Although coup risk plays an important role in theories of war, revolution, and democratization, scholars have not developed a rigorous conceptualization and valid measure of the concept. We develop a structural understanding of coup risk as distinct from proximate causes of coups as well as coup-proofing strategies that regimes implement to avert coups. Theoretical insights into factors that predispose regimes toward coup vulnerability provide the groundwork for an improved measure based on strength of civil society, legitimacy, and past coups. Cross-national statistical analyses are used to significantly improve on previous coupincidence models and highlight deficiencies of the common approach to measuring coup risk. The structural conceptualization of coup risk enhances understanding of broader civil-military dynamics, in particular the well-known distinction between motives and opportunities for launching coups. This distinction is shown to be insensitive to an important observational equivalence: that coups may be rare in both high-and low-risk cases.
Aguero, F.1995. Soldiers, civilians, and democracy: Post-Franco Spain in comparative perspective. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press.
2.
Banks, A. S.2001. Cross-national time-series data archive (data set). Binghamton, NY: Computer Systems Unlimited.
3.
Barnett, M. N.1992. Confronting the costs of war. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
4.
Bienen, H.1969. Foreign policy, the military, and development: Military assistance and political change in Africa. In Foreign policy and the developing nation, edited by R. Butwell, 67-111. Lexington: University of Kentucky Press.
5.
Boli, J. , and G. Thomas, eds. 1999. World polity in formation: A century of international non-governmental organization. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.
6.
Brooks, R.1998. Political-military relations and the stability of Arab regimes. Adelphi Paper no. 324. New York: Oxford University Press.
7.
Bueno de Mesquita, B. , R. M. Siverson, and G. Woller. 1992. War and the fate of regimes; a comparative analysis. American Political Science Review86:638-646.
8.
Chorley, K.1943. Armies and the art of revolution. London: Faber and Faber Ltd.
9.
Colton, T. J.1979. Commissars, commanders, and civilian authority: The structure of military politics. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
10.
David, S. R.1985. Defending third world regimes from coups d'état. Lanham, MD: University Press of America.
11.
David, S. R.1987. Third world coups d'état and international security. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press.
12.
Dawes, R. M.1996. Counterfactual inferences as instances of statistical inferences. In Counterfactual thought experiments in world politics, edited by P. E. Tetlock and A. Belkin, 301-308. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
13.
Decalo, S.1976. Coups and army rule in Africa: Studies in military style. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.
14.
Desch, M.1999. Civilian control of the military; the changing security environment. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press.
15.
Diamond, L. , and M. F. Plattner1996. Civil-military relations and democracy. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press.
16.
Farcau, B. W.1994. The coup: Tactics in the seizure of power. Westport, CT: Praeger.
17.
Feaver, P. D. 1995. The why, what, and how of civilian control: Civil-military relations and the use of force. Paper presented at the Annual Meeting of the American Political Science Association, Chicago.
18.
Feaver, P. D. 1996. Crisis as friction: An agency theory explanation of the souring of American civil-military relations. Paper prepared for A Crisis in Civilian Control? Contending Theories of American Civil-Military Relations, a conference sponsored by the Olin Institute for Strategic Studies, Cambridge, MA.
19.
Feit, E.1973. The armed bureaucrats: Military-administrative regimes and political development. Boston: Houghton-Mifflin.
20.
Ferguson, G.1987. Coup d'état: A practical manual. New York: Sterling.
21.
Finer, S. E.1970. Comparative government. London: Allen Lane.
22.
Finer, S. E.1983. The military and politics in the third world. In W. S. Thompson (Ed.), The third world. San Francisco: Institute for Contemporary Studies Press.
23.
Finer, S. E.1988. The man on horseback: The role of the military in politics. Boulder, CO: Westview.
24.
Fitch, J. S.1998The armed forces and democracy in Latin America. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press.
25.
Fossum, E.1967. Factors influencing the occurrence of military coups d'état in Latin America. Journal of Peace Research4:228-251.
26.
Fossum, E. 1968. Some attributes of the Latin American military coup. In Proceedings of the International Peace Research Association, Second Conference, vol. 2, 269-293. Assen, the Netherlands: Van Gorcum & Co.
27.
Frank, David J. , Ann Hironaka, and Evan Schofer. 2000. The nation state and the natural environment, 1900-1995. American Sociological Review65:96-116.
28.
Frazer, J. 1994. Sustaining civilian control: Armed counterweights in regime stability in South Africa. Ph.D. diss., Stanford University, Stanford, CA.
29.
Fukuyama, F.1995. Trust. New York: Free Press.
30.
Gurr, T. R.1967. The conditions of civil violence: First tests of a causal model. Princeton, NJ: Center of International Studies.
31.
Gurr, T. R.1970. Why men rebel. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
32.
Gurr, T. R.1990. Polity II: Political structures and regime change, 1800-1986. Ann Arbor, MI: Inter-University Consortium for Political and Social Research.
33.
Hibbs, D. A.1973. Mass political violence: A cross-national causal analysis. New York: John Wiley.
34.
Hironaka, A.2002. Changing meanings, changing institutions: An institutional analysis of patent legislation. Sociological Inquiry72:108-130.
35.
Hoadley, S.1973. Social complexity, economic development, and military coups d'état in Latin America and Asia. Journal of Peace Research1:119-120.
36.
Huntington, S.1957. The soldier and the state: The theory and politics of civil-military relations. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
37.
Huntington, S.1968. Political order in changing societies. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.
38.
Huth, P. , and B. Russett. 1993. General deterrence between enduring rivals: Testing three competing models. American Political Science Review87:61-73.
39.
International Institute for Strategic Studies . 1966-1986. The military balance. London: Brassey's.
40.
Jackman, R. W.1993. Power without force: The political capacity of nation states. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press.
41.
Jackson, R. H. , and C. G. Rosberg. 1982. Personal rule in black Africa: Prince, autocrat, prophet, tyrant. Berkeley: University of California Press.
42.
Janowitz, M.1960. The professional soldier. New York: Free Press.
43.
Janowitz, M.1964. The military in the political development of new nations. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
44.
Janowitz, M.1977. Military institutions and coercion in the developing nations. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
45.
Levy, J. , and L. Vakili. 1992. Diversionary action by authoritarian regimes: Argentina in the Falklands/Malvinas case. In Handbook of war studies, edited by M. I. Midlarsky. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press.
46.
Lieuwen, E.1962. Militarism and politics in Latin America. In The role of the military in underdeveloped countries, edited by J. Johnson. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
47.
Linz, J. J.1978. The breakdown of democratic regimes: Crisis, breakdown and reequilibration. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press.
48.
Linz, J. J. , and A. Stepan. 1996. Problems of democratic transition and consolidation: Southern Europe, South America, and post-communist Europe. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press.
49.
Londregan J. B. , and K. Poole. 1990. Poverty, the coup trap, and the seizure of executive power. World Politics42:151-183.
50.
Luttwak, E.1968. Coup d'état. London: Penguin.
51.
Marshall, M. G. , and K. Jaggers. 2000. Polity IV project: Political regime characteristics and transitions, 1800-1999 (data set). College Park, MD: Center for International Development and Conflict Management.
52.
Meyer, J. , D. Frank, A. Hironaka, E. Schofer, and N. Tuma. 1997. The structuring of a world environmental regime, 1870-1990. International Organization51:623-651.
53.
Migdal, J.1988. Strong societies and weak states. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
54.
Moon, H. 1997. Cross-national variation in participation in international non-governmental organizations, 1966-1996: The dual embeddedness hypothesis. Paper presented at the Annual Meeting of the American Sociological Association, Toronto, Canada.
55.
Moon, H. , and E. Schofer. 1998. The globalization of geological science. Paper presented at the American Sociological Association meetings in San Francisco.
56.
Morrison, D. , and H. Stevenson. 1974. Social complexity, economic development, and military coups d'état: Convergence and divergence of empirical tests of theory in Latin America, Asia and Africa. Journal of Peace Research11:345-347.
57.
Nordlinger, E. A.1977. Soldiers in politics: Military coups and governments. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall.
58.
O'Kane, R. H. T.1987. The likelihood of coups. Aldeshot, UK: Avebury.
59.
Perlmutter, A.1977. The military and politics in modern times: On professionals, praetorians, and revolutionary soldiers. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.
60.
Pion-Berlin, D.1989. Latin American national security doctrines: Hard- and softline themes. Armed Forces and Society15:411-429.
61.
Pion-Berlin, D.1992. Military autonomy and emerging democracies in South America. Comparative Politics, 25:83-102.
62.
Pitcher, B. , R. Hamblin, and J. Miller. 1978. The diffusion of collective violence. American Sociological Review43:23-35.
63.
Putnam, R. D.1967. Toward explaining military intervention in Latin American politics. World Politics20:83-110.
64.
Quinlivan, J. T.1999. Coup-proofing: Its practice and consequences in the Middle East. International Security24:131-165.
65.
Rouquie, A.1987. The military and the state in Latin America. Berkeley: University of California Press.
66.
Russell, D. E. H.1974. Rebellion, revolution, and armed force. New York: Academic Press.
67.
Sarkees, M. R.2000. The Correlates of War data on war: An update to 1997. Conflict Management and Peace Science18:123-144.
68.
Singer, J. D. , and M. Small. 1999. National material capabilities dataset. Ann Arbor, MI: Correlates of War Project.
69.
Skocpol, T.1979. States and social revolutions. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
70.
Skyrms, B.1988. Probability and causation. Journal of Econometrics39:53-57.
71.
Snyder, R.1992. Explaining transitions from neopatrimonial dictatorships. Comparative Politics24:379-399.
72.
Stepan, A.1971. The military in politics: Changing patterns in Brazil. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
73.
Stepan, A.1978. The state and society: Peru in comparative perspective. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
74.
Stepan, A.1986. The new professionalism of internal warfare and military role expansion. In Armies and politics in Latin America, edited by A. F. Lowenthal and J. S. Fitch. New York: Holmes & Meier.
75.
Sutter, D.1999. Legitimacy and military intervention in a democracy: Civilian government as a public good. American Journal of Economics and Sociology58:129-143.
76.
Taylor, C. L. , and M. C. Hudson. 1972. World handbook of political and social indicators. 2d ed.New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.
77.
Thompson, W. R.1973. The grievances of military coup-makers. Beverly Hills, CA: Sage.
78.
Thompson, W. R.1975. Regime vulnerability and the military coup. Comparative Politics7:459-487.
79.
Thompson, W. R.1976. Organizational cohesion and military coup outcomes. Comparative Political Studies9:255-276.
80.
Thompson, W. R.1980. Corporate coup-maker grievances and types of regime targets. Comparative Political Studies12:485-496.
81.
Union of International Associations . 1984-2000. The yearbook of international association. Munich, Germany: K. G. Saur.
82.
Walt, S. M.1994. Revolution and war. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.
83.
Welch, C. E., Jr. , 1976. Civilian control of the military: Theory and cases from developing countries. Albany: State University of New York Press.
84.
World Bank . 2001. World development indicators 2001. Washington, DC: World Bank.
85.
Zagorski, P. W.1992. Democracy vs. national security: Civil-military relations in Latin America. Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner.
86.
Zimmermann, E.1983. Political violence, crises and revolutions: Theories and research. Boston: G. K. Hall & Co.
Supplementary Material
Please find the following supplemental material available below.
For Open Access articles published under a Creative Commons License, all supplemental material carries the same license as the article it is associated with.
For non-Open Access articles published, all supplemental material carries a non-exclusive license, and permission requests for re-use of supplemental material or any part of supplemental material shall be sent directly to the copyright owner as specified in the copyright notice associated with the article.
