The paper hypothesizes, based on a case study of the Military Police of Minas Gerais (PMMG), that Brazilian military police, in their quest for social and institutional legitimacy, and in the absence of social recognition of their practices and values, have developed two main strategies of institutional legitimation: on the one hand, the investment in managerial knowledge and its application to organizational dynamics and to the formal regulation of military police activity; on the other hand, the investment in a process of social differentiation, marked by the isomorphism of socially legitimized practices, adapted to the institutional context, often through actions of ritualization of its content. Through the analysis of the PMMG’s institutional trajectory over the last 40 years, we observed that these strategies have reinforced status stratification characteristics in the design of the military police profession in Brazil.
military police; professionalism; public security; management