Iberian Military Politics - by José Javier Olivas Osuna (Paperback)

About the Book

"The military played a critical role in the twentieth century history of the Iberian Peninsula. They triggered and conditioned political developments and became both an important source of support and concern for Portuguese and Spanish governments. This compelling study is a comparative historical analysis of the instruments that governments used to control the military throughout two stages of Iberian recent history: first, Salazar's and Franco's dictatorships and, second, the transitions and early democratic periods (until 1986). In Portugal, the military, which had handed power over to a civilian dictator, Salazar, became a threat for the regime and ended up causing the downfall of the authoritarian Estado Novo with the Carnations revolution in 1974. In Spain the military, which helped Franco to defeat the Republic in 1939 remained loyal to the dictator's principles and posed a threat to democracy, culminating in the 23F coup attempt in 1981. This book explores the discrepancy between the experiences of two countries that share such strong political, social and geographical similarities"--

Book Synopsis

By applying the nodality, authority, treasure and organisation public policy framework and neo-institutional theory to the dictatorship of Salazar and Franco respectively, this study explores the instruments that governments used to control the military and explains the divergent paths of civil-military relations in 20th Century Portugal and Spain.

Review Quotes

"The analysis of forms of control of the military in these two regimes is novel and makes a useful contribution to the existing literature. This book will be of interest to researchers concerned with the nature of civil-military relations in non-democratic and democratising regimes." (Thomas O'Brien, Journal of Contemporary European Studies, February, 2016)

About the Author

José Javier Olivas is a Fellow and Associate to LSE IDEAS and the Civil Society and Human Security Research Unit, at the London School of Economics and Political Science. He is also Co-founder and Editor of Euro Crisis in the Press, as well as Director of the online voting and debate platform Netivist.