Marianne Sammy

HECTOR E. SCHAMIS- RECONCEPTUALIZING LATIN AMERICAN AUTHORATARIANISM IN THE 1970’S: FROM BUREAUCRATIC-
AUTHORATARIANISM TO NEOCONSERVATISM

Argentina 1976- military coup occurred: banned pol. activity the military intervened in labour
unions, market economies became # 1 objective of policymakers

Chile 1973- military coup also occurred after the breakdown of a solid democracy. General
Pinochet was the new leader; Political economy based on neo-laissez-faire principles.

Uruguay 1973- military took power: ban on pol. parties and labour unions, loss of welfare
services.

Military Regimes can be explained by Guillermo O’Donnell’s Bureaucratic- Authoratarian model,

though Schamis believes otherwise.

Schamis believes that instead of BA model, the policies regimes can be attributed to the
neoconservative projects of “some advanced industrial country”

The essay explores: 1) the military regimes inaugurated in Brazil in 1964, Argentina 1966

2) it analyzes the military regimes of the 1970’s in Argentina , Chile and Uraguay, showing the
serious limitations of interpretations based on the bureaucratic-authoratarian model.

3) The essay examines the controversies surrounding the crisis of the welfare state and of the
Keynesian policymaking as it has evolved in advanced industrial countries.

What is Bureaucratic-Authoratarianism?

It is a type of state/regime that ‘evolved in the more economically and politically advanced
countries of Latin America beginning in the 1960’s.’

Populism  Developmentalism Bureaucratic-Authoritarianism

Populism is characterized by enlargement of internal makets and inflation crisis, thus

Developmentalism came to be inorder to fix the economic problems by trying to push import-
substitution industrialization to a higher level- it failed and made the problem worst.
Bureaucratic-Authoritarianism came to be. They would promote the “deepening” of the
productive structure by means of new capital good industries.

The main point of this article is that Bureaucratic –Authoritarianism cannot explain military
regimes of the southern cone in 1970’s and O’donnel missed that point.
ECLA’s impact on Latin America is comparable to the impact that Keynesian macroeconomics
had on the advanced industrial countries.

The essay concludes that instead of being bureaucratic authoritarian, the governments of those
countries “were authoritarian versions of the neo-conservative politics that emerged in some
advanced industrial countries”