What is blurred? Legitimizing domestic military operations in contemporary Brazil

Abstract

The distinction between police and armed forces is traditionally accounted for through the division between the domestic and international realms. Grounded on this conception, scholars have claimed that contemporary security policies blurred these lines. The blurring argument, however, neglects cases in which military domestic deployment is not a historical exception. The present paper addresses this gap by focusing on the question of how a particular use of the armed forces becomes acceptable. It offers an analytical framework to empirically address the legitimation of military operations. This instrument of analysis is applied to the Brazilian case, mapping out the public debate on three major domestic military operations against crime–Operation Rio (1994–1995), Operation Arcanjo (2010–2012), and Operation Rio de Janeiro (2017–2018).