Military coups against elected leaders have hardly gone out of favor – see Myanmar, Egypt, and multiple African countries, even an attempt in Germany last month to incite an army rebellion. So it is worth asking why the top brass in Brazil, the world’s fifth-largest democracy that only a few decades ago was under junta rule, didn’t take the bait from thousands of protesters Sunday asking officers to join them as rioters briefly took over the capital’s main buildings in an attempt to roll back a presidential election.

For weeks before the winning candidate Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva took office Jan. 1, protesters had camped outside army barracks in Brasília hoping the military would keep the losing candidate, far-right President Jair Bolsonaro, in power. And that, despite a statement from three commanders of Brazil’s armed forces after the Oct. 30 election saying solutions to the country’s disputes must come from the democratic rule of law.

“When it came down to it, the armed forces were quiet,” wrote University of Denver scholar Rafael Ioris in The Conversation. “The idea of a traditional coup – tanks on the streets stuff – that just didn’t happen.” On Sunday, military forces ended up helping detain hundreds of the most violent protesters. While some in the military’s lower ranks may believe in Mr. Bolsonaro’s social causes, those in the higher ranks were not willing to overthrow a legitimate election, political commentator Tanguy Baghdadi told The Grid.