Abstract
Under what conditions do political leaders take strategies that allow them to reduce militaries' capabilities to successfully organize a coup? There is a broad consensus among previous studies that political leaders who face a high risk of coup will employ "coup-proofing" strategies. A closer look at their theory and empirical analyses, however, suggests that the presumed relationship between coup risk and coup-proofing should be reexamined. Drawing on insights from formal studies on authoritarian power-sharing, this article proposes that political leaders are less likely to undertake coup-proofing efforts as the coup risk they face increases because militaries can deter leaders from weakening them by threatening a coup. The statistical models in this article estimate a latent coup risk by properly aggregating multiple indicators that capture militaries' willingness and ability to organize a coup. The empirical results strongly support the proposition: Coup-proofing efforts taken by leaders decrease in coup risk.
Original language | English |
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Pages (from-to) | 3-15 |
Number of pages | 13 |
Journal | Journal of Peace Research |
Volume | 54 |
Issue number | 1 |
Early online date | 1 Jan 2017 |
DOIs | |
Publication status | E-pub ahead of print - 1 Jan 2017 |
Keywords
- coups
- coup-proofing
- civil-military relations
- political leaders
- coup risk
- military
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Replication Data for: Coup risk, coup-proofing and leader survival
Sudduth, J. (Creator), Harvard Dataverse, 26 May 2023
DOI: 10.7910/dvn/atxzeo
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