Braz. political sci. rev.2026;20(1):e0004.

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The Correlates of Brazil’s Military Expenditures, 1822-1945: The Politics of Defense Policy in a Non-Democratic Era

Octavio Amorim Neto , Igor Acácio

DOI: 10.1590/1981-3821202600010004

Abstract

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 20^th century.