Language matters: Security discourse and civil-military relations in Brazil

The creation of a Defense Ministry in Brazil in 1999, while fundamentally altering the institutional landscape of civil-military relations, has yet to bring about substantive changes to the country's declaratory deftnse policy and thereby to the de facto quality of civilian control of the armed forces in the country. The Brazilian Armed Forces have staved off substantive modifications to policy despite extensive institutional change by continuing to set the conceptual and linguistic terms of the security agenda. Based on extensive field research, the investigation presents for the first time decisive elements behind the formulation of Brazilian security policy in the democratic period.