Described here is a new data set including all successful coups d'état (80), failed coup attempts (108) and reported coup plots (139) for all 48 independent sub-Saharan African (SSA) states for the 46-year period from January 1956 until December 2001. Elite political instability (PI) in this form remains widespread in SSA, in contrast to other regions of the global South. Military-led PI has been shown to adversely affect economic growth and human development in SSA, and is a major cause of the current African ‘crisis’. The frequency of these instability events is given for each state for all 46 years and for the two periods 1956–79 and 1980–2001. A Total Military Intervention Score (TMIS) for each state is calculated and examined over time to explore trends in coup behaviour. The distribution of these events among major African regions is presented. Appendix A lists all coups and failed coups by state and date. Major findings are that military interventions have continued to be pervasive in Africa, despite democratisation trends since 1990; that coups, failed coups and coup plots form a syndrome of military-led PI; that colonial heritage is unrelated to coup activity; that the chance of success when launching a coup attempt has averaged more than 40% since 1958; that once a successful coup has occurred, military factionalism often leads to more coup behaviour; that except for a declining rate of success once a coup is undertaken, there is no major difference between 1956–79 and 1980–2001; that no trends of increasing or decreasing coup behaviour are evident, except that up to around 1975 as decolonisation progressed, TMIS also increased; and that West Africa is the predominant centre of coup activity in SSA, although all African regions have experienced coups. States that have been free of significant PI since 1990 are examined and those with institutionalised democratic traditions appear less prone to coups.
From independence through 2004, the sixteen West African states have experienced forty-four successful military-led coups, forty-three often-bloody failed coups, at least eighty-two coup plots, seven civil wars, and many other forms of political conflict. This two-part article seeks answers to the question, what has gone wrong inWest Africa? Part I uses world-systems and rational-choice analyses to provide theoretical answers involving macro structures and micro leadership behavior. Structural peripherality and poor leadership result in underdevelopment and state weakness, the major structural causes of West African instability. Empirical evidence demonstratesWest Africa's peripheral role in the world-economy, the high risks associated with political leadership in the region, andWest Africa's critical socioeconomic situation. Part II, appearing in the January 2006 issue, will examine new data on coups and conflict inWest Africa and speculate on what can be done to improve the situation.
This paper is a partial systematic test of Morton A. Kaplan's “theory” of alliance behavior in balance of power international systems first proposed in his well-known System and Process in International Politics (1957). Three hypotheses are inferred from Kaplan's writings predicting that in a stable balance of power system, (a) alliances will occur randomly with respect to time; (b) the time intervals between alliances will also be randomly distributed; and (c) a decline in systemic alliance formation rates precedes system changing events, such as general war. We check these hypotheses by applying probability theory, specifically a Poisson model, to the analysis of new data on fifty-five alliances among the five major European powers during the period 1814–1914. Because our research questions are so general, our findings should not be regarded as definitive; however, the data very strongly support our hypotheses. We conclude that Kaplan's verbal model of a balance of power international system has had its credibility enhanced as a result of this paper.
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