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- [00:01]
A
Welcome to the People Power Politics podcast, brought to you by ceda, the Centre for Elections, Democracy, Accountability and Representation at the University of Birmingham. Hi, my name is Deborah. I'm an adjunct professor of International Studies at Universidad Federal de Granj Doratos in Brazil. During the academic year of 2024 and 2025, I was a visiting researcher at Cedar, the Center for Election, Democracy, Accountability and Representation. I'm going to be your guest host for this episode. It's my great pleasure to welcome our guests, Professor Otavo Murineto and Igor Ocasio. Welcome to the podcast. Dr. Zotado Unico.
- [00:45]
B
Thank you.
- [00:46]
C
Thank you very much. Thank you for having us. Great to be here.
- [00:48]
A
Thank you. Thank you. Dr. Otavio Morineto is Professor of Political Science at the Brazilian School of Public and Business Administration in Rio de Janeiro. He specializes in comparative political institutions, civil military relations, and Brazilian politics and foreign policy. Dr. Igor Acacio is an assistant professor in the Division of Politics, Administration and Justice at California State University. He specializes in democracy, civil military relations and defense and security issues in Latin America. Our guests have recently published a fascinating book called Presidentialism and Civil Military Relations Brazil in Comparative Perspective. Based on these contributions, we've discussed the militarization of politics in Brazil and its impacts on democratic Especially during Bolsonaro's presidency, militarization of the cabinet has been a pathway of autocratization in the country. So to start our conversations, here goes the first question. There is a quote by Hubert Dow that states, democracy cannot exist if the military is sufficiently depoliticized to permit civilian rule. What does your recently published work reveal about the relationship between civil military relations and the development and equality of democracies?
- [02:04]
B
Well, our book shows that this relationship is mediated or affected by systems of government, the preferences of leaders and party systems. More specifically, we try to show that presidentialism, extremist leaders and lowly institutionalized party systems favor the militarization of the cabinet in democracies. And this is a problem because when military officers are appointed to cabinet portfolios, the power of the military increases, and that increase makes one of the key tasks of democracy more difficult. Which task is this? Civilian control over the military. Igor.
- [02:56]
A
Thank you, Dr. Rosavio.
- [02:58]
C
Igor so one of the things to keep in mind in this debate, and we contribute to it, is we are contributing to a literature, to a group of scholars who have been identifying this backsliding of democracy through militarization. Right. And why is that, you know, necessarily something that one should do is that when autocratization or backsliding processes take place they necessarily involve the coercive apparatus of the state, specifically the military. You can say that no leader would proceed with aggrandizing executive power and pursuing the route of autocratization without some collaboration of the military, some adherence of the military to this process. And now, another way to say this, and it's an old quote too, right? It's that civilian control over the military is a necessary condition for democracy.
- [04:00]
A
Perfect. Thank you, doctors Otago and Iger. And why is Brazil's case important for understanding the causes and the effects of militarizing politics? How does it compare to other current cases of the same phenomenon in terms of similarities and differences?
- [04:18]
B
Well, Brazil has always had a highly militarized cabinet, even under democratic rule. Brazil has had two democratic regimes throughout its history. The first was between 1946 and 1964, and the current one initiated in 1985. In both cases, the military were always present in the cabinet, but with varying degrees. That's a very important aspect, and that's what makes Brazil such an interesting case study. But recently, and I mean, between 1999, when the ministry of Defense was created and the old military ministries were dissolved in 2016, this was the period during which Brazil's cabinet was the least militarized throughout its republican history. And all of a sudden, beginning in 2016, the cabinet began to be re militarized. And under the Bolsonaro presidency, that is, between 2019 and early 2023, cabinet militarization reached its peak under democracy, almost 40% in 2020. This is a higher percentage than under our last military government. So there's a lot of variation in Brazil over time. And we have this extreme case of cabinet militarization under Bolsonaro. In extreme cases are interesting because they more clearly reveal the dynamics underlying the appointment of generals and admirals to cabinet portfolios.
- [06:24]
C
A couple of things to add to this so we understand how rare and how unique the situation is. From the data we have, solid democracies will have no military officers in the cabinet. That's the pattern. Right. Including all democracies from the 60s to 2021, it's about 1.5% of the cabinet with the military presence. Right. So it's something that you don't expect in democracy. So that's how extreme these cases are. It's also the case here that we're contributing to a literature that has been identifying the phenomena in other places. Right. So starting with the 2000 and tens, you know, there's a new wave, of course, you know, democratic backsliding, autocratization. But It's. It's a new wave of, like, military influence in politics. If back in the day, they were, you know, the dictators of these countries, or they used to help run these countries in authoritarian regimes, they're now being brought into the government. Right. So presidents and prime ministers, heads of government, they bring them in. Right. So Brazil is not the only case. It's an extreme case, but you can find others with pretty alarming rates of militarization examples here. Hugo Chavez and later on, Nicolas Maduro Duterte in the Philippines, the first administration of Donald Trump, where, depending on how you calculate it, it's about 34%, 35% of the members of the cabinet had been members, had been military officers. Right. So this is all kind of a wave of scholarship and interest in, like, what's happening now? What is this new role of the military that we really weren't ready for.
- [08:13]
B
Deborah, I have some numbers to give you that show why Bolsonaro is such an extreme case. So, overall, 36% of the cabinet appointees of Bolsonaro were either active duty or retired military officers. Under Trump, this number is 27%. Under Chavez, in his first two terms, when Venezuela was more or less democratic, it is 23.5%. And under Duterte in the Philippines, the number is 25%. So Bolsonaro is the champion of cabinet militarization. So it is a big problem for democracy, but it's an excellent case for scholars to study the underlying dynamics of cabinet militarization.
- [09:13]
A
Perfect, thank you. And when we look to these other cases, we pay attention that in your book, there is also a strong pref national analysis that shows that a set of international institutional features like the system and of government and the institutionalization of party systems, are strongly related to cabinet militarization. So could you please describe and exemplify which variables or the combination of those variables play the most significant role in militarization of democratic regimes?
- [09:48]
B
Well, we have run a lot of regression analysis and we converse a lot with a very important work by Polina Belyakova, published in Comparative political studies in 2021. This is a very important work on cabinet militarization under democracies. And Belyakova finds that the most important determinant of cabinet militarization is internal conflicts, which is a very interesting finding. But we took a more political institutional approach, and that obviously has to do with our Brazilian experience and background and observing not only Brazil, not only Bolsonaro, but the whole history of Brazil and including Latin America, and paying attention to the first Trump Administration, it was clear to us that institutional and political factors also play a role in cabinet militarization. So in the book, we highlight the role of presidentialism, the system of government which provides for the chief executive a lot of power in terms of cabinet appointments. And also the the fact that under presidentialism, the chief executive is the commander in chief of the armed forces. So the president has incentives under certain circumstances to politicize the military. And usually the politicization of the military in the extant scholarship is endogenous to the military. It is the military officers who want to enter the political arena. We are studying a different phenomenon, which is politicization by invitation, militarization by invitation by the president. So in our analysis, the most important factors is the system of government presidentialism as compared to semi presidentialism and pure parliamentarism. Also, extremist presidents are very important in our analysis because they also have the incentive to look for a different organization other than political parties to form their government. And this is a long story we can explain later on, or Igor can enter and explain the rationale. But to sum it up, and party system is institutionalization is also important because when parties are not strong or when they are going down the drain, this weakens the norms in terms of cabinet formation, cabinet appointments, and in terms of the political role of the military. So these factors for us facilitate a permissive conditions. We do not say that they cause militarization, cabinet militarization, they facilitate cabinet militarization. But we also control for other variables, particularly those variables found to be significant by Polina Belyakova. And in our study, we also found that the variables that were important for Belyakova are also important for us, but we add these three political institutional factors. Thank you.
- [13:24]
C
Yeah, Joe. So just to complement and to illustrate a little bit of these points, so when we talk about how presidential. In presidential systems, you have strong institutional channels that link the president to the armed forces, and you talk about militarization by invitation, is that in presidential systems, the president is the commander in chief of the armed forces. Right. So when presidents invite the military in, that can be interpreted very much as an order. Right. So every time presidents speak to the military, they're speaking as the commander in chief. Right. So that that carries a lot of power, that carries a lot of responsibilities on the part of the presidents as well. And over the years, we've been seeing kind of, you know, the erosion of those responsibilities, right. When presidents who should not be inviting the military in, are inviting the military in to the power. Now, with respect to the Party systems. Right. So party systems are super interesting because they are one of the most important recruitment channels to form government. And in countries where you see a decline in those, you see a decline in the relevance of parties and the decline of the party system, institutionalization itself. So the rules are not the same. You see parties coming in and out of the political arena. There's. There's nothing to pull from. Right. And, and finally, you know, the theory kind of works. These factors, in a way, they work in tandem, right? They're together. It, it's that ideologically extreme leaders, they're looking at these declining party systems as well, and they say, well, you know, we, we can't. Who are we bringing in and how? Right. So that creates the incentives to then use their institutional powers to bring in the military. To bring the military into the cabinet.
- [15:13]
B
Yes. And moreover, radical leaders, extremist chief executives, they don't want to negotiate with centrist bodies. This is extremely costly for them. They would have to abandon their cherished policy program. So they began to look for other organizations to help them govern, and organizations that can be loyal to his or her radical agenda. So the military come in easily, but they are a very interesting alternative for this kind of leaders. And when party systems are collapsing or have been weakened by a series of factors, it's also easier for chief executives to look for other organizations to, to form the governments. So this combination of institutional factors that facilitate cabinet militarization, much to our surprise, has not been properly theorized by students of presidentialism or civil military relations. Obviously, recent cases like Trump made it easier to look for this kind of variables. But in the history of Brazil and Latin America, the politicization of the military by presidents was always there.
- [16:40]
A
Perfect. This powered our attention for the features of the Brazil case. So what are the explanations for the extreme militarization during Bolsonaro, considering all these institutional features? The big picture?
- [16:55]
B
Well, I mean, we use the variables that were tested in the cross national chapter, but we also add variables that have to do with the Brazilian case. For example, elite political support to militarization, the preferences of the military, and in the case of Bolsonaro, the fact that he was a unique president in terms of his militarism. Brazil had other presidents who wanted to mobilize the military politically. We had a military regime, but nothing as radical as Bolsonaro. So we also include the preferences of Bolsonaro as a key factor in the package of conditions, not only that favor, but that determine cabinet militarization. And finally, we also include the popular demand for militarization, the Brazilian military are a highly popular institution. And because of the many public security problems of Brazil and the fact that the military has recovered their prestige after 21 years in power between 1964 and 1985, we also considered that that was a facilitating a permissive condition. There's an important work by a German scholar, Christoph Herig, who is a Brazilianist and who's keen on studying the Brazilian military. He published an important work in the Bulletin of Latin American Research trying to show that militarization in Brazil took place by popular demand. I think that that is too strong. This is an important factor, but it's not a sufficient condition for militarization.
- [18:52]
C
Thank you. Now, just to add on to some elements that Ottavio contributed here. In our work on the Brazilian case, we definitely had concerns about generalizability and how like our argument would apply to other places. And that's basically the cross national element of our work. But Brazil is the case that we know best. And it's a case where we could include other variables to nail down causality, like why does this thing actually happen? Rather than saying this makes something more likely than not. And these are all variables that are incredibly hard to measure cross nationally as well. So we're able to to drill them down into the Brazilian case, right? So of course we talk about the preferences of the president and these are to be seen as like packages, right? It's all like working together either as permissive conditions, and those are what we see in the quantitative model. But the more proximate the package of sufficient conditions that we have. One thing that I would add here that are model is able to get to. And that's perhaps the hardest one to measure, right? It's the preferences of the military. So we know from scholarship from abroad and also from studying the Brazilian case, that the preferences of the military matter. They're also impossible to nail down. It's really hard to measure what military institutions and their leaders will would like as policy preferences. So we're able to get some evidence on that. We find evidence that they have ideological support for the Bolsonaro project and the Bolsonaro administration. And that dates back to say, the lack of reforms that didn't happen during the democratic transition. The fact that they still believe that they are the guardians of the nation. There's all sorts of things that we talk about in terms of the ideological scope of the military in Brazil. But second, it's their material motivations, right? Where they gain from this. They gain from this materially. All sorts of support for different projects that they have, but also salaries, pensions, protection from very harsh budget cuts that took place during the Bolsonaro administration. This is all included in kind of the motivations that the military had to support this. And finally, one that we often don't talk about, it's how the political elites of Brazil were also not necessarily super opposed to intervention of the military in politics. And we draw on data that hadn't been used before. A Brazilian legislative survey from Cesar Zuko and Timothy Bauer, two political scientists who have been doing this for years, serving the Brazilian political elites. And we find that there's always some support for the intervention or participation of the military in the public order. So keeping the order, keeping the peace, doing stuff that isn't necessarily related to national defense. So in a way it gets us to think about the role of the elite, the role of the political elites, and how they should have behaved better and more consistent with. With democratic values and not wanting the military to execute all those different functions.
- [22:27]
A
Perfect. Now, going to the recent events, Bolsonaro has been defeated in elections and recently found guilty of a coup attempt by the Brazil Supreme Court, along with other military members involved in actions against Brazil's democratic group. Do you see this as a sign of. Of Brazil's democratic resilience?
- [22:50]
B
Well, I think so. The fact that Bolsonaro and generals have been indicted recently can be a turning point in our history. Can be because it remains to be seen whether and how long they will serve time in prison. So this is clear evidence of the strength of our institutions. But paradoxically, although the institutional Armed Forces did not support Bolsonaro school attempt, the armed forces benefited a lot from the Bolsonaro government and they supported many of the moves by the Bolsonaro government that degraded democracy in Brazil. They remained silent for a long time. They only said no in the bitter end when Bolsonaro and his clique tried to organize a coup attempt and try to reverse the outcome of the elections held in 2020. So this is a very paradoxical outcome. And it remains to be seen the dirty details of the whole Bolsonaro presidency. So in the future, when historians will be able to unearth a lot of evidence, the picture will be very clear. But the simple fact that our Supreme Court has found a lot of evidence for, for the first time in our history, indict a president and generals who try to stage a coup can be an inflection point in Brazil's very convoluted and complicated civil military relations. History.
- [24:49]
C
Yeah. So just to add to what Octavio said, yeah, I mean, this is Brazil. Almost, almost had a coup that succeeded. Right. And that cannot be understated. Like it's, you know, became really close. And the more evidence we have about that process, the more baffled we get by how close it got. Right. From the involvement of, you know, the elite military groups of Brazil, the Special Operations Community, to the highest ranking officers and, and their underlings who may be still around. Right. So one thing that I think is, and it's perhaps that from what we know in the comparative literature, and Otavio has a very good point here where we need to be clear or we need to know more about how the punishment will work and whether they will be actually punished for their actions. Right. I mean, from comparative scholarship, we know that when military officers are punished after they pursue misdeeds, there's an effect with the rest of the troop that understands that they can't follow extremist presidents. They cannot have these political ambitions. Their job is to defend the country and to prepare for potential conflicts of wars that the country may fight in a, in a context by the way of growing international competition. Right. So it's not like the military aren't needed for the function that, that they should be executing. Yes. It remains to be seen whether, whether these, these officers will be punished and if they are not, the signal that it gives to the future generations is that it's okay to do that. It's okay to perhaps plot to remove a democratically elected government. It's okay to pursue their own objectives, a lot of them like personal, like objectives, greed and this and that it's okay to do that at the cost of their professionalism and their specific function that they have to do in Brazilian society.
- [26:57]
B
So the situation regarding Bolsonaro and the generals remains uncertain and why. Next year Brazil will hold general elections and many right wing candidates are promising to pardon Bolsonaro and his supporters if they are elected. So this is going to be a big legislative battle. The Supreme Court may veto the eventual amnesty granted to Bolsonaro and the generals. But if they succeed in pardoning Bolsonaro and the generals, this will be a very negative moment, as highlighted by Igor, because it will send, it will convey a very dangerous signal to filter coup plotters. So it's very early to celebrate. It was very important to indict Bolsonaro and the generals, but again, it's very early to celebrate.
- [28:02]
A
Perfect. Thank you. I would like to thank you very much, Doctors Otago and Nigger for joining the People Power Politics podcast for this episode. And thank you very much for speaking with us about civil military relations in Brazil, their impact on politics and also inequality of our democratic rules. And also we have insights for the state of democracy and facing military politicizations around the world. I am Deborah Monchi. I'm a Professor of International Studies at University, a former student researcher and the guest host for this People Power Politics podcast episode. I've been talking to Dr. Otavo Morimeto from the Brazilian School of Public and business administration and Dr. Rigora Cassio from California State University. Thank you very much.
- [28:56]
C
Thank you, thank you.
- [28:58]
A
Thank you for listening to the People Power Politics Podcast brought to you by cedar, the center for Elections, Democracy, Accountability and Representation at the University of Birmingham. To learn more about our Centre and the exciting work we do on these issues around the world, please follow us on Twitter edarbham and visit our website using the link in the podcast description.