Controlling Blue Berets: The Consequences of Political Neglect in the Case of Uruguay’s Participation in Peacekeeping

Abstract

Peacekeeping has widely been seen as conducive to submit the military to democratic rule. We put the assumption to an empirical test based on the case of Uruguay, today a fully democratic state that has consistently ranked among the world’s top peacekeeping contributors per capita. Specifically, we ask whether participation in peacekeeping has increased civilian control over the military. To answer this question, we focus on three aspects of democratic civil–military relations: civilian oversight, civilian policy management, and armed forces–society relations. We conclude that peacekeeping has done little to trigger greater involvement of civilians in the area of military and defense policy but that it contributed to reduce the gap between the armed forces and society. Nevertheless, due to political neglect by civilian authorities, the state of civil–military relations is one of subordinate military autonomy short of ideal, even if it does not represent a threat to democratic rule.

Engagement of Military Peacekeepers in Brazilian Politics (2011–2021)

“…While there is abundant scholarship emphasizing the potential democratizing effects of peace operations (Bruneau & Mendee, 2015;González & Jenne, 2021;Levin et al, 2016;Sotomayor, 2014), our contribution attends to the dreary results peace operations can bring to the civil-military balance in new democracies. This paper shows that a specific category of military officers, peacekeepers, is expanding and renewing the long tradition of the presence of the Brazilian military in politics (Carvalho, 2005;Marques, 2018;Stepan, 1988).…”

“…The model of objective civilian control, elaborated by Huntington (1957) and updated by Michael Desch (1996), states that as military leaders are concerned with external, instead of domestic, affairs, their relations with civilian authorities would be satisfactory and conducive to healthy civil-military relationship patterns inside a country. Peace operations should be a tool to consolidate or maintain democratic control over national armed forces, to the extent that they “submit the military to democratic rule” and keep officers away from politics (Gonzáles & Jenne, 2021, p. 435; Worboys, 2007). South American governments send troops abroad as a way to demonstrate their country’s commitment to liberal democracy and to improve the reputation of the national military (Sotomayor, 2013, p. 46).…”

“…As ample research on democracy has suggested, the military should be subordinated to the rule of law and policies defined by civilians (Fitch, 2001; Huntington, 1957, pp. 62–62; González & Jenne, 2021, p. 441). So, this raises the question of how the presence of peacekeepers as political articulators is affecting the quality of democracy and the civil-military balance in sending countries from the Global South, particularly in the case of Brazil.…”

Militarisation by Popular Demand? Explaining the Politics of Internal Military Roles in Brazil

“…Even in consolidated democracies, it is a common phenomenon that citizens express more trust in their armed forces than in political institutions (Johnson, 2018). Some argue that elevated levels of trust in Latin American militaries are nowadays related with their newly found role of staying out of politics, assuming secondary internal tasks, or being deployed to UN peacekeeping missions (González Guyer and Jenne, 2021). This interpretation is further supported by the fact that armed forces did manage to maintain professional relations with leftist governments that included former military regime opponents (Vargas Velásquez, 2008).…”