Imposition of Authoritarian and Military Regimes
It is argued that the imposition of authoritarian and military regimes and their militarization of society have been both the prerequisite and the accompaniment of the restructuring of the economy for its participation in the international division of labor during the present capitalist crisis of capital accumulation. We will now examine the extent to which this authoritarian political organization is likely to be required and/or maintainable during the continued promotion of this new international division of labor and/or new international economic order. We will also try to determine whether these recent economic trends are likely to continue or be replaced by others that would require, be compatible with, or permit different states forms and political regimes. We may pose the following questions:
1. If the recent economic trends are to continue, must they continue to be enforced by the same political forms?
2. If the political forms can be changed in a more democratic or even socialist direction, will the recent economic trends be reversed and the present economic model be replaced by another?
3. In what alternative direction, through what action, and with what likelihood could the Third World countries’ participation in the international division of labor be changed; and with what possible consequences for their political regimes and state forms?
During 1977 and early 1978 some states of emergency were lifted and elections were held; more often emergency measures were maintained and elections announced or promised for the near or distant future (in various countries of Latin America and the Philippines); or hardline military dictatorships were replaced by "soft-line" ones through coups; or palace-coup attempts to impose even harder-line regimes were repulsed by existing coalitions. Various observers have hailed President Carter’s "human rights" campaign as the cause of these developments. More realistically, it was mass mobilization and/or pressure and growing conflicts among economic interest groups and military or other political representatives that promoted political changes in some of these countries.
Optimists regard these liberalizing swallows as signs that the winter of repression is being replaced by a democratic spring. Unfortunately, most of these changes are more apparent than real. In all four major countries of South Asia the 1977-78 political-economic coalitions and their civilian representatives (through elections in India and Sri Lanka) or military executors (in Pakistan and Bangladesh) represented a big step to the right in terms of the domestic political forces they represent and interpret (though some of these could for a time afford to reduce the degree of political repression).
