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A coup d'état ( /ˌkuːdeɪˈtɑː/ i ; French for 'stroke of state' [1] ), or simply a coup, is an illegal and overt attempt by the military or other government elites to unseat the incumbent leader by force. [2] [3] A self-coup is when a leader, having come to power through legal means, tries to stay in power through illegal means. [3]
By one estimate, there were 457 coup attempts from 1950 to 2010, half of which were successful. [2] Most coup attempts occurred in the mid-1960s, but there were also large numbers of coup attempts in the mid-1970s and the early 1990s. [2] Coups occurring in the post-Cold War period have been more likely to result in democratic systems than Cold War coups, [4] [5] [6] though coups still mostly perpetuate authoritarianism. [7]
Many factors may lead to the occurrence of a coup, as well as determine the success or failure of a coup. Once a coup is underway, coup success is driven by coup-makers' ability to get elites and the public to believe that their coup attempt will be successful. [8] The number of successful coups has decreased over time. [2] Failed coups in authoritarian systems are likely to strengthen the power of the authoritarian ruler. [9] [10] The cumulative number of coups is a strong predictor of future coups, a phenomenon referred to as the "coup trap". [11] [12] [13] [14]
In what is referred to as "coup-proofing", regimes create structures that make it hard for any small group to seize power. These coup-proofing strategies may include the strategic placing of family, ethnic, and religious groups in the military; and fragmenting of military and security agencies. [15] However, coup-proofing reduces military effectiveness as loyalty is prioritized over experience when filling key positions within the military. [16] [17] [18] [19] [20] [21] [22]
The term comes from French coup d'État, literally meaning a 'stroke of state' or 'blow of state'. [23] [24] [25] In French, the word État (French: [eta] ) is capitalized when it denotes a sovereign political entity. [26]
Although the concept of a coup d'état has featured in politics since antiquity, the phrase is of relatively recent coinage. [27] It did not appear within an English text before the 19th century except when used in the translation of a French source, there being no simple phrase in English to convey the contextualized idea of a 'knockout blow to the existing administration within a state'.
One early use within text translated from French was in 1785 in a printed translation of a letter from a French merchant, commenting on an arbitrary decree or arrêt issued by the French king restricting the import of British wool. [28] What may be its first published use within a text composed in English is an editor's note in the London Morning Chronicle , January 7, 1802, reporting the arrest by Napoleon in France, of Moreau, Berthier, Masséna, and Bernadotte: "There was a report in circulation yesterday of a sort of coup d'état having taken place in France, in consequence of some formidable conspiracy against the existing government."
In the British press, the phrase came to be used to describe the various murders by Napoleon's alleged secret police, the Gens d'Armes d'Elite , who executed the Duke of Enghien: "the actors in torture, the distributors of the poisoning draughts, and the secret executioners of those unfortunate individuals or families, whom Bonaparte's measures of safety require to remove. In what revolutionary tyrants call grand[s] coups d'état, as butchering, or poisoning, or drowning, en masse, they are exclusively employed." [29]
A self-coup, also called an autocoup (from the Spanish: autogolpe), or coup from the top, is a form of coup d'état in which a nation's head, having come to power through legal means, tries to stay in power through illegal means. The leader may dissolve or render powerless the national legislature and unlawfully assume extraordinary powers not granted under normal circumstances. Other measures may include annulling the nation's constitution, suspending civil courts, and having the head of government assume dictatorial powers. [30] [31]
Between 1946 and 2022, an estimated 148 self-coup attempts took place, 110 in autocracies and 38 in democracies. [32]A soft coup, sometimes referred to as a silent coup or a bloodless coup, is an illegal overthrow of a government, but unlike a regular coup d'état it is achieved without the use of force or violence. [33] See: Wiki (Citizens United v. FEC). Although SCOTUS may "legalize" bribery of Govt and bribery of SCOTUS that does not mean a Coup is not occurring. This is referred to by scholars as the "Legal Phase" of fascism. [111] [112]
A palace coup or palace revolution is a coup in which one faction within the ruling group displaces another faction within a ruling group. [34] Along with popular protests, palace coups are a major threat to dictators. [35] The Harem conspiracy of the 12th century BC was one of the earliest. Palace coups were common in Imperial China. [36] They have also occurred among the Habsburg dynasty in Austria, the Al-Thani dynasty in Qatar, [37] and in Haiti in the 19th to early 20th centuries. [38] The majority of Russian tsars between 1725 and 1801 were either overthrown or usurped power in palace coups. [39]
The term Putsch ([pʊtʃ], from Swiss-German 'knock'), denotes the political-military actions of an unsuccessful minority reactionary coup. [40] [41] The term was initially coined for the Züriputsch of 6 September 1839 in Switzerland. It was also used for attempted coups in Weimar Germany, such as the 1920 Kapp Putsch, Küstrin Putsch, and the 1923 Beer Hall Putsch by Adolf Hitler. [42]
The Night of the Long Knives in 1934 was a purge by the Hitler government to eliminate the military faction led by Ernst Röhm, but Nazi propaganda justified it as preventing a supposed putsch planned or attempted by Röhm. The Nazi term Röhm-Putsch is still used by Germans to describe the event, often with quotation marks as the 'so-called Röhm Putsch'. [43]
The 1961 Algiers putsch and the 1991 August Putsch also use the term.
Pronunciamiento ('pronouncement') is a term of Spanish origin for a type of coup d'état. Specifically the pronunciamiento is the formal declaration deposing the previous government and justifying the installation of the new government by the golpe de estado. One author distinguishes a coup, in which a military or political faction takes power for itself, from a pronunciamiento, in which the military deposes the existing government and hands over power to a new, ostensibly civilian government. [44]
A "barracks revolt" or cuartelazo is another type of military revolt, from the Spanish term cuartel ('quarter' or 'barracks'), in which the mutiny of specific military garrisons sparks a larger military revolt against the government. [45]
Other types of actual or attempted seizures of power are sometimes called "coups with adjectives". The appropriate term can be subjective and carries normative, analytical, and political implications. [33]
While a coup is usually a conspiracy of a small group, a revolution or rebellion is usually started more spontaneously and by larger groups of uncoordinated people. [47] The distinction is not always clear. Sometimes, a coup is labelled as a revolution by the coup plotters to pretend to democratic legitimacy. [48] [49]
According to Clayton Thyne and Jonathan Powell's coup data set, there were 457 coup attempts from 1950 to 2010, of which 227 (49.7%) were successful and 230 (50.3%) were unsuccessful. [2] They find that coups have "been most common in Africa and the Americas (36.5% and 31.9%, respectively). Asia and the Middle East have experienced 13.1% and 15.8% of total global coups, respectively. Europe has experienced by far the fewest coup attempts: 2.6%." [2] Most coup attempts occurred in the mid-1960s, but there were also large numbers of coup attempts in the mid-1970s and the early 1990s. [2] From 1950 to 2010, a majority of coups failed in the Middle East and Latin America. They had a somewhat higher chance of success in Africa and Asia. [7] Numbers of successful coups have decreased over time. [2]
A number of political science datasets document coup attempts around the world and over time, generally starting in the post-World War II period. Major examples include the Global Instances of Coups dataset, the Coups & Political Instability dataset by the Center of Systemic Peace, the Coup d'etat Project by the Cline Center, the Colpus coup dataset, and the Coups and Agency Mechanism dataset. A 2023 study argued that major coup datasets tend to over-rely on international news sources to gather their information, potentially biasing the types of events included. [50] Its findings show that while such a strategy is sufficient for gathering information on successful and failed coups, attempts to gather data on coup plots and rumors require a greater consultation of regional and local-specific sources.
Successful coups are one method of regime change that thwarts the peaceful transition of power. [51] [52] A 2016 study categorizes four possible outcomes to coups in dictatorships: [5]
The study found that about half of all coups in dictatorships—both during and after the Cold War—install new autocratic regimes. [5] New dictatorships launched by coups engage in higher levels of repression in the year after the coup than existed in the year before the coup. [5] One-third of coups in dictatorships during the Cold War and 10% of later ones reshuffled the regime leadership. [5] Democracies were installed in the wake of 12% of Cold War coups in dictatorships and 40% of post-Cold War ones. [5]
Coups occurring in the post-Cold War period have been more likely to result in democratic systems than Cold War coups, [4] [5] [6] though coups still mostly perpetuate authoritarianism. [7] Coups that occur during civil wars shorten the war's duration. [54]
A 2003 review of the academic literature found that the following factors influenced coups:
The literature review in a 2016 study includes mentions of ethnic factionalism, supportive foreign governments, leader inexperience, slow growth, commodity price shocks, and poverty. [56]
Coups have been found to appear in environments that are heavily influenced by military powers. Multiple of the above factors are connected to military culture and power dynamics. These factors can be divided into multiple categories, with two of these categories being a threat to military interests and support for military interests. If interests go in either direction, the military will find itself either capitalizing off that power or attempting to gain it back.
Oftentimes, military spending is an indicator of the likelihood of a coup taking place. Nordvik found that about 75% of coups that took place in many different countries rooted from military spending and oil windfalls. [55]
The accumulation of previous coups is a strong predictor of future coups, [11] [12] a phenomenon called the coup trap. [13] [14] A 2014 study of 18 Latin American countries found that the establishment of open political competition helps bring countries out of the coup trap and reduces cycles of political instability. [14]
Hybrid regimes are more vulnerable to coups than very authoritarian states or democratic states. [57] A 2021 study found that democratic regimes were not substantially more likely to experience coups. [58] A 2015 study finds that terrorism is strongly associated with re-shuffling coups. [59] A 2016 study finds that there is an ethnic component to coups: "When leaders attempt to build ethnic armies, or dismantle those created by their predecessors, they provoke violent resistance from military officers." [60] Another 2016 study shows that protests increase the risk of coups, presumably because they ease coordination obstacles among coup plotters and make international actors less likely to punish coup leaders. [61] A third 2016 study finds that coups become more likely in the wake of elections in autocracies when the results reveal electoral weakness for the incumbent autocrat. [62] A fourth 2016 study finds that inequality between social classes increases the likelihood of coups. [63] A fifth 2016 study finds no evidence that coups are contagious; one coup in a region does not make other coups in the region likely to follow. [64] One study found that coups are more likely to occur in states with small populations, as there are smaller coordination problems for coup-plotters. [65]
A 2019 study found that when a country's politics is polarized and electoral competition is low, civilian-recruited coups become more likely. [66]
A 2023 study found that civilian elites are more likely to be associated with instigating military coups while civilians embedded in social networks are more likely to be associated with consolidating military coups. [67]
In autocracies, the frequency of coups seems to be affected by the succession rules in place, with monarchies with a fixed succession rule being much less plagued by instability than less institutionalized autocracies. [68] [69] [70]
A 2014 study of 18 Latin American countries in the 20th-century study found the legislative powers of the presidency does not influence coup frequency. [14]
A 2017 study found that autocratic leaders whose states were involved in international rivalries over disputed territory were more likely to be overthrown in a coup. The authors of the study provide the following logic for why this is:
Autocratic incumbents invested in spatial rivalries need to strengthen the military in order to compete with a foreign adversary. The imperative of developing a strong army puts dictators in a paradoxical situation: to compete with a rival state, they must empower the very agency—the military—that is most likely to threaten their own survival in office. [71]
However, two 2016 studies found that leaders who were involved in militarized confrontations and conflicts were less likely to face a coup. [72] [73]
A 2019 study found that states that had recently signed civil war peace agreements were much more likely to experience coups, in particular when those agreements contained provisions that jeopardized the interests of the military. [74]
Research suggests that protests spur coups, as they help elites within the state apparatus to coordinate coups. [75]
A 2019 study found that regional rebellions made coups by the military more likely. [76]
A 2018 study found that coup attempts were less likely in states where the militaries derived significant incomes from peacekeeping missions. [77] The study argued that militaries were dissuaded from staging coups because they feared that the UN would no longer enlist the military in peacekeeping missions. [77]
A separate 2018 study found that the presence of military academies were linked to coups. The authors argue that military academies make it easier for military officers to plan coups, as the schools build networks among military officers. [78]
A 2018 study found that "oil price shocks are seen to promote coups in onshore-intensive oil countries, while preventing them in offshore-intensive oil countries". [79] The study argues that states which have onshore oil wealth tend to build up their military to protect the oil, whereas states do not do that for offshore oil wealth. [79]
A 2020 study found that elections had a two-sided impact on coup attempts, depending on the state of the economy. During periods of economic expansion, elections reduced the likelihood of coup attempts, whereas elections during economic crises increased the likelihood of coup attempts. [80]
A 2021 study found that oil wealthy nations see a pronounced risk of coup attempts but these coups are unlikely to succeed. [81]
A 2014 study of 18 Latin American countries in the 20th century study found that coup frequency does not vary with development levels, economic inequality, or the rate of economic growth. [14]
In what is referred to as "coup-proofing", regimes create structures that make it hard for any small group to seize power. These coup-proofing strategies may include the strategic placing of family, ethnic, and religious groups in the military; creation of an armed force parallel to the regular military; and development of multiple internal security agencies with overlapping jurisdiction that constantly monitor one another. [15] It may also involve frequent salary hikes and promotions for members of the military, [82] and the deliberate use of diverse bureaucrats. [83] Research shows that some coup-proofing strategies reduce the risk of coups occurring. [84] [85] However, coup-proofing reduces military effectiveness, [16] [17] [18] [19] [20] [21] and limits the rents that an incumbent can extract. [86] One reason why authoritarian governments tend to have incompetent militaries is that authoritarian regimes fear that their military will stage a coup or allow a domestic uprising to proceed uninterrupted – as a consequence, authoritarian rulers have incentives to place incompetent loyalists in key positions in the military. [22]
A 2016 study shows that the implementation of succession rules reduce the occurrence of coup attempts. [87] Succession rules are believed to hamper coordination efforts among coup plotters by assuaging elites who have more to gain by patience than by plotting. [87]
According to political scientists Curtis Bell and Jonathan Powell, coup attempts in neighbouring countries lead to greater coup-proofing and coup-related repression in a region. [88] A 2017 study finds that countries' coup-proofing strategies are heavily influenced by other countries with similar histories. [89] Coup-proofing is more likely in former French colonies. [90]
A 2018 study in the Journal of Peace Research found that leaders who survive coup attempts and respond by purging known and potential rivals are likely to have longer tenures as leaders. [91] A 2019 study in Conflict Management and Peace Science found that personalist dictatorships are more likely to take coup-proofing measures than other authoritarian regimes; the authors argue that this is because "personalists are characterized by weak institutions and narrow support bases, a lack of unifying ideologies and informal links to the ruler". [92]
Research suggests that coups promoting democratization in staunchly authoritarian regimes have become less likely to end in democracy over time, and that the positive influence has strengthened since the end of the Cold War. [4] [5] [93] [94] [95]
A 2014 study found that "coups promote democratization, particularly among states that are least likely to democratize otherwise". [93] The authors argue that coup attempts can have this consequence because leaders of successful coups have incentives to democratize quickly in order to establish political legitimacy and economic growth, while leaders who stay in power after failed coup attempts see it as a sign that they must enact meaningful reforms to remain in power. [93] A 2014 study found that 40% of post-Cold War coups were successful. The authors argue that this may be due to the incentives created by international pressure. [4] A 2016 study found that democracies were installed in 12% of Cold War coups and 40% of the post-Cold War coups. [5] A 2020 study found that coups tended to lead to increases in state repression, not reductions. [96]
According to a 2020 study, "external reactions to coups play important roles in whether coup leaders move toward authoritarianism or democratic governance. When supported by external democratic actors, coup leaders have an incentive to push for elections to retain external support and consolidate domestic legitimacy. When condemned, coup leaders are apt to trend toward authoritarianism to assure their survival." [97]
According to legal scholar Ilya Somin a coup to forcibly overthrow democratic government might be sometimes justified. Commenting on the 2016 Turkish coup d'état attempt, Somin opined,
There should be a strong presumption against forcibly removing a democratic regime. But that presumption might be overcome if the government in question poses a grave threat to human rights, or is likely to destroy democracy itself by shutting down future political competition. [98]
According to Naunihal Singh, author of Seizing Power: The Strategic Logic of Military Coups (2014), it is "fairly rare" for the prevailing existing government to violently purge the army after a coup has been foiled. If it starts the mass killing of elements of the army, including officers who were not involved in the coup, this may trigger a "counter-coup" by soldiers who are afraid they will be next. To prevent such a desperate counter-coup that may be more successful than the initial attempt, governments usually resort to firing prominent officers and replacing them with loyalists instead. [99]
Some research suggests that increased repression and violence typically follow both successful and unsuccessful coup attempts. [100] However, some tentative analysis by political scientist Jay Ulfelder finds no clear pattern of deterioration in human rights practices in wake of failed coups in post-Cold War era. [101]
Notable counter-coups include the Ottoman countercoup of 1909, the 1960 Laotian counter-coup, the Indonesian mass killings of 1965–66, the 1966 Nigerian counter-coup, the 1967 Greek counter-coup, 1971 Sudanese counter-coup, and the Coup d'état of December Twelfth in South Korea.
A 2017 study finds that the use of state broadcasting by the putschist regime after Mali's 2012 coup did not elevate explicit approval for the regime. [102]
According to a 2019 study, coup attempts lead to a reduction in physical integrity rights. [103]
The international community tends to react adversely to coups by reducing aid and imposing sanctions. A 2015 study finds that "coups against democracies, coups after the Cold War, and coups in states heavily integrated into the international community are all more likely to elicit global reaction." [104] Another 2015 study shows that coups are the strongest predictor for the imposition of democratic sanctions. [105] A third 2015 study finds that Western states react strongest against coups of possible democratic and human rights abuses. [105] A 2016 study shows that the international donor community in the post-Cold War period penalizes coups by reducing foreign aid. [106] The US has been inconsistent in applying aid sanctions against coups both during the Cold War and post-Cold War periods, a likely consequence of its geopolitical interests. [106]
Organizations such as the African Union (AU) and the Organization of American States (OAS) have adopted anti-coup frameworks. Through the threat of sanctions, the organizations actively try to curb coups. A 2016 study finds that the AU has played a meaningful role in reducing African coups. [107]
A 2017 study found that negative international responses, especially from powerful actors, have a significant effect in shortening the duration of regimes created in coups. [108]
According to a 2020 study, coups increase the cost of borrowing and increase the likelihood of sovereign default. [109]
A dictatorship is an autocratic form of government which is characterized by a leader, or a group of leaders, who hold governmental powers with few to no limitations. Politics in a dictatorship are controlled by a dictator, and they are facilitated through an inner circle of elites that includes advisers, generals, and other high-ranking officials. The dictator maintains control by influencing and appeasing the inner circle and repressing any opposition, which may include rival political parties, armed resistance, or disloyal members of the dictator's inner circle. Dictatorships can be formed by a military coup that overthrows the previous government through force or they can be formed by a self-coup in which elected leaders make their rule permanent. Dictatorships are authoritarian or totalitarian and they can be classified as military dictatorships, one-party dictatorships, personalist dictatorships, or absolute monarchies.
Autocracy is a system of government in which absolute power is held by the ruler, known as an autocrat. It includes most forms of monarchy and dictatorship, while it is contrasted with democracy and feudalism. Various definitions of autocracy exist. They may restrict autocracy to a single individual, or they may also apply autocracy to a group of rulers who wield absolute power. The autocrat has total control over the exercise of civil liberties within the autocracy, choosing under what circumstances they may be exercised, if at all. Governments may also blend elements of autocracy and democracy, forming an anocracy. The concept of autocracy has been recognized in political philosophy since ancient times.
A military dictatorship is a type of dictatorship in which power is held by one or more military officers acting on behalf of the military. Military dictatorships are led by either a single military dictator, known as a strongman, or by a council of military officers known as a military junta. They are most often formed by military coups or the empowerment of the military through a popular uprising in times of domestic unrest or instability. The military nominally seeks power to restore order or fight corruption, but the personal motivations of military officers may include greater funding for the military or a decrease in civilian control of the military.
Regime change is the partly forcible or coercive replacement of one government regime with another. Regime change may replace all or part of the state's most critical leadership system, administrative apparatus, or bureaucracy. Regime change may occur through domestic processes, such as revolution, coup, or reconstruction of government following state failure or civil war. It can also be imposed on a country by foreign actors through invasion, overt or covert interventions, or coercive diplomacy. Regime change may entail the construction of new institutions, the restoration of old institutions, and the promotion of new ideologies.
A military junta is a government led by a committee of military leaders. The term junta means "meeting" or "committee" and originated in the national and local junta organized by the Spanish resistance to Napoleon's invasion of Spain in 1808. The term is now used to refer to an authoritarian form of government characterized by oligarchic military dictatorship, as distinguished from other categories of authoritarian rule, specifically strongman ; machine ; and bossism.
A state's foreign policy or external policy is its objectives and activities in relation to its interactions with other states, unions, and other political entities, whether bilaterally or through multilateral platforms. The Encyclopedia Britannica notes that a government's foreign policy may be influenced by "domestic considerations, the policies or behaviour of other states, or plans to advance specific geopolitical designs."
In political science, a political system means the type of political organization that can be recognized, observed or otherwise declared by a state.
Democratization, or democratisation, is the democratic transition to a more democratic political regime, including substantive political changes moving in a democratic direction.
Proponents of "democratic peace theory" argue that both liberal and republican forms of democracy are hesitant to engage in armed conflict with other identified democracies. Different advocates of this theory suggest that several factors are responsible for motivating peace between democratic states. Individual theorists maintain "monadic" forms of this theory ; "dyadic" forms of this theory ; and "systemic" forms of this theory.
The resource curse, also known as the paradox of plenty or the poverty paradox, is the phenomenon of countries with an abundance of natural resources having less economic growth, less democracy, or worse development outcomes than countries with fewer natural resources. There are many theories and much academic debate about the reasons for and exceptions to the adverse outcomes. Most experts believe the resource curse is not universal or inevitable but affects certain types of countries or regions under certain conditions.
The People's Progressive Party is a political party in the Gambia. It was the dominant ruling party of the House of Representatives and the presidency from 1962 to 1994. The president throughout this time period was Dawda Jawara. The People's Progressive Party lost power after the 1994 Gambian coup d'état, a military coup led by young, junior military officers. The Alliance for Patriotic Reorientation and Construction (APRC) then became the dominant party of the Gambia. The People's Progressive Party remains active, but lacking the same level of support it garnered in the 20th century.
Militarized interstate disputes (MIDs) are conflicts between states that do not involve a full-scale war. These include any conflicts in which one or more states threaten, display, or use force against one or more other states. They can vary in intensity from threats of force to actual combat short of war. A MID is composed of a sequence of related militarized incidents, all but the first being an outgrowth of or response to a previous militarized incident. An initiator of a war need not necessarily be the same as the initiator of a preceding MID, since a MID can be started by a show of force, whereas the initiator of a war begins the actual combat. Under this definition, over 2400 MIDs have been identified from 1816 to 2014 in the Correlates of War project.
Democratic consolidation is the process by which a new democracy matures, in a way that it becomes unlikely to revert to authoritarianism without an external shock, and is regarded as the only available system of government within a country. A country can be described as consolidated when the current democratic system becomes “the only game in town”, meaning no one in the country is trying to act outside of the set institutions. This is the case when: no significant political group seriously attempts to overthrow the democratic regime, the democratic system is regarded as the most appropriate way to govern by the vast majority of the public, and all political actors are accustomed to the fact that conflicts are resolved through established political and constitutional rules.
The 1976 Argentine coup d'état that overthrew Isabel Perón as President of Argentina on 24 March 1976, while having some right-wing elements, such as its emphasis on order and security, was not a traditional right-wing coup and did not adhere to a specific ideology. A military junta was installed to replace her; this was headed by Lieutenant General Jorge Rafael Videla, Admiral Emilio Eduardo Massera and Brigadier-General Orlando Ramón Agosti. The political process initiated on 24 March 1976 took the official name of "National Reorganization Process", and the junta, although not with its original members, remained in power until the return to the democratic process on 10 December 1983. The coup was planned and executed within the framework of the Condor Plan, a clandestine system of repressive coordination between Latin American countries promoted by the United States, as part of the national security doctrine, which generalized dictatorships in Latin America in order to maintain the control over those countries during the Cold War.
A democratic transition describes a phase in a countries political system as a result of an ongoing change from an authoritarian regime to a democratic one The process is known as democratisation, political changes moving in a democratic direction. Democratization waves have been linked to sudden shifts in the distribution of power among the great powers, which created openings and incentives to introduce sweeping domestic reforms. Although transitional regimes experience more civil unrest, they may be considered stable in a transitional phase for decades at a time. Since the end of the Cold War transitional regimes have become the most common form of government. Scholarly analysis of the decorative nature of democratic institutions concludes that the opposite democratic backsliding (autocratization), a transition to authoritarianism is the most prevalent basis of modern hybrid regimes.
Authoritarianism is a political system characterized by the rejection of political plurality, the use of strong central power to preserve the political status quo, and reductions in the rule of law, separation of powers, and democratic voting. Political scientists have created many typologies describing variations of authoritarian forms of government. Authoritarian regimes may be either autocratic or oligarchic and may be based upon the rule of a party or the military. States that have a blurred boundary between democracy and authoritarianism have some times been characterized as "hybrid democracies", "hybrid regimes" or "competitive authoritarian" states.
Since Nigeria independence in 1960, there have been five military coup d'états in Nigeria. Between 1966 and 1999, Nigeria was ruled by a military government without interruption, apart from a short-lived return to democracy under the Second Nigerian Republic of 1979 to 1983. However, the most recent coup occurred in 1993, and there have been no significant further attempts under the Fourth Nigerian Republic, which restored multi-party democracy in 1999.
Anocracy, or semi-democracy, is a form of government that is loosely defined as part democracy and part dictatorship, or as a "regime that mixes democratic with autocratic features". Another definition classifies anocracy as "a regime that permits some means of participation through opposition group behavior but that has incomplete development of mechanisms to redress grievances." The term "semi-democratic" is reserved for stable regimes that combine democratic and authoritarian elements. Scholars distinguish anocracies from autocracies and democracies in their capability to maintain authority, political dynamics, and policy agendas. Similarly, the regimes have democratic institutions that allow for nominal amounts of competition. Such regimes are particularly susceptible to outbreaks of armed conflict and unexpected or adverse changes in leadership.
A hybrid regime is a type of political system often created as a result of an incomplete democratic transition from an authoritarian regime to a democratic one. Hybrid regimes are categorized as having a combination of autocratic features with democratic ones and can simultaneously hold political repressions and regular elections. Hybrid regimes are commonly found in developing countries with abundant natural resources such as petro-states. Although these regimes experience civil unrest, they may be relatively stable and tenacious for decades at a time. There has been a rise in hybrid regimes since the end of the Cold War.
The territorial peace theory finds that the stability of a country's borders has a large influence on the political climate of the country. Peace and stable borders foster a democratic and tolerant climate, while territorial conflicts with neighbor countries have far-reaching consequences for both individual-level attitudes, government policies, conflict escalation, arms races, and war.
To summarize, our definition of a coup attempt includes illegal and overt attempts by the military or other elites within the state apparatus to unseat the sitting executive... Coups may be undertaken by any elite who is part of the state apparatus. These can include non-civilian members of the military and security services, or civilian members of government.
A coup d ́etat occurs whenever the incumbent ruling regime or regime leader is ousted from power (or a presumptive regime leader is prevented from taking power) as a result of concrete, observable, and unconstitutional actions by one or more civilian members of the incumbent ruling regime and/or one or more members of the military or security apparatus
In political science, the term coup refers to the illegitimate overthrow of a sitting government—usually through violence or the threat of violence. The technical term for attempting to stay in power illegitimately—such as after losing an election—is self-coup or autocoup, sometimes autogolpe
where a monarch who had not been directly running the country (in the sense that there was a prime minister and responsible government...) decides to assume all power. Yugoslavia in 1929 was an example of this.
an entire sequence of elections may occur peacefully, with or without alternations, and then some exogenous event may lead to a coup, usurpation of power by the current incumbent, civil war, or some other constitutional irregularity.
111."New Clarence Thomas Sugar Daddies Just Dropped" Jezebel, by Caitlin Cruz, Published Aug 10, 2023
112. "America is now in fascism's legal phase" the Guardian, by Jason Stanley, Published December 12, 2021