Mapping Coercive Institutions: The State Security Forces Dataset, 1960-2010

Bruin, Erica De

doi:10.2139/ssrn.3317127

Cited by 10 publications

(15 citation statements)

References 32 publications

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“…A second direction of research will be to investigate empirically the differences among the stages in the regime cycle. The availability of new data shedding light on the composition of regimes in Africa and elsewhere (De Bruin 2020; Raleigh & Wigmore Shepherd 2020) allows a more granular and systematic analysis of institutional inclusion and representation in authoritarian regimes. By situating them within different stages of the regime cycle, our approach could further account for variations in the use of institutional buy-in within and across states.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Regime cycles and political change in African autocracies

Carboni

Raleigh

2021

J. Mod. Afr. Stud.

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This article applies a regime cycle framework to understand patterns of change and continuity in African competitive autocracies. We observe that regime change in African autocracies is rarely the result of actions carried out by rebels, opposition leaders or popular masses substantially altering the structure of power. Instead, they are more frequently carried out by senior regime cadres, resulting in controlled reshuffles of power. We argue that such regime shifts are best explained through a cyclical logic of elite collective action consisting of accommodation and consolidation, and ultimately leading to fragmentation and crisis. These dynamics indicate the stage of leader-elite relationships at a given time, and suggest when regimes may likely expand, contract, purge and fracture. We argue that, by acknowledging in which stage of the cycle a regime and its senior elites are dominant, we can gauge the likelihood as well as the potential success of a regime change. Our framework is finally applied to understand recent regime shifts in competitive autocracies across Africa.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Regime cycles and political change in African autocracies

Carboni

Raleigh

2021

J. Mod. Afr. Stud.

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“…There is a general lack of cross-national data available about the police; for example, of the 128 governance variables included in the Quality of Governance dataset, only three are related to policing and none of the 450 indicators in the V-Dem dataset specifically concern the police. This has begun to shift with the release of the Police Reforms in Peace Agreements dataset (Ansorg, Haass, and Strasheim 2016) and the State Security Forces dataset (De Bruin 2021), but major empirical gaps remain.…”

Section: What We Know About Policing In Conflict Studiesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Policing and Political Violence

Eck

Conrad

Crabtree

2021

Journal of Conflict Resolution

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The police are often key actors in conflict processes, yet there is little research on their role in the production of political violence. Previous research provides us with a limited understanding of the part the police play in preventing or mitigating the onset or escalation of conflict, in patterns of repression and resistance during conflict, and in the durability of peace after conflicts are resolved. By unpacking the role of state security actors and asking how the state assigns tasks among them—as well as the consequences of these decisions—we generate new research paths for scholars of conflict and policing. We review existing research in the field, highlighting recent findings, including those from the articles in this special issue. We conclude by arguing that the fields of policing and conflict research have much to gain from each other and by discussing future directions for policing research in conflict studies.

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“…However, the Military Balance explicitly cautions against using its data to capture variation over time (IISS, 2010: 6-7). Military Balance-based indicators are available for a similarly limited number of coup attempts but, in contrast to the SSF dataset, the data are missing non-randomly; Military Balance data are more likely to be missing in earlier years, particularly in non-NATO and Warsaw pact countries (De Bruin, 2018, 2019. 6 I considered admirals, marshals, and commodores the equivalent rank of army generals, and captains and commanders the equivalent of army majors and colonels.…”

Section: Independent Variablesmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The variable Counterbalancing (log) is a logged count of the number of security forces a regime employs that are both independent from military command and deployed near centers of political power that are the targets of coup attempts. 4 The data on counterbalancing come from De Bruin’s (2019) State Security Forces (SSF) dataset, which includes information on features of security forces in 110 randomly selected states. It is available for 224 coup attempts in the dataset.…”

Section: Data On Violence During Coup Attemptsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Will there be blood? Explaining violence during coups d’état

Bruin

2019

Journal of Peace Research

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Although just under half of all coup d’état attempts involve fatalities, there has been surprisingly little attention to the conditions under which coups turn violent. Existing research emphasizes the incentives coup plotters have to avoid bloodshed but does not explain the conditions under which violence nonetheless occurs. This article develops a theoretical framework that predicts that the extent of violence that occurs during coup attempts will vary systematically with central features of incumbent regimes and coup plotters. It then tests these predictions using new data on the fatalities associated with 377 coup attempts between 1950 and 2017. Coups against military regimes are found to be less violent than those against civilian dictatorships. This is because military rulers are better able to estimate the likelihood of the coup succeeding and more sensitive to the costs associated with using violence to suppress a coup. Since their post-coup fates tend to be better than those of other authoritarian leaders, they also have fewer incentives to hang on to power at any cost. The analysis also demonstrates that coups led by senior officers involve less bloodshed than those by junior officers and enlisted men. However, coups against rulers that counterbalance their militaries are no more violent than those against rulers that do not. The results shed new light on the dynamics of coup attempts.

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Mapping Coercive Institutions: The State Security Forces Dataset, 1960-2010

Cited by 10 publications

References 32 publications

Regime cycles and political change in African autocracies

Regime cycles and political change in African autocracies

Policing and Political Violence

Will there be blood? Explaining violence during coups d’état

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