Determinants of Coup d’État Events 1970—90: The Role of Property Rights Protection

Abstract

Existing research on the political-economic determinants of coup d'état events has not explored the role of property rights protection in decreasing the likelihood of their global and regional incidence. Case studies confirm that the military institutions of the developing world began to represent elite class values that reacted adversely to state attempts at the redistribution of wealth and the expropriation of property after the 1970s. Thus far, no empirical analysis has tested the assertions made by these cases. Using Binary Times Series Cross-Section models from the period 1970-90, this article investigates the impact of the Contract Intensive Money ratio and International Country Risk Guide measures, which are tapped as property rights proxy variables, on decreasing the likelihood of a coup. The findings show that developing states that secure their property rights (as a function of these measures) are more likely to experience a decreased likelihood of a coup. The effect of property rights protection on the decreased likelihood of a coup shows statistical significance in Africa, Asia, and Latin America. The results hold true even when the global model is subjected to a sensitivity analysis where lagged coup events over a six-year period are included as a control variable.

Revisiting Economic Shocks and Coups

“…The military may decide to stage a coup if pressures grow enough that politicians begin to consider policies that threaten to nationalize and expropriate private property. As is often the case in Latin America, the military may take the vanguard role of protecting ''the existing middle class order'' (Huntington 1968;O'Donnell 1973;Tusalem 2010).…”

Do Contracts Save Lives? The Relationship Between Contract Intensive Economies and Natural Disaster Fatalities

“…Clague et al's () measure of “contract intensive money,” for example, captures economic reliance on contracts by exploring the ratio of non‐currency money to the total money supply (p. 188). This measure has been employed as a proxy for contractual enforcement in a number of contexts (Baliamoune‐Lutz, ; Tusalem, ) and could provide a good test of the robustness of the findings here.…”

Economic Origins of Democratic Breakdown? The Redistributive Model and the Postcolonial State

“… 41 Tusalem similarly rests his claim that militaries seized power on behalf of wealthy elites in the 1970–1990 period on Latin American examples, while claiming that his results hold up across world regions. Yet his argument that stable democracies must “develop effective state institutions that can guarantee the vested wealth interests of the middle class” suggests that the deepest source of stability is state effectiveness, not the property protections state capacity ostensibly allows; Tusalem 2010, 347, emphasis added. …”