No abstract

Over the past decades, despite democratization processes, Latin American politics have frequently exemplified democratic governments' tendency to resort to the armed forces to handle urgent threats, most notably internal security crises. Consequently, the military is often granted expanded prerogative powers, including in the legal realm. Therefore, political scientists Brett J. Kyle and Andrew G. Reiter's investigation of military legal subordination to civilian control in democracies and of the implications of militaries' legal power for the rule of law, human rights, and achieving democratic objectives, appears particularly relevant for Latin American studies. Focusing on military courts' political role in democracies, Military Courts, Civil-Military Relations, and The Legal Battle for Democracy: The Politics of Military Justice aims to examine variations in military legal subordination across countries and history, in order to distinguish a model of change identifying the actors and context-specific influences which determine evolutions toward reform or backsliding.