Violent Legitimacy: How Soldiers View the Risks of Military Policing in Brazil

Democracies increasingly use their militaries to prevent crime, as if they were police, fueling human-rights violations and raising the question of how soldiers perceive this mission’s risks. Recent scholarship helps answer this question by illustrating Brazilian Army soldiers’ concerns with the operational effectiveness and legal appropriateness of their crime-prevention mission to fight street gangs in Rio de Janeiro. The mission expanded in 2018, however, to include administering local law-enforcement agencies. This study undertakes an original analysis of officers’ theses at Brazilian Army schools, and secondary analysis of interviews with officers, to understand soldiers’ risk perceptions vis-à-vis the 2018 mission. The analysis suggests that violent legitimacy, or the extent of public acceptance regarding military force, is a distinct category of risk perception and is even more important than operational or legal concerns. The expansion of military policing, from combat to governance, thus elevates the degree to which soldiers worry about their institution’s image as an administrator of violence.