Part of the Ronald and Janette Gatty series

Darin Sanders Self, PhD Candidate, Department of Government, Cornell University

From taking direct control of politics, to setting conditions on democratization, or to yielding entirely to civilians, there is substantial variation in how militaries behave during regime transitions. I argue that the extent to which a military sets parameters on electoral and political institutions during a regime transition, what I call bounded democratization, is a function of a military’s confidence that parties will protect the military’s corporate interests following a regime transition. A military’s confidence in political parties is influenced by the degree of trust between parties and the military, the institutionalization of the incumbent party, as well as the electoral and political strength of the incumbent party. When these factors are high, the military’s confidence increases and it becomes more willing to yield to civilian parties. I show that these are causal mechanisms using a comparative historical analysis of Indonesia and Paraguay and, with quantitative analysis using an original dataset, that they are generalizable.