This panel considers the connected histories of military rule in the global 1970s and 1980s. In this period, states of different types and political orientations came under the sway of their militaries. This was true especially, though not exclusively, in former colonies in the non-aligned “Third World.” Military regimes took a range of forms, including personalized dictatorships, “corrective” or reformist regimes, and civilian governments that were, in fact, dominated by their armed forces. Many featured sustained periods of martial law, but others left civilian legal systems intact. Some justified their takeovers by promising to safeguard against outside threats, while others claimed the right to rule by invoking internal divisions and political threats from within. A few were invited to take control by civilian governments, and others emerged following the outright collapse of civil regimes – often overlapping with paramilitaries and other informal military units. These regimes shared neither an ideology nor a political cause, and they included regimes of both the right and the left. Despite their diversity, military regimes shared certain features; they made use of the rhetoric of discipline and order, they presented themselves as redeemers and patriots, and they brought martial conceptions of administration from the parade ground to the statehouse.

The central intervention of this panel is to examine the history of military regimes in the 1970s and 1980s in comparative perspective. While these regimes have typically been studied at the national or, in a few cases, the regional level, the phenomenon of military rule was in fact a global one. Examining the history of military rule and militarization in Argentina, Brazil, Lebanon, and Nigeria, the panelists seek to understand the apparent convergence of their practices and tactics. Did these regimes emerge in response to a shared set of political conditions, or did the paths that they followed to military rule start from different places? Did military regimes learn from one another, and did the officers who initiated them work in concert with one another? In what ways did knowledge about military administration move, and by what mechanisms did military regimes share information? Methodologically, what are the challenges of understanding military regimes in this period? The three papers that make up this panel attempt to address these questions in a global frame.