Balance of Power, Democracy, and Foreign Policy in South America's Southern Cone.

The overall topic of this paper is the relationship between regime type (e.g., democratic or authoritarian) and foreign policy orientation (i.e., relative proneness towards conflict and cooperation) for South America's Southern Cone. Its specific purpose is to offer an explanation of the relationship between regime type and foreign policy orientation in the 1970s. I will argue that, unlike what we would expect from a balance of power perspective, political regime is indeed crucial to understanding foreign policy orientation in the case under scrutiny. But I will suggest that changes in foreign policy orientation within the region in the last decade or so might owe more to the vanishing of authoritarian regimes than to the return of democratically elected leaders. However, I will not make universal claims about authoritarian regimes. I suggest, rather, that the pervasive influence that a geopolitically driven discourse of international politics had over the military establishments within the region is crucial to understand the relative conflict proneness of the authoritarian regimes that prevailed during the 1970's. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]