was no abrupt breach with the regime […] Seen from this perspective, Argentine transition is a hybrid one, where although there was no legal continuation of the military regime, neither was there an abrupt breach with it. In fact, in the Armed Forces and the Civil Service, structural changes occurred only at the upper echelons of both organisations (Catterberg, 1989, pp. 19–20).
To characterise the Argentine transition as an example of ‘regime defeat’ or collapse is, therefore, far from satisfactory. In the first place, the concrete effects of the war on the dictatorship and the country were irrelevant: It did not affect the infrastructure of any government in Latin America and the military immediately replaced the weaponry destroyed in the war, bankrolled by the public purse. Second, once the mariscales de la derrota (those responsible for defeat) had been identified, the army took control of the situation and continued to govern alone. The pressure to hand over power to civilians was neither immediate nor intense, which explains the time lapse of 505 days between the end of the war and the holding of elections.
The fact that the military did not remain longer in government was due to the junta’s inability to manage the economic situation, but they sought to prolong their time in power as far as possible in order to leave things ‘tied up nice and tight’ (Burns Marañón, 1992, pp. 155–70).7 In short, this represented an attempt to establish protection against future accusations of accountability, particularly regarding the ‘dirty war’ against subversion (as it was termed by the junta), but also in terms of ‘los ilícitos’ (economic and financial operations of dubious legality that were undertaken, supported or approved by the military). Lastly, it is inadequate to refer to the ‘collapse of the dictatorship’ not only in light of the parsimony with which the army managed the transitional post-Malvinas period, but also in terms of the role of the armed forces as the principal destabilising factor under the first democratic government. It would be more accurate, therefore, to speak of the military as having withdrawn to the barracks, which would bear a closer resemblance to Share and Mainwaring’s concept of ‘transition through extrication’. This categorisation opens a series of further questions, including whether it was an orderly or chaotic withdrawal, what guarantees about the future political governance of the country were demanded by the armed forces and whether those guarantees were fulfilled.
The military sought to protect all the actions of the ‘proceso’ (particularly those relating to the fight against ‘subversion’) from judicial scrutiny, passing the Law of National Pacification in 1983, a clear self-amnesty. The acceptance of this law would demand some degree of agreement with the ‘democratic forces’. All transitions in the Southern Cone occurred through negotiation between the military governments and the civil elites who would take their place (in the mould of ‘transition through transaction’). All, that is, except the case of Argentina. The ‘Malvinas effect’ removed the possibility of a ‘transición pactada’, or ‘negotiated transition’, as the political parties refused to negotiate the return to constitutional order with a military dictatorship that had been completely discredited and widely condemned after defeat in the war. However, it is necessary to reflect upon the internal implications of this external setback. The armed forces immediately set about hiding, minimising and twisting the reasons behind the war and its failure, with a not inconsiderable degree of success. Why was an immediate public investigation about what happened in Malvinas not launched? Why was the Rattenbach Report not officially distributed until thirty years after the war’s conclusion? Why were the Malvinas trials brought to a halt? The military had much to hide, and therefore much to negotiate (Lorenz, 2012b, pp. 177–98).8 The democratic parties, in turn, dissolved the coalition known as the ‘Multipartidaria’, realising that it now made little sense to negotiate with the discredited military as a block, and instead embarked upon their electoral campaigns as individual parties.
Despite all the factors discussed above, negotiation did take place, covered up to protect the party which had agreed to it in order to avoid the condemnation of many supporters and members of the party who had been severely affected by repression under the dictatorship. In the Argentine return to democracy, an agreement (pacto) – impunity in exchange for governability – was sought between the outgoing military junta and the political force best placed to achieve an electoral win: the Justicialist Party (Partido Justicialista). Despite the secrecy, during the transition the leader of the Radical Party (Partido Radical) denounced the agreement between unions and the military, although no proof was offered. The defeat of Ítalo Luder, the Justicialist presidential candidate in the October elections that year, prevented the realisation of the agreement and contributed to the sidelining of the accusations aired during the political campaign.9 Today, witnesses to the agreement corroborate its existence, which adds a crucial element to our revision of the transition and its results.
Conclusion
This chapter has explored the surprising turn to democracy in Latin America three decades ago and, in the case of Argentina, has provided a closer examination of the nature of this change. We can conclude that it was not a transition through collapse, as is commonly argued, or through extrication. Instead, we could say that the Argentine case was subject to attempts to control or condition the transition through negotiation (such as in Chile and Brazil), but these plans failed when the party that should have won the elections lost them instead. This fact renders the Argentine transition ultimately unclassifiable and unique: neither regime defeat, nor transaction nor extrication. Moreover, the chapter has reconsidered the Falklands–Malvinas War through an international lens: the war not only affected the future of the Argentine dictatorship, but also formed part of a series of events that would change the conditions for the processes of change underway in other Latin American countries, which until now have been considered primarily in terms of a single, homogenous wave.
Important areas of consideration present themselves for future study. In the case of Argentina, the results of the uncontrolled, open transition generate worrying questions which are yet to be answered:
1. What happened between 1984 and 1989 to create the conditions for Carlos Menem, at the head of the Justicialist Party, to dedicate his first electoral term to institutionalising – with popular support – the same economic policy and model of society pursued by the widely condemned military dictatorship?
2. What were the outcomes of the democratic transition in the short term?
3. Is a political analysis sufficient to determine what type of transition took place?
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Yofre, J.B. (2011) 1982. Los documentos secretos de la guerra de Malvinas/Falklands y el derrumbe del Proceso (Buenos Aires: Sudamericana).
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1 Both the British and Argentine media echoed and participated in this debate, although it appears that the debates garnered greater public interest in Argentina. See, for example: Lorenz, 2011a, 2011b, 2011c, 2012a; Veiga, 2011; Palermo, 2012a, 2012b, 2012c; Tokatlian, 2012; Romero, 2012a, 2012b; Menem, 2012; Storani, 2012; P. O’Donnell, 2012; Jenkins, 2012a, 2012b; Carlin, 2012; Milmo, 2012; Herren, 2012; Goñi, 2012.
2 See also: Pastor, 1989; Karl, 1990; Mainwaring, O’Donnell and Valenzuela, 1992; Haggard and Kaufman, 1995; Linz and Stepan, 1996; Whitehead, 1996; Agüero and Stark, 1998; Garretón, 2003; Mainwaring and Pérez Liñán, 2003; Domínguez and Shifter, 2003.
3 Note that Drake’s idea of ‘protected democracy’ contains an echo of Knight’s ‘padlocked’ democracy.
4 On the evolution of the Falklands–Malvinas War and its political and cultural repercussions at a national and international level, see: Gambini, 1982; Laffin, 1982; The Sunday Times, 1982; Hastings and Jenkins, 1983; Verbitsky, 1985; Rozitchner, 1985; Adams, 1986; Burns Marañón, 1992; Blaustein and Zubieta, 1998; Guber, 2001; Balza, 2003; Novaro and Palermo, 2003; Freedman, 2005; McGuirk, 2007; García Quiroga and Seear, 2009; Yofre, 2011; Lorenz, 2012.
5 Useful sources on these events include Carothers, 1991 and Lowenthal, 1991.
6 For a more detailed discussion of the relationship between historical circumstances and regional factors in the implementation of Latin American democracies, see Mira Delli-Zotti, 2010.
7 Ch. 8: ‘Una transición renuente’. See also: Yofre, 2011, Ch. 7 (pp. 489–536): ‘Bignone, el último presidente de facto. El destape’. Significantly, the title of the documentary produced for television by Tranquilo Producciones on the 25th anniversary of the 1983 elections (Buenos Aires, 2008), was 505 días. La Transición argentina [The Argentine Transition].
8 Ch. 7: ‘Guerreros de dos guerras. Los militares y Malvinas’; 505 días. La transición argentina (2008), DVD 2: ‘La derrota en Malvinas’.
9 505 días. La transición argentina (2008), DVD 3: ‘Comienza la campaña’.