Modernization and Political Instability: Coups d'Etat in Africa 1955-85

Abstract

This article studies African coups d'etat during the period from 1955 to 1985. It applies quantitative methods to the study of African history, and examines whether coups d'etat can be explained by structural factors. The starting point is a replication of Jackman's ( 1978) seminal study of political instability m Africa The purpose of this replication is to establish whether Jackman's findings hold when continuous-time hazard models of event history data are used instead of the panel regression approach utilized by Jackman The event history approach is more appropriate, since it focuses on the rate of coup d'etat over time rather than some index of coup d'etat. Substantively the article has three separate aims The first is to consider the effect of modernization on political $instability. The second is to study the influence of social contagion and the history of political instability on the Afncan continent on the likelihood that a coup d'etat will occur in a given country The third is to study how the likelihood of a coup depends on time. The results lend some support to modernization theory, but also lead to some minor reformulations of the model adopted from previous research The social contagion hypothesis and the density hypothesis formulated in this article are also supported Finally, the results indicate that the likelihood of a coup strongly depends on time This result in particular points to the necessity of studying coups d'etat by means of event history analysis in future research.