No próximo dia 16 de Junho, o Seminário do Grupo de Investigação SPARC será dedicado ao lançamento do livro Presidentialism and Civil-Military Relations: Brazil in Comparative Perspective, da autoria de Octavio Amorim Neto e Igor Acácio (Cham: Palgrave, 2025). Este evento terá lugar na sala 3 do ICS-ULisboa e online.

Abstract: 

In an era of resurgent military political activism, this volume examines the cross-national drivers of cabinet militarization in democratic regimes and provides an in-depth study of its causes and consequences in Brazil. Chapter 2 employs cross-national statistical analysis to estimate the correlates of cabinet militarization in democratic regimes in 1963-2020. We show that pure presidentialism, extremist chief executives, and low party system institutionalization facilitate the appointment of military personnel to cabinet positions. The third chapter offers a brief history of Brazil’s president-military relations since the end of World War II. The fourth chapter applies process tracing to pin down the conditions leading to high cabinet militarization in Brazil’s democratic regime under Bolsonaro in 2019-2023. The fifth chapter is a study of Brazil’s Ministry of Defense (MOD) and defense policymaking in 1999-2021. Growing military input into defense policymaking meant more internal missions and less jointness among the armed services. The sixth chapter pins down the conditions conducive to legislative activism or passivity in overseeing the Ministry of Defense and the armed forces in Brazil in 2001-2022. The seventh chapter presents novel data and operational indicators to conduct a time-series analysis of the correlates of defense spending in Brazil in 1946-2020. We show that while democracy and coalitional politics lowered defense expenditures, unpopular presidents, cabinet militarization, and military-generated crises were associated with increased military spending. The last chapter discusses the implications of our findings and how generalizable they are. Regarding generalizability, we perfunctorily analyze 12 shadow case studies of democratic chief executives from different regions of the world.

Bio:  Octavio Amorim Neto is Full Professor of Political Science at the Brazilian School of Public and Business Administration (EBAPE) of the Getulio Vargas Foundation, Rio de Janeiro. His research focuses on comparative political institutions, civil-military relations, foreign policymaking, and Brazilian politics. He is the author, co-author, editor, or co-editor of six books, and his work has appeared in leading international journals. He has received academic awards from the Brazilian Political Science Association and the American Political Science Association.