Democratic Backsliding and Militarization in Central America: Overcoming the Moral Hazard Problem

Abstract

This paper examines how military regime involvement and police militarization shape democratic trajectories in Central America from 1980 to 2022. Analyzing El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, and Nicaragua, it argues that ruling elites increasingly substitute militarized policing for direct military governance to expand coercive capacity while limiting military political power. Panel time-series models show that military involvement in governance consistently predicts democratic decline and higher levels of state and non-state violence. Police militarization, by contrast, exhibits no uniform regional effect: its relationship with democratic quality varies across countries and institutional contexts, and is statistically insignificant in El Salvador despite rapid autocratization under President Bukele. Qualitative evidence shows that these divergent patterns reflect differences in elite strategies and institutional constraints rather than coercive capacity alone. The findings underscore that military political power—not militarization per se—poses the most consistent threat to democratic governance.