Legitimating Violence: Military Operations within Brazilian Borders

The book challenges the main theoretical assumption on the military-police distinction, grounding works on contemporary military missions and security policies, and provides an analytical framework that goes beyond the traditional inside-outside perspective. It is argued that to understand the domestic deployment of the armed forces – as well as other forms of state violence – one has to move beyond the effort of identifying essential police and military activities and ask how the process of drawing and redrawing the line of the acceptable use of force unfolds. The book presents an analytical framework to empirically address processes of violence legitimation, which are conceptualized as a communicative dynamic in which actors mobilize and articulate parameters of legitimation, ideational sources, and rhetorical strategies to forge an apparent consensus about the (un)acceptability of a particular form of violence. It is designed to provide a tridimensional view of the interplay between actors, ideas, and the social arrangement. The framework is applied to Brazil, which has a long history of internal military deployment. The book proceeds by analysing parliamentary sessions, media coverage, and public discourses uttered by presidents, ministers, and military leaders on three major military domestic operations – Operation Rio (1994-1995), Operation Arcanjo (2010-2012), and Operation Rio de Janeiro (2017-2018). It contributes to the literature on legitimacy and IR, critical approaches to International Security, Military Studies, and Civil-Military Relations in the Global South. The research supporting this book won the Capes Thesis Award 2023, as the best PhD dissertation in Political Science and International Relations, granted by the Brazilian Ministry of Education.

David Paulo Succi Junior is Postdoctoral Fellow at the Institute of Public Policies and International Relations of the São Paulo State University, funded by The São Paulo Research Foundation (FAPESP). He holds a PhD in International Relations and is Associated Researcher at the Defense and International Security Study Group (GEDES).