The Causes and Outcomes of Coup during Civil War

Bell, Curtis; Sudduth, Jun Koga

doi:10.1177/0022002715603098

Cited by 57 publications

(60 citation statements)

References 46 publications

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“…This expectation differs from earlier arguments which assert that leaders will empower their militaries with larger resources when faced with external threats, thereby increasing the likelihood that their militaries will be successful in overthrowing their leaders. Bell and Sudduth (2015) test their arguments with global data from 1950 to 2011 and find strong evidence for them. Specifically, their results show that: 1) the presence of ongoing civil war increases the probability of coup attempts, yet 2) decreases the probability that an attempted coup will succeed, and 3) the more severe the threat to the regime as measured by rebel strength and the location of the war zone, the more likely that a war-time coup will occur.…”

Section: Effect Of Civil War Threats On Coup D'etatsmentioning

confidence: 85%

“…Recent empirical evidence on the relationship between civil and international wars and coup attempts do indeed indicate that there are important differences. Bell and Sudduth (2015) find that ongoing civil war increases the probability of coup attempts and that more severe threats posed by rebels increase the likelihood of war-time coup attempts. Meanwhile, other scholars find that militaries are less likely to attempt a coup during international war and militarized crises (Arbatli and Arbatli, 2014).…”

Section: The Way Forwardmentioning

confidence: 86%

“…Still another view is that despite these external threats, the military might consider that it is better off dispensing with its leaders and dealing with the remaining threats by itself. Bell and Sudduth (2015) focus on how the presence of an ongoing civil war influences the potential coup plotters' decisions to attempt a coup. They maintain that an ongoing war increases the likelihood of coups primarily because of its influence on the plotters' disposition to conduct a coup rather than their capabilities to organize a successful coup.…”

Section: Effect Of Civil War Threats On Coup D'etatsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…High dissatisfaction with maintaining the status quo leaves potential plotters more favorably disposed toward coup attempts because the consequences of inaction are less favorable. Ongoing civil war, according to Bell and Sudduth (2015), will greatly diminish militaries' satisfactions with the status quo because of wartime hardships and the uncertainty surrounding the survival of the incumbent government. Thus, plotters are more likely to launch a coup during an ongoing war especially when they face strong rebel groups that pose greater threats to the government's survival.…”

Section: Effect Of Civil War Threats On Coup D'etatsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Recently more scholars have started to recognize a pitfall of conflating coups with civil war (e.g., Hultquist 2013) as well as the importance of systematically exploring a relationship between coups and civil war (Roessler 2011). The literatures on civil war and coups have developed independently without much consideration of each other (Sambanis, 2004), and systematic analyses of the linkage between them have only just begun (Bell and Sudduth, 2015). Studies that I overview below have looked into the question of whether leaders' efforts to cope with one threat might actually influence the severity of the other.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Coup-Proofing and Civil War

Sudduth¹

2016

Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Politics

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Political leaders face threats to their power from within and outside the regime. Leaders can be removed via a coup d’état undertaken by militaries that are part of the state apparatus. At the same time, leaders can lose power when they confront excluded opposition groups in civil wars. The difficulty for leaders, though, is that efforts to address one threat might leave them vulnerable to the other threat due to the role of the military as an institution of violence capable of exercising coercive power. On one hand, leaders need to protect their regimes from rebels by maintaining strong militaries. Yet, militaries that are strong enough to prevail against rebel forces are also strong enough to execute a coup successfully. On the other hand, leaders who cope with coup threats by weakening their militaries’ capabilities to organize a coup also diminish the very capabilities that they need to defeat their rebel challengers. This unfortunate trade-off between protection by the military and protection from the military has been the long-standing theme in studies of civil-military relations and coup-proofing. Though most research on this subject has focused primarily on rulers’ maneuvers to balance the threats posed by the military and the threats coming from foreign adversaries, more recent scholarship has begun to explore how leaders’ efforts to cope with coup threats will influence the regime’s abilities to address the domestic threats coming from rebel groups, and vice versa. This new wave of research focuses on two related vectors. First, scholars address whether leaders who pursue coup-proofing strategies that weaken their militaries’ capabilities also increase the regime’s vulnerability to rebel threats and the future probability of civil war. Second, scholars examine how the magnitude of threats posed by rebel groups will determine leaders’ strategies toward the militaries, and how these strategies affect both the militaries’ influence over government policy and the future probability of coup onsets. These lines of research contribute to the conflict literature by examining the causal mechanisms through which civil conflict influences coup propensity and vice versa. The literatures on civil war and coups have developed independently without much consideration of each other, and systematic analyses of the linkage between them have only just began.

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Section: Effect Of Civil War Threats On Coup D'etatsmentioning

confidence: 85%

Section: The Way Forwardmentioning

confidence: 86%

Section: Effect Of Civil War Threats On Coup D'etatsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Effect Of Civil War Threats On Coup D'etatsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Coup-Proofing and Civil War

Sudduth¹

2016

Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Politics

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When to expect a coup d’état? An extreme bounds analysis of coup determinants

2016

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Standard-Nutzungsbedingungen: Die Dokumente auf EconStor dürfen zu eigenen wissenschaftlichen Zwecken und zum Privatgebrauch gespeichert und kopiert werden. Sie dürfen die Dokumente nicht für öffentliche oder kommerzielle Zwecke vervielfältigen, öffentlich ausstellen, öffentlich zugänglich machen, vertreiben oder anderweitig nutzen. Sofern die Verfasser die Dokumente unter Open-Content-Lizenzen (insbesondere CC-Lizenzen) zur Verfügung gestellt haben sollten, gelten abweichend von diesen Nutzungsbedingungen die in der dort genannten Lizenz gewährten Nutzungsrechte. Abstract: Over the last several decades, both economists and political scientists have shown interest in coups d'état. Numerous studies have been dedicated to understanding the causes of coups. However, model uncertainty still looms large. About one hundred potential determinants of coups have been proposed, but no consensus has emerged on an established baseline model for analyzing coups. We address this problem by testing the sensitivity of inferences to over three million model permutations in an extreme bounds analysis. Overall, we test the robustness of 66 factors proposed in the empirical literature based on a monthly sample of 164 countries that covers the years 1952 to 2011. We find that slow economic growth rates, previous coup experiences, and other forms of political violence to be particularly conducive to inciting coups.

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Operational experiences, military role conceptions, and their influence on civil-military relations

Harig

Jenne

Ruffa

2021

Eur. j. of int. secur.

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A considerable amount of research within security studies has explored the military's increasingly diverse and multifaceted tasks. However, this debate has been disconnected from the literature on civil-military relations to the effect that we still lack knowledge about how and why these operational tasks have consequences for the relations between the armed forces, civilian authorities, and society at large. In order to provide for a better understanding of these effects, this introduction to the Special Issue debates the concept of operational experiences to capture how the military's routine activities affect the equilibria, logics, and mechanisms of civil-military relations. The article then provides an overview of the Special Issue's six contributions, whose diverse and global perspectives shed light on different aspects of the relationship between military missions and the military's roles in society and politics. Among other factors, they highlight role conceptions – the military's shared views on the purpose of the institution – as crucial in shaping the dynamic relation between what the military does and what place it occupies within the state and society. The article concludes by describing potentially fruitful areas of future research.

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The Causes and Outcomes of Coup during Civil War

Cited by 57 publications

References 46 publications

Coup-Proofing and Civil War

Coup-Proofing and Civil War

When to expect a coup d’état? An extreme bounds analysis of coup determinants

Operational experiences, military role conceptions, and their influence on civil-military relations

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