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ABSTRACT
Prior research has not established a clear relationship between democracy and insulation from coups d’état, with very few studies illustrating robust findings on the subject. I contend that the lack of attention paid to the conditional influences of democracy on coups has resulted in these mixed findings. I posit that insulation from coups occurs at higher levels of economic development in both autocracies and democracies. However, the vulnerability present at low levels of economic development is significantly greater in democracies. Poor democracies lack the coercive capacity associated with authoritarian states, suffer from relatively weaker patronage networks, and have smaller pots for public goods provision, all making them less capable of maintaining elite loyalty. An assessment of 165 states for the years 1950–2011 offers strong support for the argument. Democracies are indeed an important part of the coup story, but only when simultaneously addressing their level of economic development.
Acknowledgements
A previous version of this article was presented at the 2017 meeting of the International Studies Association. I would like to thank Jonathan Powell, Thomas Dolan, Barbara Kinsey, Clayton Thyne, Christopher Faulkner, anonymous reviewers, and the editorial staff for their comments on earlier drafts of the article.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.
Notes
1 Data on coup attempts are derived from Powell and Thyne, “Global Instances of Coups” and on regime type from Bell “The REIGN Dataset.”
2 Przeworski, “Democracy as an Equilibrium.”
3 Ibid.
4 McGowan and Johnson, “African Military Coups”; Lindberg and Clark, “Does Democratization Reduce Risk”; Gassebner et al., “When to Expect a Coup”; Tusalem, “Bringing the military back.”
5 Table A1 (Appendix A) includes studies utilizing a measure of coups as the central dependent variable, published since 2000.
6 Geddes, Paradigms and Sand Castles, 66; Askoy et al., “Terrorism and the Fate of Dictators”; Bove and Rivera, “Elite Co-optation, Repression, and Coups”; Galetovic and Sanhueza, “Citizens, Autocrats, and Plotters”; Wig and Rød, “Cues to Coup Plotters.”
7 The authors illustrate a decrease in coups after the first democratic election is held in a country but assert that coups may continue until elections are repeated; Importantly, the authors do not utilize control measures in this study, asserting that, “while we have not controlled for any confounding factors, it seems unlikely that such a strong relationship found in this investigation … would be ‘washed out’ by the influence of other factors like development, education, or availability of concentrated natural resources.”; Lindberg and Clark, “Does Democratization Reduce Risk,” 100.
8 Lindberg and Clark, “Does Democratization Reduce Risk,” 96.
9 Bell, “Coup d’état and Democracy,” 1174.
10 Ibid.
11 Powell, “The Determinants of Attempting,”1035; Bell, “Coup d’état and Democracy,” 1187.
12 Lindberg and Clark, “Does Democratization Reduce Risk”; Bell, “Coup d’état and Democracy.”
13 Gassebner et al., “When to Expect a Coup?”; Londregan and Poole, “Poverty, the Coup Trap”; O’Kane, “Coups d’état in Africa.”
14 Londregan and Poole, “Poverty, the Coup Trap,” 151.
15 Kim, “Revisiting Economic Shocks,” 15.
16 Belkin and Schofer, “Toward a Structural Understanding,” 603.
17 While there are multiple methods through which regimes experience breakdown including irregular removals and backsliding, coups account for over 65% of all irregular leader removals according to the Goemans et al. Archigos data. Furthermore, coups are disproportionately how leaders in poor countries have historically left office. Finally, while regimes might fall due to other mechanisms including civil war and popular rebellion, these means are much less common and are driven by the preferences of the masses rather than elite motivations.
18 Przeworksi et al., Democracy and Development.
19 Ibid., 112.
20 Lipset, “Social Requisites of Democracy”; Barro, “Government Spending”; Przeworski, “Democracy as an Equilibrium”; Przeworksi et al., Democracy and Development.
21 Huntington, Political Order in Changing Societies, 41.
22 Przeworski, Democracy and the Market; Przeworski, “Democracy as an Equilibrium.”
23 Lipset, “Social Requisites of Democracy”; Przeworski, Democracy and the Market; Przeworski, “Democracy as an Equilibrium”; Przeworksi et al. Democracy and Development; Weingast, “Political Foundations of Democracy.”
24 Importantly, however, while the logic of democracy as an equilibrium is specific to democratic sustainability, economic development has been found to insulate both democracies and autocracies from various forms of vulnerability, including breakdown; Boix and Stokes, “Endogenous Democratization”; Miller, “Economic Development.”
25 Barro, “Government Spending”; Lipset, “Social Requisites of Democracy.”
26 E.g. Gleditsch and Ward, “Diffusion and International Context.”
27 Lipset, “Social Requisites of Democracy.”
28 Ndikumana, “Distributional Conflict, the State and Peacebuilding”; Øtsby et al., “Regional Inequalities and Civil Conflict.”
29 Lake and Baum, “Invisible Hand of Democracy.”
30 Belkin and Schofer, “Toward a Structural Understanding”; Bell, “Coup d’état and Democracy”; Lindberg and Clark, “Does Democratization Reduce the Risk.”
31 Lindberg and Clark, “Does Democratization Reduce the Risk.”
32 Lake and Baum, “Invisible Hand of Democracy”; Lindberg and Clark, “Does Democratization Reduce the Risk.”
33 Przeworski et al., Democracy and Development, 111.
34 Acemoglu and Robinson, “Theory of Political Transitions”; Przeworski, “Democracy as an Equilibrium.”
35 Haggard and Kaufman, “Inequality and Regime Change”; Haggard et al., “Distributive Conflict and Regime Change,” 124.
36 Haggard et al., “Distributive Conflict and Regime Change,” 122; The Haggard et al. data report slightly different case distribution figures due to what appears to be a coding error in the table reported on pg. 124 of the codebook. Central African Republic (2003) is mistakenly listed in the weak democracy reversion category rather than the populist reversion category.
37 Slater et al., “Economic Origins of Democratic Breakdown?” 354.
38 Powell et al., “Give them Toys,” 1158.
39 All figures reported from the Haggard et al. dataset are based on Cheibub et al., “Democracy and Dictatorship Revisited.”
40 Lake and Baum, “Invisible Hand of Democracy,” 590.
41 Bueno de Mesquita et al., Logic of Political Survival; Lake and Baum, “Invisible Hand of Democracy”; Lake and Baum, “Political Economy of Growth”; Ross, “Is Democracy Good for the Poor?”
42 Coup data are derived from Powell and Thyne, “Global Instances of Coups d’état” and Democracy Data from Bell, “REIGN Dataset.”
43 Wealthy states are defined as those above the mean of GDP per capita in developing states (US$4000) and poor states are those below the mean; Democracy data are derived from Bell’s Reign data which follow a procedural definition of democracy coding those states as democratic that have reasonably free and fair competitions for power. All those states that do not have such competitions are coded as autocracies (non-democracies).
44 Bell and Koga-Sudduth, “The Causes and Outcomes”; Powell, “The Determinants of Attempting”; Thyne, “Supporter of Stability.”
45 Bell and Koga-Sudduth, “The Causes and Outcomes,” 1437.
46 Importantly, though the mechanism is focused on elite actors, spending on public goods could nonetheless be the impetus for a coup. In circumstances of popular unrest, protesters may send signals to coup plotters about their support of a coup as was the case in Burkina Faso 2015, for instance.
47 Przeworski, “Democracy as an Equilibrium.”
48 Bell, “Coup d’état and Democracy,” 1174.
49 Powell and Thyne, “Global Instances of Coups,” 252.
50 Ibid.
51 Bell, “REIGN Dataset,” 3.
52 Bell, “REIGN Dataset”; Boix et al., “Data Set of Political Regimes”; Cheibub et al., “Democracy and Dictatorship Revisited”; Geddes et al., “Autocratic Breakdown and Regime Transitions”; Marshall et al., “Polity IV Project”; The Polity democracy measure was transformed into a dichotomous variable according to the guidelines put forth by Marshall et al.
53 Carter and Signorino, “Back to the Future.”
54 Bell and Koga Sudduth, “The Causes and Outcomes”; Powell, “The Determinants of Attempting.”
55 Singer et al., “Capability Distribution, Uncertainty.”
56 Bell, “REIGN Dataset.”
57 Arriola, “Patronage and Political Stability”; Bell, “Coup d’état and Democracy”; Hiroi and Omori, “Policy Change and Coups”; Gassebner et al., “When to Expect a Coup.”
58 Boehmke, “Grinter: A Stata Utility.”
59 Numbers reported are in constant US dollars.
60 Berry et al., “Improving Tests.”
61 Hérnandez, “Marhis: Stata Module.”
62 E.g. Kim, “Revisiting Economic Shocks”; Powell, “The Determinants of Attempting”; Wobig, “Defending democracy.”
63 E.g. Arbatli and Arbatli, “External Threats and Survival”; Bell, “Coup d’état and Democracy”; Powell et al., “Give them toys.”
64 Logged value of 5.74.
65 Jones, “There are signs”; Vandeginste, “Breifing: Burundi’s Electoral Crisis.”
66 Falch and Becker, “Power Sharing Agreements,” iii; Vandeginste, “Breifing: Burundi’s Electoral Crisis,” 633.
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Rebecca E. Schiel
Rebecca Schiel is a Postdoctoral Scholar at the University of Central Florida working in conjunction with the Chr. Michelsen Institute. Her research interests include civil–military relations, political economy, and human rights. Her work has appeared in journals including Studies in Comparative International Development and Africa Spectrum.