Civil-Military Relations and Coups

To begin, a substantial body of work considers the relationship between the executive and the military to understand coups. The primary emphasis here is on decisions made by leaders to deter coup activity. Known as the guardianship dilemma, the basic problem for leaders is that armed forces must be strong enough to challenge threats to the regime from external actors and mass uprisings; however, the same tools used to deter threats external to the regime can be used against the regime itself in the form of a coup (Feaver, 1999; Huntington, 1957; McMahon & Slantchev, 2015; Svolik, 2012). Understanding the strategies that leaders use to solve the guardianship dilemma has produced two related sets of literatures.

First, scholars have considered how the threat environment drives executive decisions about military strength. For example, Svolik (2012) argues that executives will empower the military when threats from the population are extreme, and can avoid coups when threats are meager by weakening the military. As shown by McMahon and Slantchev (2015), however, devising the perfect balance to deter threats and assure military loyalty is easier said than done. If both the military and the executive perceive a strong internal threat, then coups are uncommon because both actors have a strong incentive to hold the regime together. When views about the threat environment diverge, however, militaries may be likely to coup. Moving beyond military empowerment, scholars have considered how elites are more generally appeased by executives. For instance, Bove and Rivera (2015) show that co-opting elites through elected authoritarian legislatures helps executives avoid coups, while Makara (2013) considers how leaders like Egypt’s Mubarak provided post-retirement appointments and financial awards to military elites to assure loyalty.

The second main area of work focused on the guardianship dilemma considers coup-proofing. At the most basic level, coup-proofing includes moves by the executive to minimize the likelihood that a small group can seize power (Quinlivan, 1999). This includes a variety of tactics, including appointing and promoting military officers based on loyalty rather than merit, purging potentially disloyal officers, creating parallel and rival military structures, rotating military officers, and centralizing control of information (Albrecht, 2015; Belkin & Schofer, 2003; de Bruin, 2018; Pilster & Böhmelt, 2012; Pollack, 2002; Powell, 2012; Sudduth, 2017a).

While early work from scholars like Quinlivan (1999) provided thorough descriptions of how leaders in places like the Middle East coup-proofed their regimes to maintain power for decades, more recent work explains when we should expect executives to pursue various coup-proofing tactics and the consequences that such actions might have. Strategies are varied, with some emphasizing the ability to effectively purchase loyalty with higher military expenditures (Collier & Hoeffler, 2007; Leon, 2014). Others have pointed to why might be called structural coup-proofing, which includes building up armed counterweights to the armed forces (Bohmelt & Pilster, 2015; de Bruin, 2018; Powell, 2012). Following qualitative efforts that have illustrated the importance of utilizing ethnic identity in the armed forces (e.g., Enloe, 1980; Horowitz, 2000), recent work has sought to more formally account for the manipulation of the military on ethnic lines (Roessler, 2011, 2017).

For example, Pilster and Böhmelt (2012) show that democracies engage in less coup-proofing than non-democracies, while Sudduth (2017b) shows that executives are apt to purge potential rivals immediately following coups. The efficacy of these efforts, however, is unclear. While it is generally presumed that leaders are effective in preventing coups, the empirical record demonstrates a variety of contradictions. For example, quantitative efforts to investigate “counterbalancing” noted in the previous two paragraphs have pointed to a reduction in coup activity, a non-robust effect, a curvilinear effect, and no effect (e.g., Albrecht, 2015). Further, even if promoting a coup-inhibiting trend, these same practices have also been linked to an increased likelihood of rebellion against the government (Powell, 2014b, 2019; Roessler, 2011). Future studies could follow the lead of de Bruin (2018) in providing more attention to how well data quality and operationalization allow us to make accurate inferences.

Protests, Conflict, and Coups

A second main area of work seeking to understand why coups come about looks beyond civil-military relations by considering how the broader population influences elite decisions to coup. Coup scholars have long recognized that militaries are apt to intervene when the public demonstrates against the regime (Finer, 1962; Sutter, 1999; Welch, 1970), and the correlation between protests and coups is one of the most consistent relationships shown in the empirical literature on coups. More recent work has attempted to explain the causal mechanisms that link protests and coups, and to further describe when we should expect protests to result in coups. For example, Casper and Tyson (2014) show that protests can ease coordination problems among coup plotters, especially when a free media is allowed to provide information about public discontent. Lee (2015) considered the type of regime, explaining that protests under personalist regimes are apt to result in coups, while non-personalist forms of authoritarian rule are apt to result in repression of the protesters. Meanwhile, Johnson and Thyne (2018) show that protests near the capitol city are apt to spur coups, while dispersed protests have little effect.

Moving beyond protests, a nascent body of work considers the nexus between higher forms of anti-regime activity, civil conflicts, and coup activity. For example, Bell and Sudduth (2017) show that civil wars are apt to spur coups, especially when governments face strong rebels, and Thyne (2017) demonstrates that coups during civil wars make war termination more likely. Additional dynamics—addressed in the subsequent sections—can be seen with international conflict. However, empirical scholarship is still in its infancy when attempting to explain when soldiers turn their arms away from the enemies of the state and toward the state itself.

Coups and the Economy

Similar to other processes like civil conflicts, scholars have consistently demonstrated a strong link between economic weakness and coups. Londregan and Poole (1990) were among the first to assess this link in a large-N context, and more recent evidence buttresses this relationship. Scholars have more recently attempted to refine the mechanisms linking economic factors and coups. For example, Houle (2016) considers class inequality, which is apt to incentivize people to challenge the government but also decreases the opportunity to do so with stronger militaries. The end result is fewer civil conflicts, but an increased likelihood of coups. An important study by Kim (2016) considers the dynamic nature of the economy. Differentiating between permanent and transitory shocks, Kim instruments economic shocks using rainfall and temperature variation to ease endogeneity concerns, finding that shocks indeed increase the likelihood of coups. These shocks, however, appear to be most meaningful in smaller economies. Meanwhile, Tusalem (2010) demonstrates that developing states can lower the likelihood of coups by securing property rights to ease elite concerns about expropriation of wealth, while Powell and Chacha (2016) borrow from the capitalist peace literature to argue that a range of economic dynamics can incentivize domestic and international actors to actively avoid the potentially destabilizing consequences of a coup.

A considerable amount of scholarship has investigated the association between commodity-driven economies and political instability more generally. Dubbed “the resource curse,” economies dependent on natural resources have been said to suffer from problems including economic stagnation and increased likelihood of civil war (e.g., Ross, 2012). And while notorious cases such as Nigeria point to the importance of resource wealth in the coup story, empirical scholarship on the association with coups is limited, and what exists seems contradictory. For example, explorations by Cotet and Tsui (2013), Escribà-Folch and Wright (2010), and Singh (2014) indicate that oil wealth has no association with coups, while Collier and Hoeffler (2007) report the same for natural resource rents more generally. Studies including Powell and Chacha (2016) find that higher levels of oil wealth are associated with significantly higher coup risk. These studies are at least in partial contrast to a previously demonstration association between oil wealth and the stability of authoritarian regimes (e.g., Smith, 2004), suggesting the need for more theoretical and empirical consideration.

Institutions, Politics, and Coups

As political scientists largely drive the research on coups, it should come as no surprise that plenty of scholars have sought to understand how things like elections, democratization, and institutions influence the likelihood of coups. Early research in this vein from Belkin and Schofer (2003) showed that the strength of civil society, regime legitimacy, and past coups are strong predictors of coups. These sorts of factors, particularly the exclusion of a large proportion of the population from political institutions, have been found to increase the likelihood of coups alongside civil wars and riots (Bodea, Elbadawi, & Houle, 2017). Beyond this basic level, scholars have sought to understand how variations in democracy and authoritarianism influence coups.

First, scholars have sought to understand the relationship between coups and democracy. While it is easy to assume democracies are less coup-prone, the literature has arrived at varied results. Bell (2016) explains that democracy makes it difficult for executives to repress threats from rivals, which makes coups easier to plot. However, rivals have less incentive to coup in democracies because they can address their grievances and achieve power via more legitimate processes. Bell finds evidence that democracies are less coup-prone, but coups plotted against democracies are more likely to succeed. Hiroi and Omori (2013) show an inverted-U relationship, with coups most likely to happen in semi-authoritarian regimes, mirroring the theoretical exploration of authoritarian consolidation by Svolik (2009). Taking a more dynamic approach and focusing on Africa, Lindberg and Clark (2008) seem to align most closely with Bell (2016) in demonstrating that liberalizing regimes are less likely to face coups. More recently, Powell, Faulkner, Dean, and Romano (2018) argue that these discrepancies can be attributed to conditional effects, finding that democracies are significantly more coup-prone than civil autocracies when the regime is young and when military expenditures are low but become significantly more resistant to coups once reaching the median level of these factors.

Second, given that most coups happen within authoritarian regimes, plenty of scholars have attempted to understand how variations in authoritarianism influence coups and other forms of leader removal. For example, Gandhi and Przeworski (2007) explain that authoritarian institutions lengthen a dictator’s tenure in office. While this finding led to the common argument that elections stabilize autocracies, Wig and Rød (2016) add important nuance to this argument. Considering elections in authoritarian regimes, they explain that election outcomes can reveal information about the strength of the opposition and the likelihood of a successful revolution. If this information reveals that a successful revolution is likely, coups are apt to come about as a way for elites to maintain their privileged status (see also Acemoglu & Robinson, 2001).

Coups and the Prospects for Democracy

Beginning with democracy, scholars have long understood that coups are the primary way that democracies falter (Kieh & Agbese, 2005; Onwumechili 1998). As such, there is near universal agreement that coups against democratic regimes are bad for the global spread of democracy. However, few coups happen in democratic regimes; rather, coups are most likely to overthrow authoritarian leaders. This reality has caused many to consider whether coups may actually improve an authoritarian state’s prospects for democracy. Collier (2008) argued that coups should be seen as legitimate means by which to extricate states from the rule of dictators in places like Myanmar and Zimbabwe, and even Amnesty International (2018) pointed to the eventual coup in the latter as providing a meaningful opportunity for democratization.

Two of the earliest scholarly studies to examine the coup-democratization relationship across time and space largely draw the same conclusion. Marinov and Goemans (2014) demonstrate that coups are apt to lead to competitive elections, particularly in aid-dependent states following the Cold War. Thyne and Powell (2016) show that coups are most likely to produce democratization when they overthrow staunchly authoritarian dictators. Debate about this relationship exists, however. Frantz and Kendall-Taylor (2017) claim a very low likelihood of post-coup democratization, even relative to other forms of irregular regime change. Tansey (2016) argues that few coups result in high-quality democratic rule, for example. Derpanopoulos, Frantz, and Geddes (2016) question Thyne and Powell’s (2016) findings—primarily through the omission of a control for prior military regime. However, Miller (2016) subsequently argued that the findings of Derpanopoulos et al. (2016) were a product of biased sampling, and provided support for the coup/democratization nexus. Beyond a general link between coups and democratization, Miller (2012) has argued that high levels of economic development can prompt democratization following the irregular exit of leaders, while Chacha and Powell (2017) point to economic interdependence as promoting post-coup democratization.

The literature has thus reached apparently contradictory findings about how coups influence democracy. These can be reconciled in a number of respects. First, democratization skeptics overstate the claims of earlier authors, who are clear that although coups might increase the prospect of democratization in an authoritarian state, the probability of democratization is still quite low. Second, differences in operationalization of key variables can lead to wildly different conclusions. For example, Frantz and Kendall-Taylor (2017) point to a post-coup democratization rate about one-fourth as high as that of Derpanopoulos et al. (2016), despite using the same data for democratization. The primary reason for this, we believe, is the former’s use of a one-year window to assess whether a transition has occurred, while the latter utilizes a three-year window. We suspect when democratization does occur, it is likely to be at the end of a well-organized electoral process—which will often take years—as opposed to immediate and sweeping changes to the political system. What is clear is that democratization often occurs following coups, though in a minority of cases. More research could do substantially more to identify the role of coups in these transitions particularly in order to distinguish whether democracy follows as a result of these ousters or in spite of them.

Coups and Economic Development

Unlike democracy, there is wide consensus that coups are harmful for states’ economies, both due to the event itself and to the uncertainty regarding the future investment climate (Fosu, 2002). An early study from Sala-i-Martin (1997) was one of the first to demonstrate that coups harm economic growth, which coincides with similar findings from Asiedu (2006), Barro (1991), and Levine and Renelt (1992), about the harmful influence of coups on investment. Additional work on economic growth rates similarly finds a deleterious impact of coups (e.g., Alesina, Ozler, Roubini, & Swagel, 1996; Feng, 1997). Using updated methodological approaches, a newer study from Meyersson (2016) largely confirms these earlier assessments. One mechanism that has been used to explain the harmful effects of coups on economic growth focuses on military expenditures. According to Bove and Brauner (2016), we should expect authoritarian regimes to have higher levels of military expenditures than democracies, and military regimes should have the highest levels among all regime types. Empirical analyses from Leon (2014) and Bove and Nisticó (2014) largely support this expectation. Given that almost all coup-born regimes are led by military leaders, therefore, it should come as no surprise that coups are often harmful for economic growth.

Coups, Coup Risk, and Conflict

While scholars such as Florea (2018) and Piplani and Talmadge (2016) have investigated the role that foreign threats can have on coups, other scholars have considered how coups, and threats of coups more generally, can influence conflict behavior in the state. These efforts have largely centered on two themes. First, scholars have considered how coups can incentivize the pursuit of foreign conflicts. Second, others have considered how coup threats and coup-proofing can influence military effectiveness. Investigations of the former typically involve diversionary incentives. Diversionary theory argues that leaders will sometimes pursue foreign policy objectives—including the initiation of disputes and even war—for domestic political expediency.

Belkin and Schofer (2005) further argue that coup risk will either incentivize increased counterbalancing or low-level military disputes. Miller and Elgun (2011) find that heightened coup risk significantly increases the likelihood of conflict initiation in Latin America. A study of a global sample indicates this might be a worthwhile strategy, as interstate dispute involvement was found by Arbatli and Arbatli (2016) to reduce the likelihood of coups. Similar findings have been reported in recent literature on peacekeeping. Kathman and Melin (2017), for example, argue that countries at higher risk of a coup are more likely to contribute to UN peacekeeping operations. Meanwhile, Lundgren (2018) finds that participation in such missions does in fact reduce the likelihood of coups. This literature suggests that foreign policy behavior can be a direct product of coup fears and can indeed help stabilize a leader’s hold on power. While diversionary arguments may be applicable to unique circumstances, as suggested by Levy (1989) and Fordham (2017), states with higher coup risk indeed seem to be ripe cases where diversionary behavior is likely.

Investigations of coup-proofing have pointed to the numerous ways in which coup fears—and specifically coup-proofing—can undermine military performance in war time. Qualitative efforts pointing to the detrimental influence of a range of coup-proofing strategies abound, with Quinlivan (1999), Pollack (2002), Talmadge (2013), and Narang and Talmadge (2018) serving as notable works. Though adequately proxying coup risk presents some challenges, scholars have begun to find additional evidence quantitatively. Pilster and Bohmelt (2011), for example, find that more heavily coup-proofed regimes suffer higher loss exchange ratios than their adversaries on the battlefield. Powell (2014a), meanwhile, argues that such weakened military capacity can reduce the diversionary incentive provided by coup risk.

Refining Coup Data

Following the precedent of data collection efforts such as McGowan’s work on Africa, cross-national data on coups has greatly advanced in the last decade. Beyond Powell and Thyne, large projects operated by the Center for Systemic Peace (Marshall & Marshall, 2018) and the Cline Center for Advanced Social Research (2013) have offered publicly available coup data on a range of coup-related actions. Other collaborative efforts include the Archigos Dataset of Political Leaders, which considers the manner leaders enter or exit office (Goemans, Gleditsch, & Chiozza, 2009.). Beyond these, individual scholars such as Svolik (2012) have pursued their own data, specific to their own needs.

Scholars such as Albrecht (2015) and Aksoy et al. (2015) have gone to great lengths to ensure the data they utilize are in fact valid measures for their conceptualization of coups, including completely re-evaluating some existing datasets in their entirety. However, as a general rule, scholars could do more to understand the differences between available datasets and how coding peculiarities could have important implications for their analyses. For example, in the Powell and Thyne data, a coup can occur in the aftermath of a leader’s natural death, as seen in Togo in 2005, where power was effectively seized from a constitutionally appointed successor instead of a previously sitting head of government. Though meeting the traditional definition of a coup, an important distinction is that an established leader was not actually targeted by the military, and the coup itself could be seen as an effort to maintain the status quo rather than target it. Consequently, Archigos data would be a very useful for theory centering on when leaders are removed rather than when militaries specifically seize power.

Scholars could similarly do more to both theoretically and empirically account for the link between mass movements and coups. Coups often occur in the midst of public resentment against the regime, and classifying an event as either a coup or a popular revolt is both potentially arbitrary and potentially important in implication. The ousters of Egypt’s Mubarak in 2011 and Burkina Faso’s Compaoré in 2014 illustrate this ambiguity quite well. In each case, the incumbent faced substantial domestic pressure but initially refused to step down, only later to see the military come to power and the ousted leader either jailed or exiled. Popular resentment against these leaders was essential in their ousters, but ignoring the key role the armed forces played in their removal and replacement could both omit the important role of the military and conflate what might be truly popular revolts with those who saw regime insiders preempt a larger, revolutionary-style change to the system.

Beyond Coup-ism

Relative to other aspects of civil-military relations, coups have been disproportionately represented in scholarship (Croissant, Kuehn, Chambers, & Wolf, 2010). This is unsurprising given that coup attempts—particularly those that succeed—are quite transparent events that are more likely to be documented than other actions (Feaver, 1999). However, the current fixation on coups—particularly successful ones—may come at the expense of other meaningful activities in a soldier’s toolkit. It is important for scholars to both give attention to these other dynamics as well as understand how they are associated with coups.

First, failed coups themselves represent around half of all overt coup attempts, and they play important roles in different political outcomes. Failed coups are often followed by mass purges, as dramatically demonstrated in cases such as the failed 2016 Turkish coup, and as more systematically demonstrated by Easton and Siverson (2018) and Powell et al. (2018). In addition to authoritarian entrenchment, failed coups have catalyzed political events such as the onset of civil war and the termination of civil war, have both ended and promoted democratization, have prompted genocide and other mass reprisals, and have led to economic consequences like capital flight. Compared to successful coups, though, we know little about these events.

Second, there has been a lack of scholarly attention given to mutinies, despite both their consequences and their increasing frequency. Consider the three major 2017 mutinies in Cote d’Ivoire, for example, which spread to over a dozen locations and ultimately saw the government agree to pay 8,500 soldiers $19,000 each, despite being mired in a budget crisis brought on by a collapse of cocoa prices (Schiel, Faulkner, & Powell, 2017). Even case-specific analyses are lacking, and quantitative assessments virtually unheard of. The recent scholarship by Dwyer (2015a, 2015b, 2015c, 2017) on West African mutinies and the dissertation by Johnson (2018) are likely to act as major catalysts for study on the subject. Though a distinct phenomenon from coups, little effort has been made to understand how these events are associated, and even why some mutinies with limited goals sometimes escalate to coups (e.g., 2012 Mali). For example, prior scholarship tells us little about what Cote d’Ivoire’s tumultuous 2017 could mean for its future coup risk.

Third, still distinct from coups and mutinies are other important forms of military insubordination. For example, desertion or “staying quartered” are problems that plague many militaries, yet little systematic effort has been made to understand the phenomenon, or why soldiers would choose this course of action over mutinies or coups (e.g., Pion-Berlin, Esparza, & Grisham, 2014; Pion-Berlin & Trinkunas, 2010). This is especially true given the mass desertions seen during civil conflict in places like Syria and Libya, while coups are said to be more likely to occur in this context. Recent contributions from Albrecht (2016), Koehler, Ohl, and Albrecht (2016), McLauchlin (2015), and Nepstad (2013) have the potential to push this agenda forward.

What Next?

The previous discussion has pointed to a number of coup trends, regarding both their causes and their consequences. Scholarship has tended to focus more on what causes coups rather than investigating their outcomes. Though coups have been argued to both end and promote democracy, specific causal mechanisms remain elusive. For the democratization argument alone, it is unclear what specific factors prompt regime insiders to act against the incumbent, whether they ultimately democratize due to their own motivations or whether these decisions are the result of exogenous pressure from other domestic or international actors.

Understanding the role of foreign actors, for example, is especially important given the policy relevance. Coups are largely clustered in a subset of the world’s more economically weakest states, potentially providing the international community substantial leverage in determining a coup’s ultimate fate. Though scholarship has begun to tackle the degree to which these actors respond to coups, we have little understanding of how these reactions influence a state’s subsequent political trajectory.