African studies and military coups in Africa

Decalo, Samuel

doi:10.1080/02589008608729452

Cited by 2 publications

(2 citation statements)

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“…Thus, this pattern can also be found in personally motivated coups, such as Idi Amin’s overthrow of Milton Obote. Although Decalo (1986) argues, the “more cogent reasons for the Amin coup would be purely personal ones” (pp. 111–112), here too ethno-regional politics was at the center of the events that transpired (Horowitz, 1985; Ingham, 1994; Nugent, 2004).…”

Section: Rural Coalitions and Coup Politics: Hypothetical Mechanismsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…For a long time, studies of coup-proofing focused primarily on how militaries were organized (Decalo, 1986; First, 1970; Horowitz, 1985; Kandeh, 2004) or on the structural conditions associated with coup risk (Bloom, Sachs, Collier, & Udry, 1998; Decalo, 1986; Londregan & Poole, 1990). But given the similarity of African military organizations and the shared vulnerabilities sub-Saharan states face, such structural approaches gave little means to predict which regimes would be more likely to fall prey to a successful military intervention (Belkin & Schofer, 2003).…”

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confidence: 99%

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Rethinking Coup Risk

Rabinowitz

Jargowsky

2017

Armed Forces & Society

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Military interventions continue to be prevalent in Africa. In the 21st century alone, 14 coups have been successfully staged. Whereas most studies of coup risk examine how militaries are organized or what structural conditions are associated with coups, we take a novel approach. We explore how coalition politics relate to coup risk. It has long been observed that regimes try to hold power by buying off urban consumers. We argue that focusing on urban consumers actually makes regimes more prone to military intervention. Instead, leaders who ally with established rural elites are more effective at thwarting coups. To test our hypothesis, we develop a unique data set of rural political strategies, coding regimes in 44 sub-Saharan countries from 1960 to 2000. Using a continuous-time Cox proportional hazards regression model, we find a robust correlation between policies supportive of rural elites and lower coup risk.

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Section: Rural Coalitions and Coup Politics: Hypothetical Mechanismsmentioning

confidence: 99%