The term “coup d’état,” --French for stroke of the state--brings to mind coups staged by power-hungry generals who overthrow the existing regime, not to democratize but to concentrate power in their own hands as dictators. We assume all coups look the same, smell the same, and present the same threats to democracy. It’s a powerful, concise, and self-reinforcing idea. It’s also wrong. The Democratic Coup d’État advances a simple yet controversial argument: Sometimes a democracy is established through a military coup. The book covers events from the Athenian Navy’s stance in 411 BC against a tyrannical home government to coups in the American colonies that ousted corrupt British governors and to twentieth-century coups that toppled dictators and established democracy in countries as diverse as Guinea-Bissau, Portugal, and Colombia. Connecting the dots between these neglected events, the book tackles several baffling questions: How can an event as undemocratic as a military coup lead to democracy? Why would imposing generals—armed with tanks and guns and all—voluntarily surrender power to civilian politicians? What distinguishes militaries that help build democracies from those that destroy them? Varol’s arguments made headlines across the globe in major media outlets and were cited critically in a public speech by President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan of Turkey.
This chapter explains why the military plays a decisive role in almost all revolutions and why, in some cases, the military may be the only actor available to ignite democratic regime change. An authoritarian regime extinguishes or significantly stifles the press, political opposition, civil society, and other reformist institutions, but it often leaves the military intact. The armed forces, after all, are necessary for the survival of most nations. As a result the military may be the one-eyed man in the land of the blind: the only available institution relatively independent of the dictatorship and capable of cracking its edifice.
This chapter more broadly analyzes the universe of democratic transitions. It explains why we tend to romanticize democratic transitions like most romantic comedies glamorize love: The people gather in a central square, start protesting, topple the dictatorship, hold elections, and live happily ever after. It further discusses why the on-the-ground facts often fail to live up to this simple ideal, why history is littered with failed attempts to democratize, and why even successful democratic transitions are often painfully long and violent. Ideally, of course, it would be enlightened civilians—not military leaders—who would depose an authoritarian government and promote, in concert with civil society, the conditions necessary for democratic development. But in many cases, civilian institutions are unable or unwilling to enable democracy, leaving the military to take charge.
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