Development Under Military Rule: Factionalism in Brazil

Abstract

Opinion in essays by the Brazilian military elite, published in their professional journals, is analyzed-prior to the military takeover, and at regular intervals during their 21 years of political control-to consider aspects and patterns of ideologic differences concerning national development strategy. This study finds one major and another minor faction existed, in addition to the recognized moderate and hard-line groups that alternatively headed Brazil's military regimes. Using their articles as a data base, the author detects the rising importance of an independence-minded nationalist cadre in the 1970s, which was also divided between those with authoritarian and democratic attitudes. Neither was dominant and in fact had to share ruling power with a moderate, internationalist faction to preserve necessary unity. The democratic nationalists, initially suppressed in the wake of purges of the reformist, leftist faction who had been Goulart appointees, gained strength during the presidencies of Geisel and Figuereido, thereby influencing and sustaining the promised transition toward civilian rule and democratic political processes. Development strategy did not shift toward the independent, nationalist direction, however, because of adverse external factors, the prior successes of the first military regimes, and the continuing need to preserve armed forces unity.