How National Populism Crafts Legitimacy: Militaristic Management as a post-bureaucratic paradigm

Abstract

In recent years, conservative populist movements emerged worldwide, and soon scholars realized the need to understand, conceptualize and examine their implications to management studies. Investigating the Brazilian regime led by president Bolsonaro, we argue here that national populism produces the erosion of bureaucracy by redefining the bases of the legitimacy of social action and social organization. What we call militarism, interpreted as an ideal type (Weber, 2012), is a way of understanding society as better governed based on military doctrine and system. Militarism emerges in Brazil as a form of rationalizing fears and establishes a post-bureaucratic paradigm of organization, with critical organizational implications. This discussion contributes more generally with analyzing the political aspects that influence new types of state administration and domination.