The impact of the multiethnic formation in the Brazilian military leadership in peacekeeping missions

Abstract

This research emerged amid a more globalized world, where the lack of dialogue between the concepts of universalism and relativism caused an increase in the number of conflicts around the planet. This fact has made the United Nations (UN) more present at the world scene, in order to try to harmonize the quarrels and restore peace. In this context, Brazil has been increasing its military participation in peacekeeping missions, requiring studies about the theoretical and continuous preparation of human resources, especially in the Joint Center for Peace Operations in Brazil (CCOPAB), noticeably in respect to the exercise of the Brazilian leadership within a multicultural environment. Under this view, starting particularly with a literature on the military leadership phenomenon, the Situational Leadership theory was chosen for its better relationship with the contingent aspects of peace missions, being impacted by idiosyncratic characters resulting from the multiethnic composition of the Brazilian people. This theory is emphasized by state-of-the-art authors and corroborated by the ‘Collective Subject Discourse’, a methodological resource applied to interviews and questionnaires submitted to Brazilian and foreign soldiers who took part in peace missions either as Military Observers, as Staff members or as troops on the terrain, in order to offer suggestions that can increase the level of military leadership in peacekeeping missions towards a multicultural leadership. It promotes ideas that permit the adoption of strategic partnerships between CCOPAB and the academic environment, so that the actors involved in operations - the “peacekeepers” - have the opportunity to be trained to develop a more effective and scientific multicultural leadership, even suggesting the export of the research concept to other countries, or to studies in Brazilian public policies and strategies.