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32 results

Page 1 of 2

  • “Persecution and Farce”: The Origins and Transformation of Brazil's Political Trials, 1964-1979

  • Anthony W. Pereira
  • Journal:
    Latin American Research Review / Volume 33 / Issue 1 / 1998
    Published online by Cambridge University Press:
    05 October 2022, pp. 43-66
    • Article
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      • The containment of communism
        was for the United States a
        problem of external defense;
        for the underdeveloped countries
        like Brazil, it was a problem
        of internal development.
      Roberto Campos, A lanterna na popa

    The authoritarian regimes that in recent decades ruled Argentina from 1976 to 1983, Brazil from 1964 to 1985, Chile from 1973 to 1990, and Uruguay from 1973 to 1984 all used violence to crush dissent and the law to regulate and legitimate that violence. Repression under the Brazilian regime was particularly legalistic in the sense that the number of killings was relatively low but the rate of judicial prosecution high. Available evidence suggests that more individuals were brought into military courts for political crimes in Brazil than in any of the other authoritarian regimes in the region.

  • Samuel P. Huntington, Brazilian ‘Decompression’ and Democracy

  • Anthony W. Pereira
  • Journal:
    Journal of Latin American Studies / Volume 53 / Issue 2 / May 2021
    Published online by Cambridge University Press:
    09 June 2021, pp. 349-371
    Print publication:
    May 2021
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  • The Harvard political science professor Samuel P. Huntington (1927–2008) made visits to Brazil in 1972 and 1974 to advise the government about ‘decompression’ or regime liberalisation. The literature on Brazil's dictatorship references these visits as having had a major causal impact. This article argues that his influence on Brazilian regime change is greatly exaggerated. It also argues that Huntington, who became a leading theorist of democratisation, had an interest in and commitment to democracy that was more recent and circumstantial than is often thought. This helps to explain the current period of democratic ‘deconsolidation’ associated with the rise of authoritarian national populism in Brazil.

Irregular Armed Forces and their Role in Politics and State Formation
  • Edited by Diane E. Davis, Anthony W. Pereira
  • Published online:
    23 November 2009
    Print publication:
    13 January 2003
  • Existing models of state formation are derived primarily from early Western European experience, and are misleading when applied to nation-states struggling to consolidate their dominion in the present period. In this volume, scholars suggest that the Western European model of armies waging war on behalf of sovereign states does not hold universally. The importance of 'irregular' armed forces - militias, guerrillas, paramilitaries, mercenaries, bandits, vigilantes, police, and so on - has been seriously neglected in the literature on this subject. The case studies in this book suggest, among other things, that the creation of the nation-state as a secure political entity rests as much on 'irregular' as regular armed forces. For most of the 'developing' world, the state's legitimacy has been difficult to achieve, constantly eroding or challenged by irregular armed forces within a country's borders. No account of modern state formation can be considered complete without attending to irregular forces.

  • 1 - Of Judges and Generals: Security Courts under Authoritarian Regimes in Argentina, Brazil, and Chile

  • Edited by Tom Ginsburg, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, Tamir Moustafa, University of Wisconsin, Madison
  • Book:
    Rule by Law
    Published online:
    05 June 2012
    Print publication:
    08 May 2008, pp 23-57

  • Summary

    INTRODUCTION

    As Ginsburg and Moustafa point out in the Introduction to this volume, few academic studies have taken the law and legal institutions under authoritarian regimes seriously. Most studies of authoritarianism assume that regimes that come to power by force cannot rely on the law to maintain control of society or to legitimate themselves; their unconstitutional origins are seen as making such an effort contradictory and impossible. When analysts do consider the law, they often assume that authoritarian rulers wield it in a direct, unmediated way, relying on their agents to impose their will through consistently compliant courts. Yet even a cursory glance at actual authoritarian regimes, past and present, should lead us to question these assumptions. In fact, authoritarian regimes use the law and courts to bolster their rule all the time, in ways that a simplistic distinction between0 de facto and constitutional (or de jure) regimes obscures. Furthermore, this use of the law can be complicated and ambiguous, furnishing regime opponents and activist judges with venues in which to challenge the prerogatives of the regime and to liberalize authoritarian rule.

    It might be thought that a security court would be the last place where such contestation might take place. However, such an assumption would also be incorrect. This chapter examines the use of security courts to prosecute political dissidents in three South American military dictatorships – those of Brazil (1964–1985), Chile (1973–1990), and Argentina (1976–1983).

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