Violent Legitimacy: How Soldiers View the Risks of Military Policing in Brazil
- Open Access
- 07.04.2026
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Abstract
How do soldiers perceive the risks of military policing? This research question emerges from a discrepancy surrounding Brazilian Army officers’ concerns with their mission to prevent crime in Rio de Janeiro state. On the one hand, recent scholarship highlights officers’ concerns with their ability to carry out this mission effectively and legally. This scholarship extensively uses interviews with soldiers regarding pre-2018 operations against street gangs (Castro et al. 2023; Harig 2020; Passos 2022). On the other hand, my interviews with officers about their crime-prevention mission in 2018, which involved not only conducting operations but, also, administering local law-enforcement agencies, detect concerns with the Army’s public image.
Clarifying this discrepancy is important because democracies around the world, especially in Latin America, increasingly deploy soldiers similarly to how they deploy police in order to prevent crime. This mission threatens to undermine both security and democracy by expanding governments’ use of force, relative to police alone patrolling the streets, and militaries’ influence, compared with soldiers remaining in the barracks (Bayer et al. 2023a; Flores-Macías and Zarkin 2021). Soldiers’ views could shape their willingness and ability to carry out the mission (see Acácio and Pion-Berlin 2022), as well as their propensity to use force.
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Rio de Janeiro in 2018 is a generative context for studying these dynamics not only because it differs from the period analyzed by other researchers. Killings by security forces also intensified during this period (Observatório da Intervenção 2019), while public support for the Army (Datafolha 2018) and its mission (Datafolha and Fórum Brasileiro de Segurança Pública 2018) remained strong. These factors make 2018 Rio de Janeiro a dynamic and representative instance of military policing, and an unlikely scenario for soldiers to worry about their institution’s image (see Gerring 2008).
To answer the research question in this context, and to clarify the discrepancy from which the question stems, this study develops the claim that violent legitimacy is a key feature within soldiers’ perceptions of risks associated with the crime-prevention mission. The claim builds upon Levy (2023) regarding internal and external acceptance of militaries’ use of force. Violent legitimacy hinges partly on other risks, related to operational effectiveness and legal appropriateness (see March and Olsen 2006), with acceptance increasing as soldiers exhibit more competence and compliance than police.
Legitimacy nonetheless is more than the sum of its parts, because it implicates the armed forces as an institution, whereas effectiveness and appropriateness reflect more on military policing as a means of security provision. As military policing extends from societal functions, with soldiers patrolling the streets, to political functions, with soldiers making governance decisions (Bayer et al. 2023a), legitimacy becomes more salient for soldiers because the armed forces’ public image becomes more vulnerable. The study illustrates this claim in 2018 Rio de Janeiro through an original analysis of 35 theses by junior and mid-level officers at Brazilian Army schools, and secondary analysis of interviews conducted by Castro et al. (2023) with senior Army officers.
This study proceeds as follows. First, it defines military policing, describes its dimensions, and, from soldiers’ perspective, conceptualizes its risks. Second, it situates military policing vis-à-vis crime prevention in Rio de Janeiro. Third, through the lens of interview findings, the study synthesizes recent scholarship on soldiers’ views of this mission and highlights the discrepancy with my research. Fourth, it presents the original analysis of junior and mid-level officers’ theses. Fifth, it discusses the interviews of senior officers (Castro et al. 2023). Sixth, it concludes by summarizing the argument, relating it to Brazil’s broader civil-military relations, and suggesting opportunities for continued research.
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Military Policing and its Risks
Democracies increasingly pursue security through military policing, which involves “the assumption of (civilian) police functions by the military” (Bayer et al. 2023a, p. 8). Theoretically, “[t]he most important difference between military and police operations concerns the use of force: [w]hile the police forces are committed to the principle of the minimum necessary use of force, a military is characterized by its readiness to employ maximum coercive and violent power” (8). The three distinct missions of military policing are: (1) “law enforcement”, which “encompasses the intervention of policing institutions following an actual breach of law”; (2) “peace preservation”, which “addresses intervention in noncriminal behavior”; and (3) “[c]rime prevention”, which aims “at preventing law violations” (9).1 Empirically, military policing “increases physical violence and decreases private civil liberties”, mostly as “a result of military deployment in a crime prevention role” (18). Understanding how soldiers view military policing for crime prevention thus is important to build knowledge about political violence and human rights, as soldiers’ perceptions could influence their use of force during this mission. This study henceforth uses “military policing” in reference to crime prevention, unless otherwise noted.
The global intensification of military policing is especially acute among Latin American democracies with high crime rates and limited public confidence in civilian law-enforcement agencies. These states “have militarized public safety and recast the role of the armed forces for domestic law enforcement purposes” (Flores-Macías and Zarkin 2021, 520), in addition to organizing, training, equipping, and deploying police like they do soldiers. This “militarization of law enforcement” (Flores-Macías and Zarkin 2021) reverses post-authoritarian states’ attempts to separate soldiers’ and police officers’ responsibilities. It risks undermining democracy by increasing armed conflict between, and human-rights violations by, state and non-state forces, by decreasing attention and resources for police reform, and by increasing impunity for government security agents.
For Bayer et al. (2023a, 8), military policing directly reflects and reinforces “societal militarization” or expansion of “the military’s social influence”. These authors further outline, but do not connect military policing directly to, “political militarization” or the armed forces’ expansion of “key decision-making power over policies and influences in the inner workings of the ruling coalition” (7). This study instead maintains that armed forces’ crime-prevention mission can involve both societal functions (with soldiers directly using violence and restricting rights), political functions (with soldiers directing police on how to do so), or both, at different places and times. Intuitively, societal functions could lay the groundwork for political functions as the armed forces’ influence expands from the streets to the halls of power.
Notwithstanding how crime-prevention missions intensify violence and abuses, this study approaches risk as the possibility that military policing will have negative consequences specifically for the armed forces themselves. These missions pose three main, interrelated categories of risk to the military as an institution. First, the risk category of operational effectiveness involves the possibility that the armed forces will be unsuccessful. This risk, which corresponds inversely with the likelihood that soldiers will reduce homicides, robberies, and other violations of the law, is central to military policing because the mission responds partly to high crime rates (Flores-Macías and Zarkin 2021). If soldiers cannot improve security by protecting lives and property more effectually than police, their domestic law-enforcement mission cannot achieve its purpose.
Second, the risk category of legal appropriateness entails the likelihood that soldiers will be punished, in the military or civil justice systems, for crimes that they themselves commit during crime-prevention missions. This risk increases with the probability that soldiers will engage in corruption, such as bribery and extortion, and carry out human-rights violations, such as extrajudicial killings. It is important for military policing because this mission responds partly to low levels of public confidence in civilian law-enforcement agencies, which, in turn, stems partly from the image of police officers as dishonest and abusive (Flores-Macías and Zarkin 2021). If soldiers cannot improve public support for security agents and their civilian principals by exhibiting trustworthiness and respectfulness more persuasively than police, this is another way that their mission cannot achieve its purpose.
I base these first two categories partly on the juxtaposition of consequentialist and normative political logics. The ends justify the means under the former, while the inverse holds under the latter. Practices, rules, and values are especially crucial for democracy, under which, in theory, the idea that might makes right holds less than under autocracy (March and Olsen 2006). The operational-effectiveness risk aligns with the consequentialist logic, as soldiers’ competence in security provision is central. The legal-appropriateness risk corresponds with the normative logic, as soldiers’ integrity and respectfulness are paramount. These logics could offer distinct lenses through which soldiers perceive their roles under democracy.
Third, violent legitimacy as a risk category encompasses the chance that acceptance, both within and beyond the military, of soldiers’ use of force will diminish through crime-prevention missions. This risk increases with the likelihood that approval, among soldiers and civilians, of physical coercion by the armed forces will decrease as military policing expands. This category is a composite of the previous two, as increased risks with operational effectiveness and legal appropriateness intuitively could correspond with the greater chance of actors viewing military force negatively. If soldiers cannot prevent crime successfully, honestly, and respectfully, what suffers is not only the perception of military policing as effectual for security and suitable for democracy. What suffers also is the view of the armed forces as a legitimate state institution. Violent legitimacy thus is more than the sum of its parts. It implicates not only military policing but, also, the armed forces overall, whereas risks associated with operational effectiveness and legal appropriateness relate to the mission more than the institution.
This third risk category stems from Levy (2023), who describes “intra-military legitimacy of violence” as “a socially constructed system of norms, values, and beliefs held by soldiers and commanders that accept and operate” (218) the armed forces’ coercive measures. “Extra-military legitimacy of violence”, in turn, is a similar system pertaining to “the national community of citizens, that accepts or rejects the state’s formal mode of using (or threatening to use) violence […] as a normal, pervasive, and enduring strategic option” (218). These concepts relate to risks of both operational effectiveness, under which the strategic consequentiality of military policing receives attention, and legal appropriateness, under which normative suitability is central. At the same time, legitimacy not only depends on how the military uses force. It also reflects the degree to which the armed forces are an optimal and correct means of state violence, relative to state violence being provided by civilian police (e.g., with soldiers in the barracks) or being deemphasized altogether as a way of providing security (e.g., with more non-coercive measures).
The three categories are interrelated, as violent-legitimacy risks could intensify with operational- effectiveness and legal-appropriateness risks. If the likelihood that military policing will prevent crime decreases, and if the likelihood that military policing will expose soldiers to potential sanctions for engaging in corruption or violating human rights increases, then the likelihood that soldiers and civilians will consider military policing acceptable could decrease. Of interest for this study, though, is whether, to what degree, and why soldiers perceive these risks differently.
Risk perception is important because, as soldiers’ concerns deepen, democratic civil-military relations become more tenuous. The armed forces become more likely to refuse crime-prevention missions assigned by their political principals, to condition their acceptance of these missions on principals’ concessions to advance the military’s interests, or to carry out these missions in ways intended to mitigate risks regardless of principals’ directives. These possibilities threaten to undermine the democratic norm of civilian control over the armed forces. Understanding how soldiers view the risks of military policing therefore is crucial for building knowledge about democratic civil-military relations, within which theoretical and empirical questions of whether, to what extent, and how soldiers carry out their missions, as well as how these missions affect civilian control, have upmost importance (see Acácio and Pion-Berlin 2022). As the next section illustrates, Rio de Janeiro is a fruitful site for developing this knowledge.
Military Policing in Rio de Janeiro
Enacted after 21 years of dictatorship by the armed forces, Brazil’s 1988 constitution provides for military policing with societal functions through “Guarantee of Law and Order operations” (GLOs) to prevent crime in the 26 states and federal district. Presidents deployed the armed forces on 22 “urban violence” GLOs from 1992 to 2018, which, as of January 2026, is the last year that this type of operation occurred. Rio de Janeiro, with approximately 16 million residents or 8% of Brazil’s population, received 10 (45%) GLOs. No other state received more than two. Sixty-three of 99 (64%) GLO-months occurred in Rio de Janeiro, while only one other state had more than 10 months with GLOs. Rio de Janeiro GLOs lasted six months on average. The Army participated in all 10 Rio de Janeiro GLOs, with five involving the Air Force, Navy, or both (Ministério da Defesa 2022b). A main feature of GLOs was military incursions into, or occupations of, Rio de Janeiro’s low-income “favela” neighborhoods. These operations attempted to disrupt, or take territorial control from, street gangs involved in drug trafficking (Barnes 2021).
Data on Rio de Janeiro GLOs is incomplete, but some illustrations are: (a) “Operation Carioca” consisted of 4,268 troops between the three armed services and cost USD 7,231,314 from February 14 to 22, 2017 (Ministério da Defesa 2022a); (b) over time, GLOs became more frequent, longer, more expansive with the number of armed services involved (Ministério da Defesa 2022b), and more intense with the number of favela incursions and other operations (Viana 2018); and (c) the Army killed at least 29 civilians, excluding alleged criminals, from 2010 to 2017 (Viana 2018).2 In 2017, President Michel Temer expanded legal protections for soldiers accused of human-rights violations and other crimes during GLOs (Harig 2021).
Brazil’s constitution also provides for military policing with political functions by permitting the federal government to intervene into the security decision-making of subnational units. From February to December 2018, the Army both conducted GLO “Operation Rio de Janeiro” (initiated July 2017 and costing USD 60,390,868) and led the “Federal Intervention Cabinet”. Under Temer’s 11-month “Federal Intervention in Rio de Janeiro State’s Public Security”, and with congressional and gubernatorial approval, the Cabinet took control of local law-enforcement agencies. These included the State Military Police, responsible for preventing crime and serving as the Army’s auxiliary force, and State Civil Police, responsible for investigating crime. It was the first intervention into a state’s security under the 1988 constitution. The Cabinet’s budget was USD 309,157,397, or five times greater than that of the concurrent GLO.
Estimates from civil society organizations hold that, during the Intervention: (a) soldiers participated in 128 of 739 (17%) security actions, including police incursions into favelas; (b) police killed between 1,375 and 1,534 people, increasing at least 34% from the prior 11-month period; and (c) homicides decreased by 2% (Observatório da Intervenção 2019, 5–6; Rede de Observatórios de Segurança 2023, 6–15).3 Some researchers characterize this police violence as “extrajudicial killing” (Peterke and Vasconcelos 2021; Palma 2023). Comprehensive data on killings by soldiers is not publicly available, but human-rights violations by the Army and police agencies reportedly were extensive (Defensoria Pública do Estado do Rio de Janeiro 2018, 12–34).4
Nevertheless, surveys of public opinion before, during, and immediately after the Intervention suggested that the military was Brazil’s most trusted institution (Datafolha 2017, 2018, 2019). Surveys in 2018 and 2019 also found that support for the Intervention and GLOs was strong among Rio de Janeiro city’s approximately seven million residents, even as they doubted these measures’ effectiveness (Datafolha and Fórum Brasileiro de Segurança Pública 2018, 6; 2019, 11–13). Brazil’s mainstream press generally supported military policing before and during 2018, although the alternative media presented critical perspectives from favela residents (Winand et al. 2021, 184–194).
This variation in soldiers’ crime-prevention missions between societal and political functions, and this possible intensification of soldiers’ violence and abuses, make 2018 Rio de Janeiro a “diverse” and “typical” (Gerring 2008, p. 647) case of military policing, respectively. It thus is a dynamic and representative context for building knowledge about military policing. It also is a “crucial” (Gerring 2008, p. 647) case for the argument that violent-legitimacy risks influence soldiers’ worries about military policing, given that public acceptance of military force endured. Rio de Janeiro in 2018 therefore is a useful scenario for confirming or disconfirming the argument, at least preliminarily.
In broader terms, Brazil is an especially consequential site of military policing. It has the world’s seventh largest population, eighth largest military (World Bank Group 2025), and greatest number of annual homicides (United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime 2025). Brazil was among the top quartile of countries in the number of years with military policing from 1990 to 2020 (Bayer et al. 2023b). It is a relatively new democracy where the expansion of military policing symbolized by the 2018 Federal Intervention has corresponded with the armed forces’ increasing political power, drawing parallels to Brazil’s 21-year dictatorship (Duarte 2025). As discussed further below, building this knowledge also is valuable partly because of a discrepancy in scholars’ recent interviews with Brazilian Army officers about the risks of military policing.
Interviews about Military Policing in Rio de Janeiro
Recent scholarship by Passos (2022), Harig (2020), Castro et al. (2023), and Littlefield and Block (2023) has sought to understand soldiers’ views of crime-prevention missions’ risks, mostly by interviewing and surveying Brazilian Army soldiers about Rio de Janeiro GLOs (i.e., societal functions of military policing) and, somewhat, the Federal Intervention (i.e., political functions). This scholarship varies in interviewees’ ranks, or positions within the Army’s organizational hierarchy.5 The authors nonetheless demonstrate soldiers’ strong concerns with GLOs’ operational effectiveness and, to a lesser degree, legal appropriateness. While concerns with effectiveness and appropriateness could shape concerns with legitimacy, scholars’ explicit treatment of this third risk is limited.
Analyzing soldiers’ views of military policing in Tijuana, Mexico, and Rio de Janeiro, Passos (2022, 261–266) interviewed 17 Brazilian Army officers about GLOs. Four were generals, 12 were mid-level officers, and one was a junior officer. Eleven total officers were on active duty when the interview occurred. Passos also conducted a group interview with Army officers. Senior officers mostly focused on increasing “military autonomy for managing corporate affairs, as well as reducing the scrutiny of third parties over military activities” (244–245). This perception suggests a concern with legal-appropriateness risks, insofar as greater scrutiny implies greater threat of juridical sanction for soldiers.
Passos (2022, 248) also finds that, because military policing reflects and reinforces competition between armed forces and civilian law-enforcement agencies, and because “the reputation of the [Brazilian] Armed Forces is seemingly built [… upon discourse] portraying cops as unprepared and corrupt, self-interested military commanders might be inclined to foster” mission expansion as a means of increasing military autonomy and authority vis-à-vis these agencies. This perception suggests a concern with operational-effectiveness risks, as, to distinguish themselves from police whose crime-prevention roles they are assuming, soldiers must be successful in fulfilling their mission.
Passos’ (2022) interviews with mid-level and junior officers further revealed concerns about GLOs’ effectiveness and appropriateness risks, partly because senior officers might constrain military violence if doing so could limit the chance that soldiers would face legal punishment:
Even when officers at decision-making levels are prone to agree in establishing greater limits to the use of force, they are likely to confront the beliefs of on-the-ground soldiers that they represent the last bastion of state authority. This disjunction not only creates tensions within the institution, but also indicates the inevitable gap that separates [soldiers’] training from [their] effective role adaptation [when transitioning] from soldiering to policing (Passos 2022, p. 250).
Passos (2022) thus implies that mid-level/junior officers and senior officers are more concerned with operational effectiveness and legal appropriateness, respectively, even as these risks are interrelated and theoretically could shape the unaddressed third risk of violent legitimacy. Harig (2020) further underscores the importance of effectiveness when analyzing experiences and skills that soldiers gained through the United Nations Stabilization Mission in Haiti, which Brazil led from 2004 to 2017, and Rio de Janeiro GLOs. Harig surveyed 119 and interviewed 14 soldiers, including officers and non-officers, and conducted focus groups with 12 officers (1099), although the analysis deemphasizes rank.
Harig (2020) shows that soldiers have “difficulties when dealing with critical situations and would have preferred to be able to apply more coercion when facing armed actors in GLOs. They often used force gradually but felt hampered by rules of engagement that placed an emphasis on protecting civilians” (1110). When “they were facing a trade-off between protecting civilians from harm and [achieving] military effectiveness”, soldiers “would often prefer the latter and thus accept ‘collateral damage’ among the population” (1110). Soldiers’ concerns therefore emphasized effectiveness over appropriateness, the latter being evident in worries about rules of engagement and protection of civilians, with little explicit consideration of legitimacy.
Castro et al. (2023) similarly highlight operational-effectiveness risks through interviews with senior military officers who “occupied privileged positions in the decision-making, planning, or conduct” (8) of crime-prevention GLOs, including 14 Army generals, one Army colonel, and one Marine Corps admiral.6 Legitimacy concerns were present because “the risks of damage to the Armed Forces’ reputation are seen as high due to constant media monitoring” (17), potentially undermining public acceptance of military violence. However, senior officers mostly perceived effectiveness risks because military policing fails to achieve long-term success in crime prevention. Military policing also distracts from the armed forces’ conventional mission of national defense, for which soldiers are more prepared (18–19). A later section of this study examines the interviews by Castro et al. (2023) in greater detail.
Littlefield and Block (2023) draw attention from officers’ views of risk toward their general opinions of military policing. Comparing the Army’s contestation of civilian control vis-à-vis pre-2018 Rio de Janeiro GLOs and the 2018 Federal Intervention, the authors suggest that senior officers generally view crime-prevention missions more favorably. Senior officers tend to be more “interventionist”, seeing these missions as an opportunity to apply the armed forces’ power toward what some consider a key national challenge of crime prevention in Rio de Janeiro. Mid-level and junior officers, meanwhile, tend to be more “legal-institutionalist” in viewing missions through the lens of the Army’s corporate interests. They saw the Intervention, with political functions that were beneficial in reflecting and reinforcing the Army’s influence, more favorably than prior GLOs, with societal functions whose institutional risks did not outweigh the prospective rewards. An implication is that, on top of rank, overall stance toward military policing could inform risk perception by reflecting how soldiers understand the Army’s general purpose.
While the above scholarship demonstrates Brazilian soldiers’ concerns with the operational- effectiveness risks and, somewhat, legal-appropriateness risks of mostly Rio de Janeiro military policing with societal functions (i.e., GLOs) based heavily on interviews, my own interviews in this context suggest that violent-legitimacy risks warrant greater attention. I conducted 119 interviews in 2023 about civilian control of military policing in 2018 Rio de Janeiro, a period that involved both societal functions through GLO “Operation Rio de Janeiro” and political functions through the Federal Intervention. My research focused on civilian responses to military policing. Only 11 interviews included people who had worked for the Brazilian Armed Forces during the 2018 Intervention. These interviews nonetheless offered generative insight about soldiers’ views of military policing, as discussed below in more detail.
Six of my interviews included people who, in 2018, had been senior or mid-level Army officers.7 On the one hand, they referenced operational-effectiveness and legal-appropriateness risks in ways that other scholarship predicts (#9, 50, 84, 109). Soldiers’ concerns with effectiveness were unsurprising, as the dramatic increase in state violence had not corresponded with a notable decrease in homicides during the 2018 Intervention (Observatório da Intervenção 2019; Rede de Observatórios de Segurança 2023). Concerns with appropriateness, too, were unsurprising. Although President Temer in 2017 had reduced juridical consequences for soldiers during GLOs, multiple non-military interviewees emphasized that he had not empowered soldiers in 2018 to the maximum legal extent. Temer placed state police agencies, not the entire state government, under the Federal Intervention Cabinet’s authority. He did not declare a state of defense or siege, either of which could have facilitated the crime-prevention mission by restricting civil liberties. Soon after the Intervention began, he withdrew authorization for a type of warrant that had permitted soldiers to search and seize property within broad areas, rather than specific addresses (#7, 17, 31, 55, 61, 99, 113).
On the other hand, my six interviews with soldiers also highlighted violent-legitimacy risks, with concerns that the GLO and Intervention had threatened to undermine the Army’s public image (#9, 109) and, by implication, society’s acceptance of military force. For example, an interviewee said that the Intervention had been risky because, if the Army did not reduce crime, then “security would have deteriorated and the Army’s image would have been undermined” (#109). This interviewee felt that, although soldiers had carried out their crime-prevention mission effectively, the possibility of negative ramifications for the military as an institution was high. Five additional interviews included people who, in 2018, had been Army civilian staff. These interviewees further stressed not only effectiveness and appropriateness risks but, also, legitimacy risks (#18, 30, 31). This emphasis on legitimacy risks was surprising because surveys had found robust public support for the Army (Datafolha 2017, 2018, 2019), the Intervention, and GLOs (Datafolha and Fórum Brasileiro de Segurança Pública 2018; 2019), and because other researchers had found soldiers worrying more about effectiveness and appropriateness.
Given these discrepancies between other scholars’ interviews and my own, the next sections undertake two analyses to understand further how soldiers perceive the risks of military policing in 2018 Rio de Janeiro. These analyses move beyond my interviews about civilian control of military policing, for two reasons. One is that my interviews focused on civilian responses to military policing, more than they addressed soldiers’ risk perception, as previously mentioned. Another is that, as discussed below in more detail, the first analysis seeks to use new data about soldiers’ risk perceptions in order to supplement other scholars’ insights from interviews.
Approach to Understanding Soldiers’ Risk Perceptions
This primary analysis examines 35 theses written by officers and officer candidates at Brazilian Army schools, from 2018 to 2021, about military policing in 2018 Rio de Janeiro. Little scholarship has used Brazilian Army theses to understand perceptions of risk with military policing aside from Acácio (2022, 116–120), whose dissertation briefly undertakes statistical analysis to “highlight a strong dislike on the part of the military for policing missions” (120). My approach supplements this and other scholarship by focusing on a period with both societal and political functions in military policing, which provides for variation in the object of the views that this study aims to describe.
My data collection, which began in 2022, involved using keyword searches like “Federal Intervention”, “Guarantee of Law and Order” (i.e., GLO), “Rio de Janeiro”, or “urban violence” in the Brazilian Army’s online library (Exército 2025) to identify 83 potentially relevant theses. Content analysis then led to excluding 48 theses that did not concentrate on either political functions, like the Army’s leadership of the Intervention, or societal functions, like the Army’s conduct of GLO “Operation Rio de Janeiro”. The excluded theses generally addressed more technical functions that might be unspecific to Rio de Janeiro or military policing, such as small-unit leadership.8
To examine the 35 theses, I use descriptive statistics concerning the distributions of risk perception by officers’ rank, by theses’ main policing functions of interest, and by theses’ overall tone toward military policing. In terms of rank, 21 of 35 (60%) theses are by junior officers and 14 (40%) are by mid-level officers. The former include 16 by captains at the Officer’s Training School (EsAO, the Portuguese acronym) and five by cadets at the Agulhas Negras Military Academy (AMAN). I include cadets because, after graduating from AMAN, these officer candidates become junior officers. Mid-level officers’ theses include six by colonels at the Army Command and General Staff School (ECEME), one by a colonel at EsAO, one by a lieutenant colonel at ECEME, five by majors at ECEME, and one by a major at the Personnel Studies Center/Fort Duque Caxias.
In terms of functions, 24 of 35 (69%) theses emphasize societal functions by concentrating on GLOs and 11 (31%) emphasize political functions by concentrating on the Intervention. I categorize their main functions of interest through keyword searches of theses’ titles or, secondarily, theses’ excerpts that reflect risks of military policing, with the simplifying assumption that a thesis cannot concentrate equally on both functions. If the title or excerpt includes key words or phrases related to GLOs, operations, use of force, employment of the military, troops or soldiers, or doctrine, I categorize it as addressing societal functions. I otherwise categorize it to political functions. Thirteen (62%) and eight (38%) theses by junior officers concentrate on societal and political functions, respectively. Eleven (79%) and three (21%) theses by mid-level officers address societal and political functions, respectively.9
I categorize risk perceptions by reading each thesis, with 10,352 words on average, to identify excerpts that address the operational effectiveness, legal appropriateness, or violent legitimacy of military policing in 2018 Rio de Janeiro. This categorization occurred inductively and iteratively in 2022, involving the compilation and characterization of excerpts in a spreadsheet. Excerpts about effectiveness have information, themes, or words concerning the relationship between military policing and the core Army mission of national defense, the adequacy of Army training for crime prevention, or the ability of military policing to reduce crime, violence, or gang capacity. Excerpts concerning appropriateness reflect the clarity surrounding soldiers’ rules of engagement and soldiers’ legal consequences of using force, the adequacy of soldiers’ training on juridical matters, or the status of civil liberties when military policing is in effect. Excerpts regarding legitimacy address public opinion toward the Federal Intervention, competition with gangs for favela residents’ support, or consequences of military policing for the armed forces’ public image. I categorize theses’ overall tone by interpreting the balance of positive, neutral, or negative sentiments across selected excerpts. Table 1 below summarizes my risk categorization.
Table 1
Topics for categorizing excerpts in theses at Brazilian Army schools from 2018 to 2021, based on risks with military policing in 2018 Rio de Janeiro
Operational-effectiveness risks | Legal-appropriateness risks | Violent-legitimacy risks |
|---|---|---|
• Relationship between military policing and the core Army mission of national defense • Adequacy of Army training for crime prevention • Ability of military policing to reduce crime, violence, or gang capacity | • Soldiers’ rules of engagement • Soldiers’ legal consequences for using force • Adequacy of soldiers’ training on juridical matters • Status of civil liberties when military policing is in effect | • Public opinion toward Federal Intervention • Competition with gangs for favela residents’ support • Consequences of military policing for armed forces’ public image |
Views of Legitimacy Risks among Junior and Mid-level Officers
Examination of Brazilian officers’ theses firstly finds that violent-legitimacy risks appear more often than operational-effectiveness or legal-appropriateness risks among concerns with military policing in 2018 Rio de Janeiro. The prominence of legitimacy over other risks does not depend on whether the author is a junior or mid-level officer, concentrates on societal or political functions, or views the mission favorably overall.10 Second, concerns with effectiveness appear more frequently in theses by junior-level authors than in theses by mid-level authors. Third, appropriateness worries are evident more commonly in theses regarding societal functions. Table 2 shows these distributions.
Table 2
Brazilian Army officers’ views of risks with military policing in 2018 Rio de Janeiro, based on theses at Army schools from 2018 to 2021
Feature of thesis | n | Risk to which thesis alludes | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Characteristic | Value | Operational effectiveness | Legal appropriateness | Violent legitimacy | Any | |
Author rank | Junior | 21 | 10 (48%) | 8 (38%) | 13 (62%) | 16 (76%) |
Mid-level | 14 | 4 (29%) | 6 (43%) | 8 (57%) | 9 (64%) | |
Main policing function of interest | Societal | 24 | 11 (46%) | 12 (50%) | 15 (63%) | 17 (71%) |
Political | 11 | 3 (27%) | 2 (18%) | 6 (55%) | 8 (73%) | |
Overall tone toward policing | Positive | 15 | 2 (13%) | 3 (20%) | 7 (47%) | 7 (47%) |
Neutral | 13 | 7 (54%) | 6 (46%) | 7 (54%) | 11 (85%) | |
Negative | 7 | 5 (71%) | 5 (71%) | 7 (100%) | 7 (100%) | |
All | --- | 35 | 14 (40%) | 14 (40%) | 21 (60%) | 25 (71%) |
First, 21 of 35 (60%) theses allude to violent-legitimacy risks. Legitimacy appeared more frequently than effectiveness or appropriateness across all thesis features. These frequencies ranged from 100% in theses with negative tones to 47% in theses with positive tones. An exception was neutral tone, in which legitimacy concerns were as frequent as effectiveness concerns (54%). Three sub-categories of legitimacy concerns, each appearing in seven theses, were: (1) tarnishing of the Army’s public image; (2) public criticism of the Federal Intervention; and (3) competition with gangs over favela residents’ support.
Major Atella (2021, 31–40) wrote that, according to approximately half of the 100 soldiers whom he had surveyed and who had participated in 2018 military policing, favela residents generally had negative views of the Army’s presence in their communities. Cadet Lima (2020, 24–31) similarly wrote that his fellow soldiers had attributed residents’ negative views partly to gang coercion. Perhaps gangs had an advantage over soldiers in obtaining support and information from residents. Captain Jones Schmitz (2020, 19–20) wrote that the Army consequently “can win the operational confrontation and reduce criminality indices, but it runs the risk of losing the information war.”
Colonel Mandim de Oliveira (2019, 45) described the public’s “negative vision” as resulting partly from media criticism of the Intervention’s effectiveness at reducing crime and managing state police. Captain Faria de Oliveira (2019, 20–21) wrote that, due to its “ideological contamination”, the press had transmitted “a very controversial and polemical” opinion of the Intervention’s effectiveness. Captain Gatti (2018, 23) wrote that public criticism of GLOs had risked the “erosion” (in Portuguese, desgaste) of the Army’s image. Relating legitimacy risks to appropriateness and effectiveness concerns, Colonel Souza wrote,
[p]rolonged employment […] in GLOs […] exposes [the Army] to erosion of [its] image, due to the possibility of […] failures, misconduct, or violations [of the law], at the operational and tactical levels, with large repercussion at the political and strategic levels. The […] difficulty in presenting satisfactory results and definitive solutions [to crime …] can expose the [Army] to disrepute [in] society (Souza 2018, 66–67).
Souza thus linked effectiveness and appropriateness to legitimacy, while elevating the latter as a predominant concern. Captain Jones Schmitz (2020, 19–20) cited Souza (2018) in writing that GLOs “could harm the [military’s] image and undermine the [Army’] high level of credibility within Brazilian society.” Given this potential harm, “the Brazilian Army worries more and more about not committing errors [… during GLOs] in order to avoid the erosion of [its] image and possible political repercussions” (22).
Second, 14 of 35 (40%) officers revealed operational-effectiveness concerns. Effectiveness appeared somewhat more frequently in theses with negative (71%) or neutral (54%) tone, theses by junior officers (48%), and theses regarding societal functions of GLOs (46%). The sub-categories of this risk perception were: (1) insufficient military training, appearing in five theses; (2) limited reductions to crime, violence, and gang capacity, in four; and (3) deviation from the Army’s core mission of national defense, in two. Three theses had general or multiple concerns.
Captain Abrantes (2019, 14–15) wrote, “the Armed Forces’ principal mission is defense of the homeland against external threats. Their doctrine, preparation, and training” serve this mission. The military should avoid letting this mission “be overshadowed or jeopardized” by policing, which could generate “a possible erosion of the Armed Forces’ image in public opinion.” Captain Jones Schmitz (2020, 21) wrote that policing had overtaken the military’s national-defense mission, to the detriment of soldiers’ readiness for conventional operations. Captain Lopes Leite (2019, 11) suggested that this insufficient preparation had stemmed from the Federal Intervention’s unprecedented nature, which had prevented “the consolidation of knowledge from previous experiences” in military policing.
Major Atella (2021, 39) wrote that 93% of 100 officers surveyed had indicated that gangs were more knowledgeable than the Army regarding favelas; 79%, that gangs had more local support; and 75%, that gangs were better at blending into the local population. These factors gave gangs a competitive advantage over the Army during GLOs. Captain Batista Machado (2021, 41–53) wrote that, although the Intervention had reduced crime somewhat, GLOs ultimately were ineffective as evidenced by public criticism and the Army’s disadvantages against gangs.
Third, 14 of 35 (40%) theses suggested legal-appropriateness concerns. These appeared most frequently in theses with negative tone (71%) and theses about societal functions of GLOs (50%). Three sub-categories were: (1) insufficient legal certainty and inadequate rules of engagement, in four theses; (2) insufficient juridical preparation, in two; and (3) lack of legal measures to restrict civil liberties in ways that could have made policing easier for soldiers, in two. Four expressed general or various appropriateness concerns.
Captain Faria de Carvalho (2019, 22) wrote that, according to approximately half of the 19 officers whom he had surveyed, “the intensity of instructions about GLOs’ rules of engagement”, or use-of-force regulations, had been “inadequate”. Captain Costa Neto (2020, 19) received similar responses to a survey of 28 officers about GLOs and the Intervention.
Major Atella (2021, 41) wrote that, according to approximately 90% of 100 officers surveyed, soldiers’ rules of engagement had been too restrictive during the Intervention. Captain Luciano Gaspar (2019, 9) wrote that soldiers’ difficulties during GLOs had included “legal protection” for “soldiers’ actions” because, “[e]ven with [the laws] in effect, the threshold of legality generated uncertainty among soldiers […] The main doubt revolved around the issue of responsibility [… and] whether [the soldier] would be judged in the civilian or military sphere.” Cadet Pereira (2019, 26) wrote that soldiers’ “juridical-legal rearguard” had been “ignored” during the Intervention.
Major Silva (2018, 57) wrote that GLOs’ rules of engagement, centering individual rights, “limit or impede the breadth and intensity of [military] actions” and “add considerable juridical insecurity” over “the prevalence of individual or collective rights”. That is, an emphasis on collective rights would have enabled soldiers to infringe upon individual rights if doing so provided societal benefits. Major Santos Junior (2021, 17–19) surveyed 60 officers about GLOs. Twenty-six (43%) responded that juridical instruction had been insufficient. Thirty-two (53%) responded that rules of engagement had been unclear. Captain Orsini de Assis (2020, 17) wrote that approximately 60% of 22 officers interviewed had considered the Intervention either fully or partly inadequate from a legal perspective.
Aside from the small number of theses in my sample, a limitation with this analysis stems from how writing at Brazilian Army schools likely is subject to extensive institutional bias because of censorship. Although I have no information regarding this censorship, it is possible that Army schools have an incentive to direct soldiers’ theses away from certain operational-effectiveness and legal-appropriateness risks, and toward violent-legitimacy risks. Legitimacy, in this perspective, might be the main risk not so much because junior and middle-level officers inherently are more concerned with it, but more so because their instructors and institutional leadership want them to concentrate on this risk. This possibility invites further analysis of the views expressed by senior officers, whose rank might make them less subject to censorship and, therefore, more sensitive to violent-legitimacy risks than are junior and mid-level officers.
Perceptions of Effectiveness and Legitimacy among Senior Officers
This secondary analysis examines transcripts of interviews that Castro et al. (2023) conducted, in 2021 and 2022, with 14 generals and one colonel about the Army’s crime-prevention mission. This analysis involves reading transcripts to identify questions or answers that directly address the 2018 Federal Intervention, compiling them in a spreadsheet, and categorizing them with respect to operational-effectiveness, legal-appropriateness, and violent-legitimacy concerns. The secondary analysis therefore uses similar risk sub-categories to those of the primary analysis. However, whereas the primary analysis of theses considers the relationship between risk and other factors, this secondary analysis of interviews by Castro et al. (2023) focuses on risk perception alone due to the sample’s comparatively limited variation in position (with 93% of Army interviewees being senior officers), relatively minor diversity in tone (with interviewees mostly expressing negative views toward military policing), and even smaller size. The goal of this secondary analysis is to consider whether and to what degree legitimacy risks are prominent in another sample, with more senior officers.
The analysis suggests that effectiveness and legitimacy carry similar weight within interviewees’ concerns of military policing in 2018 Rio de Janeiro. On effectiveness, General Fernandez Nunes (cited in Castro et al. 2023, 273–275) suggested that GLO “Operation Rio de Janeiro” during the Intervention had been less important for soldiers than prior GLOs in the state had been because the Army had learned that this type of crime-prevention mission “had a large psychological impact, a media impact, but, in practice, did not leave a lasting result.” Fernandez Nunes had been the Federal Intervention Cabinet’s second most prominent official, assuming responsibility for the Rio de Janeiro state agency that coordinated between the Military and Civil Police. General Hiroshi (289) said that administrative changes to state police implemented by the Cabinet had lost momentum, for electoral reasons, soon after the Intervention ended. He estimated that another intervention would be necessary soon due to the state’s persistent security challenges. An implication is that both the Army’s societal and political functions in military policing were unsuccessful.
As for legitimacy, General Braga Netto, who had led the Cabinet, suggested that biased and negative media coverage had raised concern about how military policing could impact the Army’s public image (cited in Castro et al. 2023, 220–221). General Fernandez Nunes (249) said that the Army had focused “on the informational environment” of GLOs, owing to the “considerable political-strategic character” of military policing and the possibility that human-rights violations in Rio de Janeiro would “have repercussions that transcend the national level” under intensive media scrutiny. General Pereira, who had been responsible for the Cabinet’s coordination with external agencies and organizations, described how Braga Netto had warned him that issues with civil liberties during the Intervention were causing “a lot of erosion” (240), implicitly of the Army’s public standing. Given the comparable frequencies with which interviewees emphasized effectiveness concerns and legitimacy concerns in this sample of senior Army officers, the next section discusses what these findings and those of the primary analysis imply for continued research into military policing.
Research Claim and Continuation
This study suggests that concerns with violent legitimacy, or public acceptance regarding their use of force, are key to soldiers’ views toward the risks with military policing. While recent scholarship on the Brazilian Army’s societal functions during Rio de Janeiro GLOs emphasizes soldiers’ perceptions of operational-effectiveness and legal-appropriateness risks, the 2018 Federal Intervention involved a combination of military operations and command over local police. This expansion to the scope of military policing helps account for the prominence of legitimacy concerns within junior- and -mid-level officers’ theses, and of legitimacy risks alongside effectiveness risks within senior officers’ interviews, whereas prior work does not address the acceptance of military violence (or violence that the military delegates to police) extensively. An implication is that, as crime prevention expands to assume both societal and political functions, soldiers worry more about consequences for the military’s public image.
Recent developments in Brazil’s civil-military relations suggest the importance of soldiers’ legitimacy concerns with crime-prevention missions. During the Federal Intervention, some senior Army officers decided to oppose the 2018 presidential candidacy of leftist Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, a former head-of-state, and support that of rightist Jair Bolsonaro, a former Army captain and a federal representative of Rio de Janeiro. Bolsonaro would make Gen. Braga Netto, who had led the Intervention, his vice president from 2019 to 2022. Bolsonaro would staff the presidential cabinet with more current or former military officers than had any leader during Brazil’s 21-year dictatorship (Littlefield and Block 2023). Senior officers of the armed forces successfully lobbied Bolsonaro against sustaining their mission in Rio de Janeiro, despite Bolsonaro’s tough-on-crime, pro-military politics, reportedly because “[m]ilitary behavior [had] been shaped by fear of prosecution and by the military’s mission beliefs and their concerns of overall prestige in Brazilian society” (Acácio 2021). Bolsonaro, Braga Netto, and other current and officers allegedly conspired in what some have labeled an attempted military coup against the newly reelected Lula da Silva on January 8, 2023 (Duarte 2025).
Analyzed through the lens of legitimacy concerns with military policing, these developments imply that the expansion of the Brazilian Army’s crime-prevention missions in Rio de Janeiro, from societal to political functions, might have fueled soldiers’ efforts to mitigate risks to, or recuperate, the armed forces’ public image by assuming a more prominent role within national politics. Whether and to what extent this indeed was the case remains a matter for future scholarship. At the same time, these developments underscore how violent legitimacy intersects with, and is not mutually exclusive of, other risk categories. Legal-appropriateness risks were salient during and after the 2018 Federal Intervention despite soldiers having minimal consequences for human-rights violations. Operational-effectiveness risks could have been salient, too, because the Intervention did not reduce crime significantly. Senior officers might have advocated against these missions due to a combination of concerns. These concerns figured into senior officers’ expectations regarding how the crime-prevention missions could shape soldiers’ and civilians’ views of the armed forces as suitable for security and democracy.
Beyond Brazil, as military policing fuels violence and abuses in other democracies, potentially engendering a cycle of instability that leads to more missions, this expansive global use of soldiers for internal security is likely to become increasingly consequential. Continued research, in Brazil and elsewhere, may benefit from greater access to data, given this study’s limitations with sample sizes, institutional biases, and lack of comparability between main sources. Collecting this information at a larger scale, through additional surveys or social media, or a smaller scale, through more in-depth interviews with soldiers, could help scholars understand further soldiers’ views of legitimacy. This understanding, in turn, could give society greater leverage to constrain military policing. Doing so could help reduce violence, protect human rights, and preserve democratic civil-military relations – not to mention democracy itself, as the Brazilian case suggests.
Acknowledgements
Two anonymous reviewers gave expert advice. Participants in the Law and Politics of Civil-Military Relations conference, at the University of Wisconsin Law School in August 2025, offered valuable feedback. Camila Angulo provided useful guidance on statistical tests. Anisa Pontes and Semi Hyeong helped with data collection through the University of Wisconsin-Madison's Undergraduate Research Assistant Program, in the Department of Political Science, and through the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee's Support for Undergraduate Research Fellows Program, respectively. All errors are my own.
Declarations
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The author declares none.
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