Military Identity, Political Control, and Domestic Deployment of the Armed Forces

The current paper addresses the intersection between the tasks assigned to the armed forces and the political control over the military. While the literature on civil–military relations tended to establish a close connection between weak political control over the military and domestic deployment, recent works challenged it. The paper contributes to this debate by exploring the role played by military identity in the relations between tasks performed by the armed forces and the political control over the military. It is argued that the military’s willingness to broaden its realm of action and engage in political interferences, as well as the way it responds to civilian efforts to expand the spectrum of tasks assigned to the armed forces and to bring the military into political disputes, are rooted in the military institutional identity. The argument is developed through the Brazilian case.