How to Keep Officers in the Barracks
Causes, Agents, and Types of Military Coups
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 6273279 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Holger Albrecht (0000-0003-3487-397X, University of Alabama), Ferdinand Eibl (0000-0003-0091-5182, King's College London) |
| Year | 2018 |
| Publication date | 2018-04-13 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | No |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | International Studies Quarterly (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0020-8833 • E-ISSN: 1468-2478 |
| Publisher | Oxford University Press (PUBLISHER • GB) |
| DOI | 10.1093/isq/sqx085 |
| OpenAlex | W2759007063 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 26 |
| References cited | 79 |
What are the most efficient strategies to prevent military coups d'état? The answer depends on coup agency, that is, who attempts to overthrow the regime: elite officers or lower-ranking combat officers. Elite officers and lower-ranking combat officers have different incentives, opportunities, and capacities when it comes to perpetrating coups. Using original data on coup agency, public spending, and officer salaries in the Middle East and North Africa, we find that counterbalancing—a strategy designed to increase barriers for coup plotters' coordination efforts—and higher shares of defense spending prove more effective at preventing coups by elite officers. However, higher social spending reduces the risk of coups by combat officers. Political liberalization has mixed effects on military agents. It decreases the risk of coups by combat officers, but makes elite officers more likely to mount coups. Our findings suggest that the study of coups needs to better incorporate variation and that we need to rethink the image of coups as purely elite-led power grabs
Agency (philosophy · Economics · Elite · Incentive · Market economy · Officer · Political economy · Political science · Politics · Power (physics · Ranking (information retrieval · Social science · Sociology · Defense, Military, and Policy Studies · Law · Political Conflict and Governance · Terrorism, Counterterrorism, and Political Violence
Regime security and taxation in autocracies
Coup d’état in West Africa
Praetorian Army in Action
A test of the democratic peacekeeping hypothesis
Foreign Legionnaires and Military Mutinies
Strategies of Dictatorship and Military Disloyalty during Anti-Authoritarian Protests
Coups and the End of Mass-Killing Episodes
Getting a Seat at the Table
Getting away with it? Kleptocracy, atrocities, and the morality of autocratic exile
Leaving the Barracks
How Mosul fell
Diversionary Peace
The colonial roots of structural coup-proofing
Soldiers and Protest
Natural Resource Exploitation and Military Spending
Coup-proofing
Who Punishes the Leader? Leader Culpability and Coups during Civil War
Pitfalls of Professionalism? Military Academies and Coup Risk
Planes, Trains, and Armored Mobiles
Coup Agency and Prospects for Democracy
The Varieties of Coups D’état
The dictator’s legionnaires
Political Institutions and Coups in Dictatorships
Veteran politics
Armed forces and airwaves
Revolutions and the Military
Seizing Power
Citizens, Autocrats, and Plotters
Fractionalization
Man on Horseback; the Role of the Military in Politics
The Logic of Political Survival
Inequality and Democratization
The Limits of the “Democratic Coup” Thesis
Naval Forces and Civil-Military Relations
Causes and Triggers of Coups d'état
Reforming the Rule of Law in Morocco
Coup-Proofing and Military Effectiveness in Interstate Wars, 1967–99
The Impact of Institutional Coup-Proofing on Coup Attempts and Coup Outcomes
Coup-proofing
The Military Role in Yemen's Protests
The Libyan Armed Forces between Coup-proofing and Repression
Coups d’état and defense spending
Loyalty for sale? Military spending and coups d’etat
Confronting Coup Risk in the Latin American Left
Wedded to Mubarak
Economic Reform and the Military
Rentier Militaries in the Gulf States
Narrow interests and military resource allocation in autocratic regimes
Economic origins of dictatorship and democracy
Power Resources and Employer-Centered Approaches in Explanations of Welfare States and Varieties of Capitalism
Poverty, the Coup Trap, and the Seizure of Executive Power
Toward Explaining Military Intervention in Latin American Politics
Terrorism and the Fate of Dictators
Popular Protest and Elite Coordination in a Coup d’état
How Multiple Imputation Makes a Difference
Back to the Future
Exit, Resistance, Loyalty
Squeaky Wheels and Troop Loyalty
Regime Vulnerability and the Diversionary Threat of Force
Revisiting Economic Shocks and Coups
IMF Programs and the Risk of a Coup d’état
Coordination, Learning, and Coups
When War Helps Civil–military Relations
Toward a Structural Understanding of Coup Risk
Determinants of the Attempting and Outcome of Coups d’état
Contracting on Violence
The Ethnic Army and the State
Overthrowing the “Loyalty Norm
Preventing Coups d’état
Political Succession
Cues to Coup Plotters
Risk Mitigation, Regime Security, and Militias
The Political Origins of African Military Coups
Openness, Uncertainty, and Social Spending
Economic interdependence and post-coup democratization
Military loyalty and the failure of democratization in Africa
Reconsidering the Robustness of Authoritarianism in the Middle East
Divided They Rule
Auxiliary Force Structure
Strategic Logic of Elite Purges in Dictatorships
Breaking Out of the Coup Trap
Countering Coups
Searching Where the Light Shines
What to Do about Missing Values in Time‐Series Cross‐Section Data
A Probabilistic Approach to the Causes of Coups d'Etat
Coups and Democracy
Different Threats, Different Militaries
The Enemy Within
Waiting for Godot
Armed conflicts, 1946-2014
Analyzing Incomplete Political Science Data
Global instances of coups from 1950 to 2010
Factors Influencing the Occurrence of Military Coups D'Etat in Latin America
Generals and Autocrats
Military Professionalization and Civil-Military Relations in the Middle East
Mutiny and nonviolence in the Arab Spring
Coup risk, coup-proofing and leader survival
Explaining African Military Coups d'Etat, 1960-1982
Democracy and Social Spending in Latin America, 1980-92
TheMaddisonProject
The Myth of Coup-proofing
Arab Uprisings, Armed Forces, and Civil-Military Relations
| Unique citing works | 26 |
|---|---|
| Citations per year | 3,71 |
| Citation span | 2019 - 2025 (7) |
| Citation velocity | recent |
| Highly cited | No |
| Citation types | Neutral: 26 |