Dados is one of the most widely-read social sciences journals in Latin America. Created in 1966, it publishes innovative works, originating from academic research, by Brazilian and foreign authors. Edited by IESP-UERJ, it aims to reconcile scientific rigor and academic excellence with an emphasis on public debate based on the analysis of substantive issues of society and politics.
Dados vol. 46 n. 1 Rio de Janeiro 2003
Abstract
This article analyzes the formation of national intelligence systems in the modern state and the basic causes of institutional differences even among countries from the same constitutional tradition, like the United Kingdom and the United States. Considering intelligence systems as a sort of bureaucracy typically associated with the state's coercive core, one can trace their origins to three different historical matrices: 16th and 17th century European diplomacy, the Napoleonic form of war management at the turn from the 18th to the 19th century, and 19th and 20th century counterrevolutionary political policing. Following a logic of expansion and functional differentiation that is simultaneously horizontal and vertical, current national intelligence systems display great organizational complexity and dilemmas in their institutionalization which provide good examples of the virtual impossibility of complete democratization of the state in the contemporary world.
Keywords: institutions, state-building, war, intelligence services, bureaucracy
DOI: 10.1590/S0011-52582003000100003
National intelligence systems: origins, expansion logic, and current configuration
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