Studies of civil–military relations tend to focus either on the subtle problems of military influence that characterize developed democracies or on the more dramatic coups d’etat that tend to concern less mature and nondemocracies. Only a few studies have explored issues of military obedience to political dictates in ways that could theoretically cross the developed/developing state divide. Maiah Jaskoski is thus doing us a great favor in testing explanations for work-shirk decisions short of coups on states transitioning to democratic rule. There is a wealth of information here, and the extensive interviews make it a worthwhile read for anyone with an interest in Latin America or military organizations.
Jaskoski addresses the question concerning the factors that explain a military’s propensity to take on certain types of missions. She notes that existing explanations include desires for autonomy, resources, public legitimacy, and professionalism, but argues that none of them accounts for the behavior of the Ecuadorian and Peruvian armies under democratic consolidation. She argues that their behavior can be explained better by two organizational theory concepts: first, that organizations develop beliefs about mission appropriateness that become sticky, and second, that organizations value predictability in core functions and will, when confronted with contradictory orders, act to maximize predictability for themselves.
The author argues that each military developed ideas about which missions are appropriate (professional) during the 1980s and 1990s. Then, in the 2000s, when each was confronted with some contradiction in its orders, they responded not by taking on the more professional, legitimate, or lucrative of the tasks available, but rather by pursuing tasks that—as Jaskoski puts it—maximized predictability for patrols on the ground. By this, she means that they chose behaviors that reduced risk both of violent encounters and of violating some command from higher up, leading to punishment. However, she does not include a comprehensive discussion of the relationship between the concepts of predictability and risk, making it hard to evaluate her operationalization of predictability. Most of her interview subjects expressed a fear of damage to their individual careers if they violated human rights (in Peru) or escalated the conflict with the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) (in Ecuador). Are these selfish motivations simply manifestations of an organizational impulse? Or are they more like a rational-actor model?
While Jaskoski cites some of the civil–military literature closely related to her argument, she does not incorporate it in enough detail to show how her argument fits in or is significantly different. She does not cite Elizabeth Kier’s (1997) Imagining War, which first articulated the idea that military behavior results from the organization’s culturally driven interpretation of political directions. She cites Deborah Avant (Political Institutions and Military Change, 1994), but does not use the concept of a divided principal to shed light on the behavior of organizations faced with contradictions. She also cites Peter Feaver’s (Armed Servants, 2003) rational-actor agency argument, but does not explore it either as an alternative explanation or as a possible framework for her own explanation. In the empirical discussions, she does include some detail about the punishment relationships in Peru and Ecuador, but does not explain how her theory’s predictions would differ from Feaver’s.
The author rejects the autonomy hypothesis on the grounds that she wants a single theory to explain mission performance in both Ecuador and Peru (p. 7). It seems obvious from Jaskoski’s own analysis, however, that there are a number of explanatory factors for organizational behavior. The problem with her framing, therefore, is that it assumes that agents must have a fixed preference ranking that always values one thing significantly more than everything else, rather than incorporating all of the agent’s values into a cost–benefit calculation or determining the conditions under which each becomes salient.
In the case of Peru, Jaskoski acknowledges that the autonomy hypothesis is compelling. The military may have refused to carry out their orders not because they believed they were contradictory but because they resented the loss of autonomy and subjection to the civilian court system for human rights abuses.
Feaver’s model would explain this case as follows: The principal issued two sets of requirements, the shirking of one of which (counterinsurgency) was never punished, while the shirking of the other (respect for human rights) was punished. This would lead us to expect the military to shirk counterinsurgency in favor of respect for human rights, given the military’s belief that the two were incompatible. This is precisely the contradiction that Jaskoski is talking about; I merely note that an elegant framework for explaining such behavior already exists.
In the case of Ecuador, Jaskoski argues that the military have chosen to do policing because they fear that if they do aggressive border defense, they will get involved in a war with the FARC and thus have to reallocate the resources they need to do their policing role. However, it is not obvious why the military would choose to resolve the contradiction this way when they were happy to resolve it the other way (border defense over policing) during the conflict with Peru. The Ecuadorian military seems primarily concerned about competition with the national police for the policing role. Thus, it is possible that they are prioritizing this way because no one is competing with them for the border defense role, while the policing role is threatened. It appears that this was not the case during the conflict with Peru. Furthermore, although Jaskoski characterizes both conflicts as border defense, the military clearly thinks that the conflict with Peru was a true sovereignty defense mission but that the FARC is not.
Feaver’s model predicts that militaries will follow their own preferences when there is little monitoring or punishment, as in this case. The author is arguing that they are preferring predictability over the more professional, legitimate, and lucrative mission. However, I am not persuaded that they are not pursuing the more lucrative mission, in net terms. Jaskoski does not present much specific evidence that pursuing certain missions would in fact bring in more resources than others, only assurances that they probably would. Furthermore, she appears to be arguing that anything that would bring in more resources must be the course of action chosen by a resource-seeking actor. This is overly simplistic; very few actors seek resources regardless of the attendant costs. Resource seeking is about net resources, and if higher resources are attended by higher risks/costs, it is rational resource-seeking behavior to go with the less-lucrative/lower-cost transaction. This is consistent with Jaskoski’s emphasis on organizational desires for predictability, but that is why resource seeking should not be treated as a pure alternative to her argument. It needs to be incorporated.
The idea that militaries form beliefs about the acceptability of missions and then interpret their context accordingly is persuasive. It is compatible with Kier’s argument, Feaver’s work–shirk model and Avant’s concept of divided principals. I was not completely convinced, however, by the argument about predictability. Bringing in organizational theory concepts is a brilliant stroke, but the mechanisms remained underdeveloped, and this made it difficult to assess whether the evidence really indicated a concern with predictability as opposed to something else. Nevertheless, Military Politics and Democracy in the Andes is an important contribution to the discussion of civil–military relations and gives students of military organizations good material for further inquiry.
