Criteria for Ministers Recruitment in Military Dictatorships: An Analysis of the Conformation of the Inaugural Cabinets in the Coups d'état of 1964 and 1966 in Brazil and Argentina

Abstract

Although the implantation of bureaucratic authoritarianism had common characteristics in its different manifestations in the southern cone, each of the regimes that began in the sixties presented specific characteristics. This work aims to distinguish the attributes of the founding project of the Brazilian and Argentine dictatorships that began in 1964 and 1996 from the analysis of their respective inaugural cabinets. They allow distinguishing predominant criteria of partisan, military and technocratic recruitment in the Brazilian case and corporative in the Argentine experience. The explanation for this variation rests on the specificities of the crisis prior to the military irruption, the characteristics of the respective coup coalitions and the types of early institutionalization that both regimes projected. The findings regarding recruitment mechanisms are relevant as they have been replicated in successive governments after the authoritarian experiences.