UC Riverside

    This dissertation sheds light on the causes of military deployments for public security in Latin American democracies. It argues for a need to understand the political reasoning behind them, emphasizing the role of civilian control and the military’s propensity to execute such missions. It employs a multi-method design that draws on original quantitative data, novel uses of existing events data, FOIA-obtained data, and interviews with high-ranking military officers.  The first empirical chapter presents the first-ever quantitative analysis of cross-national correlates of deployments. I find that crime rates matter and that civilian control over the military is associated with more deployments. Its interaction with the military propensity to execute such missions also predict deployment levels. The second empirical chapter investigates how the interaction between the civilian and military leadership takes place by explaining large-scale deployments in Brazil, finding those moments of high civilian control are the ones where large-scale deployments take place and that the military’s conduct is explained by their mission preferences and considerations regarding risks – individual and collective – in case collateral damage takes place. The third empirical chapter presents the first-ever quantitative analysis of subnational correlates of deployments. Crime rates are associated with more deployments, but political considerations are at play, and deployments are used as a tool for political support. These findings advance our understanding of the causes of domestic deployment of the military and in particular the role of civilian control over the military and the military’s propensity to execute such missions.