Since the coup of September 1973, no one can deny that the Chilean political system has been influenced by the armed forces. A democracy that had earlier distinguished itself as one of the most stable and durable in Latin America has had to fight to recover its reputation, and continues to do so. The outgoing Pinochet dictatorship made sure to leave its imprint on the Chilean constitution and democratic institutions in an attempt to protect military interests into the future. To what extent have these efforts obstructed the civilian quest for supremacy over the armed forces? To what extent are civilians gradually gaining the upper hand?

These questions guide much of the research in Gregory Weeks's book. Weeks argues that military influence in Chile remains decisive and that if civilians are ever to fully subordinate the armed forces to their will, they must make key decisions regarding vital issues within the official centers of power. These centers include, first and foremost, the Defense Ministry, as well as the National Security Council (NSC), the Congress, and the judiciary. If, on the other hand, the military eludes these centers in the posttransitional period by shifting decision-making encounters into semiformal venues, then it will be much more difficult for civilians to succeed.

Many scholars would agree with Weeks that formal institutions like the Defense Ministry matter. When heretofore politicized militaries agree to work within proper channels, they exhibit a self-restraint that greatly benefits democratic civilian control. Unfortunately for Chile, the armed forces have repeatedly skirted the Defense Ministry in favor of unofficial venues. The author is at his best when detailing this circumvention and the ministerial frailties. He is also right on the mark when noting how Congress failed to assume a forceful role in civil–military affairs due to lack of expertise and resources.

Weeks structures his book primarily around a series of military-governmental flashpoints during the 1990–98 period: a nationwide military alert, a military deployment in front of army headquarters, the forced resignation of Carabineros head Rodolfo Stange, the arrest of Manuel Contreras, and the congressional accusation against Pinochet. For each, he wants to know what salience the issues had for the military, to whose benefit these conflicts were resolved, and where interactions occurred. If we follow the author's argument, then military victories over key issues outside the confines of official channels would pose the greatest obstacles to civilian control. Conversely, civilian successes over key issues within official channels would enhance civilian control. Presumably, semiformal interactions would be less objectionable if they involved disputes over matters less vital to military core interests.

It is here that the author's characterization of events and points of emphasis and deemphasis generates more ambiguity than clarity about these assertions. Huge attention is devoted to crises provoked over relatively minor issues. The 1990 military alert was set off by an investigation into a fraudulent check-writing scheme that implicated Pinochet's son. The 1993 deployment seemed to be triggered by a series of annoyances, including the rather mundane issue of bureaucratic sluggishness within the Defense Ministry. While small incidents may add up, none of these alone attacked the vital interests of the institution. Yet these crises were undoubtedly serious, suggesting that the military were looking for virtually any pretext to ignite a confrontation that might weaken their civilian overseers.

The second and more serious difficulty is that the author emphasizes crises overshadowed by other events that place civil–military relations in a much more positive light—events which he chose to discount or ignore. For example, he details how the former head of the Directorate of National Intelligence, Manuel Contreras, played cat and mouse with the authorities before finally submitting to arrest over his conviction in the Orlando Letelier assassination. Weeks maintains that the military had won the public relations war by portraying that arrest as the end of judicial recriminations and the beginning of an era of forgiveness. In fact, the Contreras arrest proved to be the preface to a volume of judicial inquests and indictments of military officers that continues to this day.

Eleven pages are devoted to a 1998 congressional accusation aimed at blocking Pinochet's appointment as Senator for Life. The accusation failed, under the weight of veiled threats from the army, thus proving to the author how politically powerful the military was. But this setback was eclipsed just two years later by judicial actions that stripped Pinochet of his parliamentary immunity from prosecution for human rights offenses. To avoid his possible imprisonment, his lawyers were forced to argue that he was too mentally feeble to stand trial, thus barring him from public office as well. Civilians had achieved their goal of removing Pinochet from the Senate, yet the author devotes only one sentence to this historic event.

It is also unclear whether military circumvention of the National Security Council was a good or bad thing. Through constitutional amendment, civilians were able to weaken the military's grip on the NSC. Thus, the military routinely skirted the Council in favor of semiformal political contact and confrontations. Rather than focusing on the civilian victory—one that denied the armed forces a winning majority on the NSC—the author oddly concludes that the Council constituted a permanent challenge to civilian supremacy merely because the military reserved the right to convoke a meeting—a right, it turns out, it seldom used. But was military avoidance of the NSC a setback for civilian control? Not necessarily. Plausibly, civilians were better off precisely because the military could no longer push its weight around inside the Council.

In general, it is unclear whether or not the military's use of semiformal contact points in the posttransition helped to undermine or enhance civilian supremacy. At times, unofficial encounters seemed to have eased tensions and built civil–military trust. By the author's own depictions, the two sides enhanced mutual understandings by coming together to write the National Defense Book in 1997 and by helping to clear the air on the fate of the “disappeared” with the Mesa del Diálogo that commenced in 1999. Perhaps neither of these semiformal encounters directly contributed to greater civilian control, but neither did they thwart such efforts.

These problems notwithstanding, The Military and Politics in Post-Authoritarian Chile should be read by everyone concerned with the relation between democracy and the armed forces. It is a timely volume that advances our knowledge of the subject and stimulates further debate. It is a well-researched, well-written volume that should prove both interesting and useful to scholars and students alike.