One of the central aspect of assessing democracy in South America, and maybe in other parts of the world, is to scrutinize the role of the military. For example, in the case of Chile, after the 1989-90 transition, the military sought for a tutelary role according to Peter H. Smith, and even in 2009 he classifies Chile as being in the “conditional military subordination”, which he describes as :
“abstention by the armed forces from overt intervention in political questions, while reserving the “right” to intervene for protection of national interests and security”
He also places Bolivia, Brazil and Paraguay in this category. This shows us that the military played and still play a non negligible role in those countries even after their transition to “democracy” as defined by different datasets. This role and the prerogatives granted to the military can influence the quality of the democracy in those states and it is therefore important to see if the measures catch this aspect.
What I want to discuss is then which measures do take the role of the military into account, which indicators do they use, how those indicators actually measure properly the constraints caused by the military, etc.
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