The Correlates of Brazil’s Military Expenditures, 1822-1945
The Politics of Defense Policy in a Non-Democratic Era
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 8239643 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Octavio Amorim Neto (0000-0002-3891-3361), Igor Acacio (0000-0001-9998-0683) |
| Year | 2026 |
| Volume | 20 |
| Issue | 1 |
| Publication date | 2026-01-01 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Brazilian Political Science Review (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 1981-3821 • E-ISSN: 1981-3821 |
| Publisher | FapUNIFESP (SciELO) (PUBLISHER) |
| DOI | 10.1590/1981-3821202600010004 |
| OpenAlex | W7139039051 |
| SCIELO_PID | S1981-38212026000100204 |
| Language | EN |
| References cited | 17 |
The complex relationships between domestic factors, the armed forces, and the international system are key to analyzing any country’s defense policy. Defense spending is the most tangible product of defense policymaking. This article delves into the intricacies of those relationships by examining the correlates of the defense burden in a pre-democratic period in Brazil, where the democratically informed guns-versus-butter trade-off was not a central concern for policymakers because there was no national mass-based political party. Leveraging an original dataset created through meticulous historiographical research and employing time series analysis techniques, we investigate the factors shaping Brazil’s military expenditures in 1822-1945. This is the first study of its kind looking into the Brazilian case for this period. Our findings indicate that political instability often led governments to increase military funding. Yet, levels of electoral democracy, greater military political power, and military-generated political crises were not systematically associated with defense spending, challenging conventional hypotheses. Finally, the article provides systematic quantitative evidence on the negative association between defense spending and Brazil’s freeriding on the US security umbrella throughout the first half of the 20th century
Association (psychology · Military policy · Military theory · Military threat · National security · Political instability · Politics · Product (mathematics · Brazilian History and Foreign Policy · Defense, Military, and Policy Studies · Military History and Strategy
Do Democracies Spend Less on the Military? Spain as a Long-Term Case Study (1876-2009)
Political Regimes and the Extractive Capacity of Governments
How the Military Competes for Expenditure in Brazilian Democracy
Measuring Arms
Bearing the Defense Burden, 1886-1989
Kantian Liberalism, Regime Type, and Military Resource Allocation
Bread Before Guns or Butter
The Effects of the International Security Environment on National Military Expenditures
Guns versus Butter
Buttery Guns and Welfare Hawks
What goes up, must come down? The asymmetric effects of economic growth and international threat on military spending
Power, proximity, and democracy
The Effect of Declining Military Influence on Defense Budgets in Latin America
Why No Trade-off between 'Guns and Butter'? Armed Forces and Social Spending in the Advanced Industrial Democracies, 1960-1993
| Citation velocity | historical |
|---|---|
| Highly cited | No |