Political Institutions and Coups in Dictatorships

Reshuffling coups are often executed by coalition insiders who want to replace the incumbent leader but preserve the existing regime and their power within it (Aksoy et al., 2015, p. 429). The same group of ruling elites will continue to rule the country, and the formal and informal rules for choosing leaders and deciding policies will remain intact after reshuffling coups. The ruling coalition consists of both civilian and military elites that hold key positions in the regime. They enjoy privileges, rents, and policy influence in the regime in exchange for tacit or manifest support for the dictator and the regime.

The primary goals that members of the ruling coalition seek to achieve through reshuffling coups are to make a dictator commit to share enough power and resources with them and/or to punish the dictator for any violation of power-sharing agreements or policy failures. Though the dictator must sign on to a power-sharing agreement to win the support of the ruling coalition, such agreements are plagued by a commitment problem due to the lack of an independent authority to enforce the deal (Svolik, 2012). In order to deter the dictator from reneging on the power-sharing deal, the ruling coalition needs to make credible threats of punishment. As Boix and Svolik (2013) nicely put it, “[p]ower-sharing in authoritarian regimes is . . . ultimately sustained by the ability of the dictator’s allies to credibly threaten a rebellion that would replace the dictator should he violate the power-sharing agreement (p. 300).” Once the ruling coalition observes the dictator’s transgressions or policy failures, it will launch a coup to remove the dictator (Aksoy et al., 2015; Sudduth, 2017). In this way, reshuffling coups serve as an accountability mechanism in dictatorships and help the ruling coalition attain their goals by punishing opportunistic or incompetent dictators and deterring future dictators from accumulating power.

Political institutions decrease the probability of reshuffling coups because they provide the ruling coalition with alternative mechanisms to hold dictators accountable to other elites by providing ex ante and ex post constraints (Weeks, 2012). That is, political institutions in dictatorships diminish incentives for coalition insiders to attempt reshuffling coups. First, they can deter the dictator’s opportunism against coalition insiders by facilitating collective actions among ruling elites (Boix & Svolik, 2013; Gehlbach & Keefer, 2012). Gehlbach and Keefer (2012) argue that party institutionalization increases capacity for collective actions among regime elites by increasing information flows within the party and weakening the dictator’s capability to prohibit coordination among regime elites. Authoritarian legislatures and parties also provide an institutional forum for elites to meet and coordinate defenses against the dictators’ opportunistic behavior (Albertus & Menaldo, 2018; Gehlbach & Keefer, 2012). By enabling ruling elites to credibly threaten to stage a coup against the dictator, political institutions make the dictator more likely to comply with power-sharing deals (Magaloni, 2008).

Second, political institutions enable regime elites to monitor the behavior of dictators because they institutionalize regular interactions between dictators and regime elites in high-level, deliberative, and decision-making bodies within authoritarian parties and legislatures (Boix & Svolik, 2013; Svolik, 2012). Enhanced transparency, in turn, facilitates the dictator’s compliance with power-sharing rules and promotes regime stability, as any opportunistic behavior to violate the power-sharing arrangement could be detected by members of the ruling coalition. To the contrary, imperfect information about the dictator’s behavior can fuel ruling elites’ misperceptions and leads to unnecessary coups. Political institutions thus resolve informational problems that plague the task of maintaining power-sharing pacts between a dictator and the ruling coalition.

Last, authoritarian parties and legislatures allow members of the ruling coalition to participate in policymaking and exercise some influence on policy and personnel decisions (Boix & Svolik, 2013; Geddes, 2003). This may reduce the likelihood that a dictator chooses policies that disfavor ruling elites. Furthermore, when leadership selection and personnel appointments are made according to institutionalized rules, the need to resort to violent coups for replacing leaders is diminished (Boix & Svolik, 2013). For instance, in Mexico under the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI), the top leadership of the ruling party controlled the nomination processes for leaders, which enabled ruling elites to govern their country without suffering violent internal struggles.

The above-mentioned roles of institutions in enabling coalition insiders to deter dictators’ opportunism apply not only to civilian members of the ruling coalition, but also to military elites who are most critical in executing a coup. According to the data by Geddes et al. (2018), for example, 61% of country-year observations with support parties include military officers as members of the party executive committees, which is the most powerful decision-making body within a party institution such as politburo, standing committee and presidium. This number is even higher (66%) if we include the party executive committees that include military officers who had been members of insurgent or revolutionary armed forces before the regime’s accession to power.⁵ By allowing them to participate in the high-level, deliberative, and decision-making bodies, political institutions allow not only civilian elites but also military elites to coordinate actions, monitor dictators’ behaviors and reflect their policy preferences in the decision-making processes.

As an illustration of our proposed mechanisms, consider how the institutional reforms promoted by Deng Xiaoping have alleviated commitment and monitoring problems within the Chinese political system. Departing from politics under Mao, under Deng’s leadership, key Party bodies began meeting regularly, based on formal rules of consultation and consensual decision making in the 1980s. The Politburo Standing Committee began meeting weekly, and since 1987, the full Politburo has held regular monthly meetings. New institutional rules were set that required the General Secretary of the Party to report about the work of the Politburo Standing Committee to the full Politburo and similarly to report on the full Politburo’s work to the Party Central Committee (Miller, 2008). These institutional reforms allowed more frequent interactions among the ruling elite members and helped them coordinate their actions. They also increase transparency helping the ruling coalition detect dictators’ potential opportunism (Svolik, 2012, p. 92). Indeed, scholars on Chinese politics agree that such institutional reforms initiated by Deng mitigated policy disputes among ruling elites, prevented power accumulation by any single individual, and stabilized leadership transitions (e.g., Li, 2010; Miller, 2008).

In sum, parties and legislatures help neutralize coup threats from coalition insiders by increasing commitment by the dictator to power-sharing deals. When well-institutionalized political parties and legislatures exist, they can discipline and constrain dictators and/or deter their opportunism against ruling allies, reducing the need for reshuffling coups to punish dictators for reneging on power-sharing agreements. However, when the institutionalized accountability mechanism is absent, the ruling coalition has little choice but to rely on coups to hold the leader accountable for his violations of power-sharing or policy failures. The theoretical logics mentioned above suggest that authoritarian institutions reduce the risk of reshuffling coups in dictatorships.

While plotters in reshuffling coups have an interest in preserving their power and position within the regime, plotters in regime-change coups aim for a total regime overthrow (Aksoy et al., 2015).⁶ Regime-change coups would change the set of formal and informal rules that identify the group from which leaders can be chosen and that determine who influences policy decisions. Plotters in regime-change coups seek to oust the ruling coalition in power and install a new group of ruling elite. Therefore, regime-change coups are more likely to be conducted by coalition outsiders who have positions within the regime but are outside the ruling coalition. Most crucially, coalition outsiders have no chance of rising into leadership positions as they are not members of the ruling group from which leaders are chosen.

For example, regime-change coups that oust a monarchy and replace it with a military junta are conducted by militaries outside the group of ruling elites that control leadership selection and policy making (i.e., a despotic family). A regime-change coup also occurs when a group of lower-ranked officers overthrows the incumbent military regime ruled by high-ranked military officers, or when a military regime ruled by certain ethnic groups is ousted by military officers from rival ethnic groups. The coup that replaced the military dictatorship led by Colonel Saye Zerbo in Burkina Faso with another military dictatorship led by Captain Thomas Sankara is an example of a regime-changing coup since the two military factions represented different ethnic groups (Geddes et al., 2018, p. 7).

We claim that political institutions, such as political parties and legislatures, do not affect the likelihood of regime-change coups for several reasons. First, unlike in reshuffling coups, plotters’ goals in regime-change coups are incompatible with the existing regime; thus, activities within political institutions of the current regime cannot help plotters achieve their goals. As we elaborated above, political institutions reduce the necessity of reshuffling coups because potential plotters’ goals are attainable through their representation within existing institutions. However, when the primary goal of plotters is to change the group of ruling elites who select the leader and make key decisions, it is incompatible with the values and rules of existing institutions (Aksoy & Carter, 2014). Institutionalized accountability or commitment mechanisms in dictatorships are unlikely to help potential plotters replace the entire group of ruling elites as the existing ruling coalition controls the way these institutions function. These mechanisms are created to improve the regime’s prospects for survival (e.g., Brownlee, 2007; Magaloni, 2006) and are not suitable for ousting the regime. Authoritarian parties and legislatures do not provide a peaceful alternative to regime change and thus do not diminish the necessity that plotters resort to violent methods of achieving their goals (i.e., regime-changing coups).

Second, even the role of political institutions in co-opting potential coup plotters does not help to reduce the risk of regime-changing coups. Co-optation is usually considered to appease potential elite challengers and discourage their rebellion. Co-optation through ruling parties and legislatures, however, does not fully address grievances of discontented coalition outsiders. Imagine, for example, military officers are unsatisfied with the current regime where royal family members enjoy privileged access to key decision-making bodies and resources. Though participating in legislature or parties might increase the size of political and economic benefits enjoyed by these unsatisfied officers (Gandhi, 2008), most political and economic powers, including the ability to make key decisions about how political institutions work, are still controlled by royal family members.⁷ Most crucially, regardless of their participation in existing institutions, these officers have no chance of rising into state leadership positions because they are not members of the ruling group from which leaders are chosen. Unless they change the group of ruling elites from one of royal family to the one of military officers, the officers’ desires for a central role in leadership selection and exclusive access to political power would not be satisfied.

Finally, while the institutionalized regime’s ability to mobilize mass opposition to attempted coups can deter regime-change coups, this diminishing effect of political institutions on regime-change coups would be offset by institutions’ effects in increasing the feelings of relative deprivation and grievances among coalition outsiders. As failed coups are costly for plotters, individual elites would participate in coups only when they expect that the coup is most likely to succeed. For coups to succeed, the public’s perception of the regime would be crucial. Tactically successful coups can be overturned by widespread disapproval among the general public (Galetovic & Sanhueza, 2000). Mass support toward the regime would discourage regime-change coups, while widespread mass dissatisfaction with the government would increase the risk of regime-change coups (Aksoy et al., 2015). In this vein, Geddes (2005) argues that political parties can deter coups in dictatorships by building mass support for the incumbent regime and increasing the likelihood of widespread post-coup protests. Ruling parties can increase popular support by providing political concessions and supplying benefits. Party members, tied to the pre-existing networks and relationships with the incumbent regime, play a critical role in mobilizing and organizing post-coup protests since they enjoy targeted benefits in return for support and thus develop a vested stake in the regime’s survival (Geddes et al., 2018; Magaloni & Kricheli, 2010). Further, some ruling parties, such as the United Socialist Party of Venezuela and the Islamic Republic Party in Iran, have paramilitary wings whose coercive capacity can counterbalance coup threats. Authoritarian legislatures also mobilize public support toward the regimes by allocating economic rents and local public goods to citizens (e.g., Geddes et al., 2018). Deputies and regime supporters who compete for deputies’ offices play a central role in increasing mass support toward the regime. They are motivated to extend their distributive networks to citizens and gather and report information from citizens to regimes to secure deputies’ offices (Geddes et al., 2018). Authoritarian regimes can also use legislative debates to increase mass support toward the regime by, for example, allowing public debate on salient issues in the legislatures (Schuler, 2020) and signaling the regime’s attentiveness to citizen concerns by passing a law on salient issues (Truex, 2020). In short, both ruling parties and legislatures can exert a deterrent effect on regime-changing coups as they mobilize mass support toward the regime and increase the likelihood of mass protests against attempted coups.⁸

At the same time, political institutions would have positive effects on the likelihood of regime-change coups as they increase the feeling of relative deprivation and grievances held by coalition outsiders. As we discussed above, political institutions increase the share of political and economic benefits for those who participate in the institutions. In many instances, however, coalition outsiders do not have opportunities to participate in political institutions and receive political and material benefits associated with the institutions. Potential plotters who oppose the regime in the military, for example, tend to be based outside the capital city because a dictator who has cause to fear their threats to his tenure will send them away (Aksoy et al., 2015, p. 431). Their location outside the capital city makes it almost impossible for them to participate in political institutions and receive the associated benefits. Relatedly, the majority of seats in the legislatures and key positions in the regime party are typically distributed to high-level civilian officials and top-ranking military officers. Therefore, middle- or low-ranked military officers, who are often the key plotters organizing regime-change coups in some cases, are unlikely to have opportunities to have representation within political institutions.⁹ Seeing that political institutions increase the share of material and political benefits for the group of ruling coalition, coalition outsiders who do not receive such benefits would perceive relative deprivation and increase their grievances against the regime (Woo & Conrad, 2019). Political institutions increase the power and wealth disparities between those who would receive benefits associated with the institutions and those who do not receive such benefits. As coalition outsiders are typically unable to obtain such benefits, institutions would increase their frustration and incentives to challenge the regime.

In sum, authoritarian political institutions produce countervailing effects on regime-changing coups: they increase the disposition to attempt a regime-change coup by increasing individual grievances among coalition outsiders against the regime, while the institutions’ ability to mobilize mass opposition to attempted coups would deter coalition outsiders from attempting a regime-change coup. We expect that these two opposite effects are likely to cancel out each other and, thus, the total effect of political institutions on regime-changing coups should be negligible.

The above theoretical discussion produces our second testable hypothesis:

One potential selection bias could arise if dictators establish parties and/or legislatures to neutralize threats to their political survival (Pepinsky, 2014). We should note, though, that if dictators are more likely to establish authoritarian institutions when they feel less secure in power, it will be more difficult to find supporting evidence for our first hypothesis. Additionally, we find that authoritarian institutions only influence the probability of reshuffling coups, not regime-change coups. Thus, the potential selection bias may not be serious here.

We use coarsened exact matching (Iacus et al., 2012) to create a comparison group that is as similar as possible to the set of country-years having authoritarian parties or legislatures. Using the matching analysis, we pre-process the data to minimize any potential differences between observations with and without authoritarian institutions before conducting the parametric analysis. This process helps to improve balance among observed features of treatment and control groups, although it does not address unobserved factors that may be associated with the assignment of authoritarian institutions. We match on military leaders, a log of GDP per capita, economic growth, a log of population, post-cold war, and years since the last coup attempt. Supplemental Tables A26 to A28 of the supporting appendix show that the coarsened exact matching significantly improves the balance across these covariates. We then re-estimate the models of Table 1 on the matched data set to control for remaining differences between the two groups.

Time Since Last Coup polynomials are included in all the analyses (for each type of coups), but coefficients are not reported in Table 2.

Table 2 presents the estimates based on the matched data. The results are quite similar to the results reported in Table 1. Table 2 shows that our main results are robust to matching. Authoritarian institutions only significantly reduce the probability of reshuffling coup attempts, but not that of regime-change coup attempts.

We further consider variations in support parties and legislatures. The content of nominally democratic institutions rather than the existence of these institutions may be more important for explaining variations in coup risk (e.g., Meng, 2020; Miller, 2020). For instance, ruling parties can vary in the degree of independence from the dictator, the level of organizational power, the strength of ties to social organizations, and so on. Some legislatures only include ruling party members, while others allow opposition party members. Therefore, we move beyond the presence of ruling parties and legislatures and explore whether the results are robust when we account for institutional variations.

Table 3 investigates the effects of institutional variations using matched data based on coarsened exact matching.¹¹ We first examine variations in support parties. Columns 1 to 2 use a measure of autocratic ruling parties obtained from a new dataset developed by Miller (2020). Miller (2020) defines a ruling party “as a political party that is either the supreme ruling power or is used as a significant vehicle of power by the regime and is clearly preeminent among all parties” (7). This definition is thus more stringent than the definition of a regime support party (i.e., a party that seeks to maintain the current regime) used by Geddes et al. (2018). Columns 3 to 4 test the effects of Independent party in which “party executive committee has policy independence and autonomy from the regime leader” (Geddes et al., 2017, p. 24).¹² As independent ruling parties enable ruling coalition members to influence policy-making discussion and decisions rather than serving as a rubberstamp for the regime leader, we expect such parties to better facilitate power-sharing arrangements and exert greater reductive effects on reshuffling coups. However, we do not expect them to influence regime-change coups. Columns 5 to 6 use the Party with local organization variable obtained from the same Geddes et al. dataset. This variable captures the existence of regime support parties that have “local-level branch organizations that link party militants to citizens” (Geddes et al., 2017, p. 13). Such parties can increase mass support toward the regime by providing benefits to ordinary citizens and mobilize anti-coup protest utilizing local party officials and militants. Thus, they might possess a greater capacity to counterbalance the threat of regime-changing coups. Last, Columns 7 to 8 examine the impacts of Revolutionary party that is originally formed as a violent revolutionary organization using Miller (2020)’s data. As Levitsky and Way (2013) argue, armed liberation struggles and postrevolutionary state-building enhance revolutionary parties’ abilities to mobilize mass support and facilitate elite cohesion, which might increase their abilities to deter regime-change coups.

Baseline controls are included in all the analyses, but coefficients are not reported in Table 3.

The results in Table 3 show that the estimated coefficients on all party variables, except revolutionary party, are negative and significant for reshuffling coups. In contrast, none of these party variables have significant effects on regime-change coups. While parties with local organizations and revolutionary parties are better equipped to mobilize popular support, our results reveal that they do not deter regime-change coups. This finding seems to indicate that even for these parties with high counter-coup mobilization abilities, the deterrent effects of institutions on regime-change coups are not sufficiently large enough to outweigh the increasing impacts of institutions on grievances held among coalition outsiders. As we argued above, political institutions would increase the power and wealth disparities between coalition insiders who receive political and material benefits from the institutions and coalition outsiders who do not receive such benefits. This positive effect of institutions on coalition outsiders’ grievances would offset the institutions’ deterrent impact on regime-changing coups.

Similarly, we explore variations among authoritarian legislatures by focusing on who occupies seats in the legislatures. Non-opposition legislature captures the existence of legislatures that do not include deputies from opposition parties and thus primarily benefit the front groups and ruling party members. Opposition legislature captures legislatures that include deputies from opposition parties elected in competitive elections. These variables are obtained from Geddes et al. (2018). We separately conduct a matching analysis for each variable. Since we expect reshuffling coups to serve as an accountability mechanism in dictatorships, Non-opposition legislature representing only regime elites will be more effective than Opposition legislature in reducing the likelihood of reshuffling coups. We also expect that neither type of legislature affects regime-change coups. Both types of legislatures could increase mass support toward the regime by distributing private benefits to citizens (Geddes et al., 2018) and signaling the regime’s attentiveness to citizen grievance (e.g., Truex, 2020). At the same time, they would also increase grievances among coalition outsiders against the regime. By increasing the shares of benefits for coalition insiders (Non-opposition legislature) and opposition party members (Opposition legislature), these legislatures increase the feeling of relative deprivation among coalition outsiders who do not have legislative seats, offsetting the deterrent effects of legislatures on regime-changing coups. Columns 9 to 12 provide supporting evidence for our expectations. We find that Non-opposition legislature has negative and significant impacts on reshuffling coups, while the effect of Opposition legislature on reshuffling coups is not statistically significant. The magnitude of the coefficient on Non-opposition legislature is also much greater than that of the coefficient on Opposition legislature. We also find that the effects of neither type of legislatures on regime-change coups are statistically significant, which is consistent with our expectation.

Several additional robustness tests provide further evidence for our hypotheses. Due to space constraints, the results of these robustness checks are discussed here briefly and presented fully in the supporting appendix. First, our results hold when we use successful coups as our dependent variables. The results in Supplemental Tables A4 and A5 show that political institutions reduce the probability of successful reshuffling coups, but do not affect regime-change successful coups. Second, the results are robust to controlling for the following additional variables: antigovernment protests, intrastate war, and interstate war (Supplemental Tables A6 and A7), coup proofing measures including military spending, military size and counterbalancing (Supplemental Tables A8 and A9), IMF programs (Supplemental Tables A10 and A11), and election outcomes and post-election protests (Supplemental Tables A12 and A13). This holds true regardless of whether we use the matched data or not.

Third, we attempt to control for unobserved factors that may influence both authoritarian institutions and coup attempts. Supplemental Table A14 adds decade fixed effects to account for any time-varying shocks that are common to all countries. Supplemental Tables A15 and A16 attempt to control for time-invariant country-specific factors by including region fixed effects or country random effects. Further, Supplemental Tables A17 and A18 estimate the within-between model by including the country-specific means of the explanatory variables and the deviations from the country-specific means (Mundlak, 1978). The deviations capture the within-country effects, while the country means estimate the between-country effects. We find that both the within-country and the between-country effects are consistent with our main results.

Fourth, we investigate whether political institutions’ impacts on regime-change coups depend on countries’ regime types. In particular, some might argue that our proposed theory should only apply to non-military regimes. We address this issue by including the interaction terms between the political institution and the military regime (whether the country-year is military regime or not) variable. The results show that the coefficients on the interaction terms are insignificant, indicating that our proposed argument about the relationships between institutions and regime-change coups does not depend on regime types (Supplemental Table A20). The results are also robust when we control for regime types (see Supplemental Table A19).

Finally, the results are consistent when we simultaneously analyze reshuffling coups and regime-change coups using multinomial logit models. The multinomial logit models, including ones based on the matched data, are reported in Supplemental Tables A21 to A24 and support our hypotheses.