Table Of ContentPreferred Citation: O'Donnell, Guillermo. Bureaucratic Authoritarianism:
Argentina 1966-1973 in Comparative Perspective. Berkeley: University
of California Press, c1988 1988.
http://ark.cdlib.org/ark:/13030/ft4v19n9n2/
Bureaucratic Authoritarianism
Argentina, 1966–1973, in Comparative
Perspective
Guillermo O'Donnell
Translated by James McGuire
in collaboration with Rae Flory
UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA PRESS
Berkeley · Los Angeles · Oxford
© 1988 The Regents of the University of California
Preferred Citation: O'Donnell, Guillermo. Bureaucratic Authoritarianism:
Argentina 1966-1973 in Comparative Perspective. Berkeley: University
of California Press, c1988 1988.
http://ark.cdlib.org/ark:/13030/ft4v19n9n2/
Preface
This book presents the findings of an empirical investigation into the
political and economic processes in Argentina between June 1966 and
March 1973. By interpreting these processes through concepts whose
theoretical status is made explicit at the outset, and by comparing this
case to analogous ones—Brazil after 1964, Uruguay and Chile after
case to analogous ones—Brazil after 1964, Uruguay and Chile after
1973, and Argentina (again) after 1976—the book is intended to advance
the understanding of what I have termed the bureaucratic-authoritarian
(BA) state, and on the basis of this understanding to analyze and critique
the characteristics and consequences of this form of rule. In the course of
the research that went into this book, it proved necessary to move back
and forth across several levels of analysis and data, from the most
structural to those related to the perceptions and ideological orientations
of some key actors of the period. This shifting back and forth was costly
in time and effort but indispensable for tracing a sequence of events that
cannot properly be reduced to any single level of analysis.
Behind this book is a personal story. In 1971, as soon as I had
finished my first book,[*] I began the research for the present one, using
as a starting point interviews I had conducted between 1966 and 1968.
The research was completed in late 1974, and by mid-1975 this book had
assumed its present form. During that interval, however, events in
[*] Modernización y Autoritarismo (Buenos Aires: Editorial Paidós, 1972).
Published in English as Modernization and Bureaucratic-Authoritarianism
(Berkeley: Institute of International Studies, University of California at
Berkeley, 1973; second edition with postscript, 1979).
― xii ―
Argentina, together with the publication of another book[*] and several
articles that I felt responded to more urgent concerns, prevented me from
putting the finishing touches on the present work. Shortly thereafter the
March 1976 coup, and the extraordinarily repressive regime it
inaugurated, made it impossible to publish the book in Argentina. I might
have published it in other languages, but it was not until recently, when it
became possible again to publish it in Argentina, that I found the
motivation to polish the version I had sadly shelved in 1976, update the
footnotes, and prepare the present version for publication. This not-too-
academic attitude was due in large part, I suspect, to another central
motivation—and hope—of this work: that it may serve as an informed
argument about the immense costs (not only the ones inflicted on the
bodies of those more dreadfully victimized) that we Argentines have
exacted from ourselves as a result of the pervasive political violence and
the recurrent attempts to establish authoritarian rule that have
characterized the past decades. Such tragedies are commonplace in our
time. Detailed study of the processes, errors, and passions that
generated the one discussed here may be a useful undertaking, if only to
demonstrate that at least this one was not unavoidable.
The book I would write today about the 1966–73 period in Argentina
would be different from the one I wrote between 1974 and 1976. But it
would not necessarily be better, since my current perceptions of that
period are perhaps too heavily colored by subsequent events, particularly
the extraordinary cruelty of the 1976–83 second Argentine BA. The crises
and violence of the 1966–73 period pale in comparison to what unfolded
after 1976. The reader, however, must try to view the present text in
historical perspective, since that future was not in the minds of those who
made the history of the 1966–73 years. What happened during that
period, especially after 1969, was perceived as a confluence of crises,
hopes, and fears entirely new to Argentine experience. If we ignore this
crucial fact, we will not be able to comprehend why political actors
behaved as they did before 1973, or especially how, and how much, such
behavior contributed to what has occurred since then in Argentina.
This book has benefited from my discussions with many persons, in
particular my colleagues and friends Fernando Henrique Cardoso,
particular my colleagues and friends Fernando Henrique Cardoso,
Marcelo Cavarozzi, David Collier, Shepard Forman, Albert Hirschman,
[*] Guillermo O'Donnell and Delfina Linck, Dependencia y Autonomía
(Buenos Aires: Amorrortu Editores, 1973).
― xiii ―
Sarah Hirschman, Helio Jaguaribe, Abraham Lowenthal, Cándido
Mendes, Oscar Oszlak, Adam Przeworski, Philippe Schmitter, the late
Kalman Silvert, and Francisco Weffort. I want to express my special
gratitude to David Apter, Robert Dahl, and Alfred Stepan.[*] I wish also to
acknowledge the many valuable contributions I received at the various
places through which I wandered as a result of events in my country and
in my personal life: the Centro de Estudios de Estado y Sociedad
(CEDES) in Buenos Aires, the Institute for Advanced Studies at
Princeton, the University of Michigan, the Instituto Universitario de
Pesquisas de Rio de Janeiro (IUPERJ) and, most recently, the Helen
Kellogg Institute at the University of Notre Dame. At various stages I
received financial support from Yale's Office for Advanced Political
Studies, the Danforth Foundation, the Council for Scientific and
Technological Research in Argentina, the Guggenheim Foundation and
the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, and for the preparation
of the present version, from the Helen Kellogg Institute. Support was also
provided by CEDES, with funding supplied by institutional subsidies from
the Ford Foundation and Sweden's SAREC. I extend my deepest
gratitude to the persons and institutions involved. persons and institutions
involved.
James McGuire has been much more than the translator of a difficult
text by a difficult author; with exceptional dedication and talent, he made
me aware of more than a few flaws in the Spanish version. Having
struggled with other English translations of my very Hispanic writing, I
was very fortunate that Grant Barnes, then of the University of California
Press, invited an excellent scholar like McGuire to undertake this one.
To my loves, past and present, my apologies for the more than a few
moments that this book stole from us, and my thanks for their support.
One final word. Interviews with many of the most important actors of
the period were an indispensable source for this book, since they
enabled me to understand the significance of certain episodes and to
[*] This community of colleagues and friends includes William Smith, who
arrived in Argentina in 1974 to do research toward his doctoral
dissertation at Stanford University. By that time I had basically completed
dissertation at Stanford University. By that time I had basically completed
my research and was struggling with the first draft of this book. Since
Smith's project focused on the same period as my own, and since our
approaches were quite similar, we engaged in frequent and fruitful
discussions. When Smith returned to the United States, we agreed to
safeguard the identity of each text by refraining from reading the other's
until both had been completed. The product of Smith's research is "Crisis
of the State and Military-Authoritarian Rule in Argentina, 1966–1973"
(Ph.D. diss., Stanford University, 1980). This work is an excellent
contribution to the study of Argentina and to the theory of authoritarian
forms of rule. In spite of the coincidences, Smith and I gave different
emphases to our texts, making them much more complementary than
overlapping.
― xiv ―
check information whose reliability I could not otherwise assess. To
preserve the anonymity of those interviewed, I was compelled at several
points to suppress information that would have lent further credibility to
some of my arguments. Such decisions were motivated not only by basic
research ethics, but also by the fact that many of those I interviewed
remained in Argentina during the post-1973 period, when it was
dangerous indeed to be recognized as the source of certain opinions or
the bearer of the memory of certain events—dangerous to the extent that
assassinations have claimed the lives of the vast majority of the persons
who have died since I interviewed them. They represent the innumerable
victims to whose memory I dedicate this book.
― 1 ―
One
Theoretical and Historical Background to the
Study of the Bureaucratic-Authoritarian State
Argentina between 1966 and 1973 serves in this book as a case study of
the implantation, social impact, and collapse of a type of state I have
termed bureaucratic-authoritarian (BA). The first section of this chapter
introduces some of the basic concepts to be used and elaborated upon
as we examine the Argentine BA and compare it with similar cases. The
remainder of the chapter outlines the decisive antecedents to the BAs
implanted in Argentina and other Latin American countries during the
1960s and 1970s, beginning with the emergence of the popular sector as
an important actor during the period that followed the collapse of
oligarchic domination. Both the ambiguous relationship of this process to
the issues of citizenship and political democracy (section 2) and the
largely concomitant process of the transnationalization of Latin American
economies and societies (section 3) are analyzed.
The processes of popular activation and social and economic
transnationalization gave rise to crises that formed the more immediate
antecedent to the BAs. The fourth section contains a general discussion
of crises. The fifth section distinguishes among various types of crisis in
order to lay the groundwork for analyzing the ones that, at varying levels
of intensity, preceded the implantation of the BAs. The sixth section
summarizes attributes that define the BA and distinguish it from other
forms of authoritarian rule. The seventh consists of a brief excursus
To facilitate the reading, notes have been separated into two
categories. Those at the bottom of the page elaborate the arguments and
information presented in the text, while those at the end of the chapter
refer exclusively to sources.
― 2 ―
defining the social and political actors whose conflicts and alliances
constitute a central theme in this study.
[1]
1. On the Capitalist State and Related Themes
The BA is a type of capitalist state, and should therefore be understood in
the light of the distinctive attributes of capitalist states in general. The
most important characteristics of such states, and of other concepts to be
used throughout this book, are delineated in this section.
A. State and State Apparatus
The basic (though not the only) network of social relations in a capitalist
society, and the one that characterizes it as capitalist, is the one formed
by its relations of production. These relations are established in one of
society's basic cells: the workplace and work process. Ordinary
consciousness views these relations as exclusively economic, but closer
inspection reveals that they are constituted by other aspects as well. One
such aspect is the coercive guarantee they contain for their effectiveness
and reproduction. The state, according to the view set forth here, is a
part, or more precisely an aspect, of these relations: the one that supplies
its coercive guarantee. The state, as the guarantor of the capitalist
relations of production, is (no less than their economic aspects) a
necessary and primordial part of these relations. In addition to
guaranteeing their effectiveness and reproduction, the state also
organizes the capitalist relations of production by articulating and
buffering the relationships among classes and by providing elements
necessary to their "normal," unchallenged reproduction.
It is crucial to underscore that the state is the guarantor not of the
immediate interests of the bourgeoisie, but of the ensemble of social
relations that establish the bourgeoisie as the dominant class. It is a
capitalist state, not a state of the bourgeoisie. Insofar as it guarantees
and organizes capitalist social relations, the capitalist state guarantees
and organizes the social classes inherent in them—including the
dominated classes, although what the state guarantees in respect to
