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A coup d'état (; ; ), or simply a coup, is typically an illegal and overt attempt by a military organization or other government elites to unseat an incumbent person or leadership. A self-coup is said to take place when a leader, having come to power through legal means, tries to stay in power through illegal means.
By one estimate, there were 457 coup attempts from 1950 to 2010, half of which were successful. 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. Coups occurring in the post-Cold War period have been more likely to result in democratic systems than Cold War coups, though coups still mostly perpetuate authoritarianism.
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 others to believe that the coup attempt will be successful. The number of successful coups has decreased over time. Failed coups in authoritarian systems are likely to strengthen the power of the authoritarian ruler. The cumulative number of coups is a strong predictor of future coups, a phenomenon referred to as the "coup trap".
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 the fragmenting of military and security agencies. However, coup-proofing reduces military effectiveness as loyalty is prioritized over experience when filling key positions within the military.
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. Norfolk Chronicle, 13 August 1785: "It is thought here by some, that it is a Coup d'Etat played off as a prelude to a disagreeable after-piece. But I can confidently assure you, that the above-mentioned arrêt was promulgated in consequence of innumerable complaints and murmurs which have found their way to the ears of the Sovereign. Our merchants contend, that they experience the greatest difficulties in trading with the English". What may be its first published use within a text composed in English is an editor's note in the London Morning Chronicle,1804, 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 italic=no, 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 grands coups d'état, as butchering, or poisoning, or drowning, en masse, they are exclusively employed."
The 1934 Night of the Long Knives was Hitler's purge to eliminate opponents, particularly the paramilitary 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'.
The 1961 Algiers putsch and the 1991 August Putsch also use the term.
The 2023 Wagner Group rebellion has also been described as a putsch.
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.Little-Siebold, Todd. " Cuartelazo" in Encyclopedia of Latin American History and Culture, vol. 2, p. 305. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons 1996.
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'état 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. 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.
The literature review in a 2016 study includes mentions of ethnic factionalism, supportive foreign governments, leader inexperience, slow growth, commodity price shocks, and poverty.
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.
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.
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.
A 2019 study found that when a country's politics is polarized and electoral competition is low, civilian-recruited coups become more likely.
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.
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.
A 2019 study found that regional rebellions made coups by the military more likely.
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.
A 2021 study found that oil wealthy nations see a pronounced risk of coup attempts but these coups are unlikely to succeed.
On the contrary, a 2014 study of 18 Latin American countries in the 20th century found that coup frequency does not vary with development levels, economic inequality, or the rate of economic growth.
A 2016 study shows that the implementation of succession rules reduce the occurrence of coup attempts. Succession rules are believed to hamper coordination efforts among coup plotters by assuaging elites who have more to gain by patience than by plotting.
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. A 2017 study finds that countries' coup-proofing strategies are heavily influenced by other countries with similar histories. Coup-proofing is more likely in former French colonies.
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. 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".
In their 2022 book Revolution and Dictatorship: The Violent Origins of Durable Authoritarianism, political scientists Steven Levitsky and Lucan Way found that political-military fusion, where the ruling party is highly interlinked with the military and created the administrative structures of the military from its inception, is extremely effective at preventing military coups. For example, the People's Liberation Army was created by the Chinese Communist Party during the Chinese Civil War, and never instigated a military coup even after large-scale policy failures (i.e. the Great Leap Forward) or the extreme political instability of the Cultural Revolution. (2022). 9780691169521, Princeton University Press. ISBN 9780691169521
Some scholars have posited that the recruitment of foreign legionnaires into national armies can reduce the probability of military coups.
The study found that about half of all coups in dictatorships—both during and after the Cold War—install new autocratic regimes. 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. One-third of coups in dictatorships during the Cold War and 10% of later ones reshuffled the regime leadership. Democracies were installed in the wake of 12% of Cold War coups in dictatorships and 40% of post-Cold War ones.
Coups occurring in the post-Cold War period have been more likely to result in democratic systems than Cold War coups, though coups still mostly perpetuate authoritarianism. Coups that occur during civil wars shorten the war's duration.
| + Coups and the end of the Cold War |
| 49% |
| 35% |
| 12% |
| 12% |
| + Coups and the end of the Cold War |
| 12% 15 |
| 8 |
| 40% 8 |
| 7 |
Since the end of the Cold War, coups have become rarer, and more likely to be followed by democratization. Coups still often simply replace one autocracy with another one (with the new autocratic regime usually more repressive, in an attempt to prevent another coup) or have no effect on regime type.
, there was debate about whether coups in autocracies should now be considered to promote democratization, on average, or if countries' chances of democratization are still unchanged or worsened by coups (since democratization can take place without a coup). One reason for the increase in the chance of democratization is that a higher proportion of coups (half of post-Cold-War coups) now take place in democracies (a higher percentage of countries are also now democracies). Democratic countries often rebound from coups quickly, restoring democracy, but coups in a democracy are a sign of poor political health, and increase the risk of future coups and loss of democracy. The dataset is small, so statistical significance varies depending on the model used, ; debate will end if data on more coups makes the pattern clear.
The post-Cold-War increase in the chances of post-coup democratization may partly be due to the incentives created by international pressure and financing. US law, for instance, automatically cuts off all aid to a country if there is a military coup. 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.
But coup conspirators also increasingly say that they chose a coup to save their country from the autocratic incumbents. Successful conspirators may hold free and fair elections simply because they think it is a good idea. A desire for economic growth and legitimacy have also been cited as motivations for democratization.
Legal scholar Ilya Somin believes that a coup to forcibly overthrow a democratic government might sometimes be justified. Commenting on the 2016 Turkish coup d'état attempt, Somin opined,
Research from 2016 suggests that increased repression and violence typically follow both successful and unsuccessful coup attempts. According to a 2019 study, coup attempts lead to a reduction in physical integrity rights.
Coups that lead to democratization unsurprisingly reduce repression, and coups that bring in a new autocratic regime increase it. Post-Cold-War, post-coup autocracies seem to have become more repressive and post-coup democracies less repressive; the gap between them is therefore larger than it was during the Cold War.
Averaging across democratic and non-democratic outcomes, most coups seem to tend to increase state repression, even coups against autocrats who were already quite repressive. The time interval in which violence is measured matters. The months after a bloodless coup can be bloody. The small sample size and high variability means that this conclusion again does not reach statistical significance, and a firm conclusion cannot be drawn.
According to Naunihal Singh, author of Seizing Power: The Strategic Logic of Military Coups (2014), it is "fairly rare" for the incumbent government to violently purge the army after a failed coup. 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.
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 Greek junta, 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.
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.
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.
According to a 2020 study, coups increase the cost of borrowing and increase the likelihood of sovereign default.
Repression and counter-coups
It has been argued that failed coups might motivate a regime to reform and reduce repression. Such reforms are not obvious in the data, . Coups that fail, or merely shuffle the leadership without changing the system, generally do not change the amount of repression (measured in government-sanctioned and pro-government killings).
International response
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." Another 2015 study shows that coups are the strongest predictor for the imposition of democratic sanctions. A third 2015 study finds that Western states react most strongly against coups of possible democratic and human rights abuses. A 2016 study shows that the international donor community in the post-Cold War period penalizes coups by reducing foreign aid. 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.
Current leaders who assumed power via coups
Leaders are arranged in chronological order by the dates they assumed power, and categorized by the continents their countries are in.
Asia
Africa
President Kais Saied Hichem Mechichi 2021 Tunisian self-coup Chairman of the National Committee Mamady Doumbouya Alpha Condé 2021 Guinean coup d'état President of the Patriotic Movement Ibrahim Traoré President of the National Council for the Safeguard of the Homeland Abdourahamane Tchiani Mohamed Bazoum 2023 Nigerien coup d'état Head of the Committee for the Transition and Restoration of Institutions Brice Clotaire Oligui Nguema Ali Bongo Ondimba 2023 Gabonese coup d'état
See also
Further reading
(2025). 9781848325036, Pen and Sword Books Ltd. ISBN 9781848325036
External links
target="_blank" rel="nofollow"> Powell, Jonathan & Clayton Thyne. Global Instances of Coups from 1950–Present via Archive.org.
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