“Recent political science literature has produced few works that are as compelling and important as Kirk Bowman’s Military, Democracy and Development. Bowman’s path breaking work makes significant contributions to important debates in the areas of social science methodology, the role of the military in Latin America, and the nature of Costa Rican and Honduran political development. Its magnificent research design and jargon-free presentation should make this book required reading in any advanced course dealing with Latin American politics or research methodology.” –Donald Share, University of Puget Sound, The Americas

“Bowman grapples with theoretically important issues, presents skillfully conducted and original empirical work, and provides a clear explanation for disparate patterns of political development in Cold War Central America. This book will not end the debates about the causal relationships it explores, but it is a solid conribution to them.” –Anthony W. Pereira, Tulane University, Perspectives on Politics

"This book comes at a particularly appropriate moment, one in which the United States is rethinking its unconditional support for democratic regimes and may be moving toward support for almost any regime that will join it in its war against the terrorists. Bowman shows that this may prove to be a Faustian bargain, one with serious long-term consequences for development in the Third World. The quantitative and qualitative evidence in this work is very persuasive and should be troubling for those who support the view that ‘the enemy of my enemy is my friend.' That was precisely the policy that led us so far astray in the Latin American region during the Cold War, and Bowman's impressive and accessible analysis should be read by policymakers and students alike."—Mitchell A. Seligson, University of Pittsburgh

Do Third World countries benefit from having large militaries, or does this impede their development? In the face of conflicting evidence from prior quantitative research and case studies, Kirk Bowman sets out to explore just what effect militarization has had on development in Latin America.

Identifying distinctive features of the military as an institution in Latin America, Kirk Bowman uses statistical analysis to demonstrate that militarization has had a particularly malignant impact in this region of the world on three key measures of development: democracy, economic growth, and equity. For this quantitative comparison he draws on longitudinal data for a sample of 76 developing countries and for 18 Latin American nations.

To illuminate the causal mechanisms at work—how agency and sequence operate in the relationship between militarization and these three areas of development—Bowman offers a detailed comparison of Costa Rica and Honduras between 1948 and 1998. The case studies not only serve to bolster his general argument about the harmful effects of militarization but also provide many new insights into the processes of democratic consolidation and economic transformation in these two Central American countries.