Armed forces, political control, and domestic operations: military identity and colonial anxiety in Brazil

• Grant number: 23/08724-0
• Support Opportunities: Scholarships in Brazil - Post-Doctoral
• Start date: October 01, 2024
• End date: September 30, 2026
• Field of knowledge: Humanities - Political Science - International Politics
• Principal Investigator: Samuel Alves Soares
• Grantee: David Paulo Succi Junior
• Host Institution: Instituto de Políticas Públicas e Relações Internacionais (IPPRI). Universidade Estadual Paulista (UNESP). Campus de São Paulo. São Paulo , SP, Brazil

Abstract

In this project we propose to analyze the intersection between the tasks assigned to the armed forces and political control over military institutions in Brazil, highlighting military identity and coloniality as explanatory factors. It responds to the growing concerns about the involvement of the armed forces in domestic tasks, as well as the political involvement of the military. Despite being strongly interrelated, these phenomena are often treated by distinct research agendas. Both works on the nexus between internal and international security, and studies on civil-military relations, frame the military deployment in domestic security and in politics as a disruption of the normal organization of state's instruments of violence. However, these phenomena are historically recurrent in many countries. We argue that the ambiguity between normality and exception is constitutive of Brazilian military identity and reflects the relations of coloniality, which permeate and structure military identity and the relationship between the armed forces and the State and society. The research adopts genealogical and content analysis procedures, operationalized through qualitative analysis software.