The Democratic Coup d'État

Abstract

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.

Reanalysis: Are coups good for democracy?

“…Yet recent transitions in Ecuador in 2003, Bangladesh in 2009 and Niger in 2011 all quickly followed military coups, matching an earlier pattern in Panama, Portugal, Bolivia, Thailand, and elsewhere. Indeed, recent empirical work argues that coups within autocracy raise the ensuing likelihood of democratization (Miller, 2012(Miller, , 2016Thyne and Powell, 2016;Varol, 2012). In particular, Thyne and Powell (2016) find that both coups and coup attempts predict democratization from 1950-2008. In a recent reconsideration of the evidence, Derpanopoulos et al (2016) (hereafter, DFGW) dispute the idea that coups predict democratization.…”

International Legal Protection of Public Property Relations: Practical Experience of the European Court of Human Rights

“…Key innovations should create conditions for the development of corporate transparency in the use of public property. It is useful to create a state register that will cover international coverage data in Ukraine, taking into account the German experience for Ukraine 45 . Of course, it is necessary to ensure full access to data on public expenses and expenses of local self-government bodies, private law and delegated competency subjects that use public property.…”

“…P. 245. 45 Germany: Trend toward re-municipalisation of energy sector. URL: https://www.epsu.org/article/ germany-trend-toward-re-municipalisation-energy-sector (дата звернення: 04.04.2019).…”

Názvosloví studií státního převratu: jeho použití v odborné literatuře, 1962–2014

“…Ferguson 1987;Moreno et al 2004;O'Kane 1987;Londregan, Poole 1990;Thompson 1974) nebo třeba ustanovení nového politického režimu (např. Dix 1994;Janowitz 1977;Powell 2014;Putnam 1967;Varol 2012), naplněním tohoto zamýšleného stavu je rozhodnuto o úspěchu. Slabinou přístupu je ovšem jistá pravděpodobnost, že cíle daného převratu nebudou splněny beze zbytku.…”