Organizing coercion in authoritarian Chile

Abstract

Coercion is at the center of politics, yet how it is organized has remained poorly understood. This dissertation analyzes how the Chilean military regime (1973-90) organized coercion, focusing especially on two major shifts during the period of most institutional flux, from 1973-78. Available explanations for the shifts fail to account for the magnitude of organizational changes. As an alternative, this dissertation provides a typology of coercion, based on measurements of how well principals monitor agents' operations and performance. Principals can monitor from within their own organization (internal monitoring), or from information sources outside their direct control (external monitoring). Measuring levels of internal and external monitoring, using various criteria for the breadth and depth of information, yields a matrix with types that are mutually exclusive and jointly exhaustive. The four basic types are blind, bureaucratic, transparent, and hide and seek coercion. There are tradeoffs to each type of coercion, which can prompt principals to shift from one to another. In Chile, measurements of internal and external monitoring before and after each of the two major shifts, alongside counterfactual analysis and tests of the competing available explanations, reveal that the regime in each case grappled with organizing coercion as a discrete problem of governance. In 1974 the regime created a powerful secret police to better coordinate coercion through higher internal monitoring. The police resolved many organizational problems but failed to increase internal monitoring substantially.

(cont.) Moreover, it created a series of new problems as it began to run amok. In 1977-78 it was replaced by another institution, which increased internal monitoring, a shift that also coincided with an increase in external monitoring. In each case, the regime's choices were influenced by, but not reducible to, broader political dynamics such as power struggles and efforts to institutionalize the regime. Secondary literature is used to analyze three other cases (Argentina, East Germany, and South Africa), that organized coercion differently than Chile. In all cases, the framework provided accounts for the variation in the organization of coercion.