Coup d'état

For other uses, see Coup d'état (disambiguation).

"Coup" and "Putsch" redirect here. For other uses, see Coup (disambiguation).

A coup d'état (/ˌkuːdeɪˈtɑː/ (); French: blow of state; plural: coups d'état), also known as a coup, a putsch, or an overthrow, is the sudden and illegal seizure of a government, usually instigated by a small group of the existing state establishment to depose the established government and replace it with a new ruling body. A coup d'état is considered successful when the usurpers establish their dominance. When the coup either fails or doesn't entirely succeed, a civil war is a possible consequence.

A coup d'état typically uses the extant government's power to assume political control of the country. In Coup d'État: A Practical Handbook, military historian Edward Luttwak states that "[a] coup consists of the infiltration of a small, but critical, segment of the state apparatus, which is then used to displace the government from its control of the remainder." The armed forces, whether military or paramilitary, can be a defining factor of a coup d'état.

Etymology

The phrase coup d'État (French pronunciation: [ku deta]) is French, literally meaning a "stroke of state" or in practice a "blow against the state". In French the word "État", denoting a sovereign political entity, is capitalized.

Although the coup d'état has featured in politics since antiquity, the phrase is of relatively recent coinage; the Oxford English Dictionary identifies it as a French expression meaning a "stroke of State". The phrase did not appear within an English text, before the nineteenth century, except when used in the translation of a French source, there being no simple phrase in English to convey the contextualized idea of a "knockout blow to the existing administration within a state". One early example of the use of the phrase within text translated from French, is in 1785, in a printed translation of a letter from a French merchant, commenting on an arbitrary decree or ‘arret’ issued by the French King, restricting the import of British woollen cloth. What may be its first published use within a text composed in English, is in an editor’s note in the London Morning Chronicle, 7 January 1802, reporting the arrest by Napoleon in France, of Moreau, Berthier, Massena, and Bernadotte:

There was a report in circulation yesterday of a sort of coup d’etat having taken place in France, in consequence of some formidable conspiracy against the existing government.

In post-Revolutionary France, the phrase came to be used to describe the various murders by Napoleon’s hated secret police, the Gens d’Armes d’Elite, who murdered the Duke of Enghien:

… the actors in torture, the distributors of the poisoning draughts, and the secret executioners of those unfortunate individuals or families, whom Bonaparte’s measures of safety require to remove. In what revolutionary tyrants call grand[s] coups d’etat, as butchering, or poisoning, or drowning, en masse, they are exclusively employed.

Since an unsuccessful coup d'état in 1920 (the Kapp Putsch), the Swiss German word Putsch (pronounced [pʊtʃ]; coined for the Züriputsch of 1839) also denotes the same politico-military actions.

Usage of the phrase

Politically, a coup d'état is a usually violent method of political engineering, which affects who rules in the government, without radical changes in the form of the government, the political system. Tactically, a coup d'état involves control, by an active minority of usurpers, who block the remaining (non-participant) defenders of the state's possible defence of the attacked government, by either capturing or expelling the politico-military leaders, and seizing physical control of the country's key government offices, communications media, and infrastructure. It is to be noted that in the latest years there has been a broad use of the phrase in mass media, which may contradict the legal definition of "coup d'état". In looser usage (as in intelligence coup, boardroom coup) the term simply refers to gaining a sudden advantage on a rival.

Pronunciamiento

Main article: Pronunciamiento

Pronunciamiento (pronouncement) is term of Spanish and Latin American origin for a special type of coup d'état. The coup d'état (called golpe de Estado in Spanish) was more common in Spain and South America, while the pronunciamiento was more common in Central America. The pronunciamiento is the formal explanation for deposing the regnant government, justifying the installation of the new government that was effected with the golpe de Estado. The difference between a coup and a pronunciamento is that in the former a military, paramilitary or opposing political faction deposes the current government and assumes power; in the pronunciamiento the military deposes the existing government and installs an (ostensibly) civilian government.

History

Further information: List of coups d'état and coup attempts and List of coups d'état and coup attempts by country

Historically speaking, variations of coup d'état have been amongst the most common forms of governmental transition in human societies. In the modern day, coups d'état are common in Africa; between 1952 and 2000, thirty-three countries experienced 85 such depositions. Western Africa had most of them, 42; most were against civil regimes; 27 were against military regimes; and only in five were the deposed incumbents killed. Moreover, as a change-of-government method, the incidence of the coup d'état has declined worldwide.

Types

The political scientist Samuel P. Huntington identifies three classes of coup d'état:

• Breakthrough coup d'état: a revolutionary army overthrows a traditional government and creates a new bureaucratic elite. Generally led by mid-level or junior officers. Examples are China in 1911, Bulgaria in 1944, Egypt in 1952, Turkey in 1960, Greece in 1967, Libya in 1969, Portugal in 1974, and Liberia in 1980.
• Guardian coup d'état: the "musical chairs" coup d'état. The stated aim of such a coup is usually improving public order and efficiency, and ending corruption. There usually is no fundamental change to the power structure. Generally, the leaders portray their actions as a temporary and unfortunate necessity. An early example is the coup d'état by consul Sulla, in 88 B.C., against supporters of Marius in Rome, after the latter attempted to strip him of a military command. An example from the Age of Enlightenment is Swedish king Gustav III's coup d'état in 1772, when he overthrew the government, instituted a new constitution with himself as an enlightened despot, all with massive popular consent. A contemporary instance is the civilian Prime Minister of Pakistan Zulfikar Ali Bhutto's overthrow by Chief of Army Staff General Muhammad Zia-ul-Haq in 1977, who cited widespread civil disorder and impending civil war as his justification. In 1999, General Pervez Musharraf overthrew Pakistani Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif on the same grounds. Nations with guardian coups can frequently shift back and forth between civilian and military governments. Example countries include Pakistan, Turkey (1971 and 1980), and Thailand. A bloodless coup usually arises from the Guardian coup d'état.
• Veto coup d'état: occurs when the army vetoes the people's mass participation and social mobilisation in governing themselves. In such a case, the army confronts and suppresses large-scale, broad-based civil opposition, tending to repression and killing, such as the coup d'état in Chile in 1973 against the elected Socialist President Salvador Allende by the Chilean military. The same happened in Argentina throughout the period 1930–1983, Burma during the 8888 Uprising, and was attempted in Russia in 1991.

A coup d'état is typed according to the military rank of the lead usurper.

• The veto coup d'état and the guardian coup d'état are affected by the army's commanding officers.
• The breakthrough coup d'état is effected by junior officers (colonels or lower rank) or non-commissioned officers (sergeants). When junior officers or enlisted men so seize power, the coup d'état is a mutiny with grave implications for the organizational and professional integrity of the military.
• In a bloodless coup d'état, the threat of violence suffices to depose the incumbent. In 1889, Brazil became a republic via bloodless coup; in 1999, Pervez Musharraf assumed power in Pakistan via a bloodless coup; and, in 2006, Sonthi Boonyaratglin assumed power in Thailand as the leader of the Council for Democratic Reform under Constitutional Monarchy.

The self-coup denotes an incumbent government – aided and abetted by the military – assuming extra-constitutional powers. A historical example is President, then Emperor, Louis Napoléon Bonaparte. Modern examples include Alberto Fujimori, in Peru, who, although elected, temporarily suspended the legislature and the judiciary in 1992, becoming an authoritarian ruler, and King Gyanendra's assumption of "emergency powers" in Nepal. Another form of self-coup is when a government, having been defeated in an election, refuses to step down.

Resistance to coups d'état

Many coups d'état, even if initially successful in seizing the main centres of state power, are actively opposed by certain segments of society or by the international community. Opposition can take many different forms, including an attempted counter-coup by sections of the armed forces, international isolation of the new regime, and military intervention.

Sometimes opposition takes the form of civil resistance, in which the coup is met with mass demonstrations from the population generally, and disobedience among civil servants and members of the armed forces. Cases in which civil resistance played a significant part in defeating armed coups d'état include: the Kornilov Putsch in Russia in August 1917; the Kapp Putsch in Berlin in March 1920; and the Generals' Revolt in Algiers in April 1961. The coup in the Soviet Union on 19–21 August 1991 is another case in which civil resistance was part of an effective opposition to a coup: Boris Yeltsin, President of the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic, stood on top of a tank in the centre of Moscow and urged people to refuse co-operation with the coup.

Governments following military coups

After the coup d'état, the military faces the matter of what type of government to establish. In Latin America, it was common for the post-coup government to be led by a junta, a committee of the chiefs of staff of the armed forces. A common form of African post-coup government is the revolutionary assembly, a quasi-legislative body elected by the army. In Pakistan, the military leader typically assumes the title of chief martial law administrator.

According to Huntington, most leaders of a coup d'état act under the concept of right orders: they believe that the best resolution of the country's problems is merely to issue correct orders. This view of government underestimates the difficulty of implementing government policy, and the degree of political resistance to certain correct orders. It presupposes that everyone who matters in the country shares a single, common interest, and that the only question is how to pursue that single, common interest.

Current leaders who assumed power via coups d'état

Title	Name	Assumed power	Replaced	Country	Coup d'état
Sultan	Qaboos bin Said al Said1	23 July 1970	Said bin Taimur	Oman	1970 Omani coup d'état
President	Teodoro Obiang Nguema Mbasogo	3 August 1979	Francisco Macías Nguema	Equatorial Guinea	1979 Equatoguinean coup d'état
President	Yoweri Museveni	29 January 1986	Tito Okello	Uganda	Ugandan Bush War
President	Blaise Compaoré	15 October 1987	Thomas Sankara	Burkina Faso	1987 Burkinabé coup d'état
President	Omar al-Bashir	30 June 1989	Sadiq al-Mahdi	Sudan	1989 Sudanese coup d'état
President	Idriss Déby	2 December 1990	Hissène Habré	Chad	1990 Chadian revolution
President	Yahya Jammeh2	22 July 1994	Dawda Jawara	The Gambia	1994 Gambian coup d'état
Prime Minister	Hun Sen	August 1997	Norodom Ranariddh	Cambodia	1997 Cambodian coup d'état
President	Denis Sassou Nguesso	25 October 1997	Pascal Lissouba	Republic of the Congo	Republic of the Congo Civil War
Acting Prime Minister	Frank Bainimarama	5 December 2006	Laisenia Qarase	Fiji	2006 Fijian coup d'état
President	Mohamed Ould Abdel Aziz3	6 August 2008	Sidi Ould Cheikh Abdallahi	Mauritania	2008 Mauritanian coup d'état
President	Abd Elfattah Elsisi3	3 July 2013	Mohamed Morsi	Egypt	2013 Egyptian coup d'état
Prime Minister	Prayuth Chan-ocha	22 May 2014	Niwatthamrong Boonsongpaisan4	Thailand	2014 Thai coup d'état

¹Monarch who overthrew his father in a bloodless palace coup.
²Subsequently confirmed in office by an apparently free and fair election.
³Subsequently confirmed by a narrow margin in the Mauritanian presidential election, 2009, which was regarded as "satisfactory" by international observers.
⁴Acting Prime Minister at that time.

Other uses of the term

The term has also been used in a corporate context more specifically as boardroom coup. CEOs that have been sacked by behind-the-scenes maneuvering include Robert Stempel of General Motors and John Akers of IBM, in 1992 and 1993, respectively.

Steve Jobs attempted management coups twice at Apple Inc.; first in 1985 when he unsuccessfully tried to oust John Sculley and then again in 1997 which successfully forced Gil Amelio to resign.

See also

• Assassination
• Civil-military relations
• Contrast with civilian control of the military
• Coup de main
• Dictatorship
• Kleptocracy
• List of coups d'état and coup attempts
• List of coups d'état and coup attempts by country
• List of fictional revolutions and coups
• List of protective service agencies
• Military dictatorship
• Political corruption
• Political warfare
• Sabotage
• Seven Days in May

Bibliography

• Curzio Malaparte, Technique du Coup d'État (Published in French), Paris, 1931
• S.E. Finer, The Man on Horseback: The Role of the Military in Politics, Pall Mall Press, London, 1962. p. 98.
• D. J. Goodspeed, Six Coups d'État, Viking Press inc., New-York, 1962
• Ken Connor and David Hebditch, How to Stage a Military Coup: From Planning to Execution, Pen and Sword Books Ltd, 2008, ISBN 978-1-84832-503-6
• McGowan, Patrick. 2005. "Coups and Conflict in West Africa, 1955–2004: Part I, Theoretical Perspectives." Armed Forces & Society, vol. 32: pp. 5–23.
• McGowan, Patrick. 2006. "Coups and Conflict in West Africa, 1955–2004: Part II, Empirical Findings." Armed Forces & Society, vol. 32: pp. 234–253.
• Beeson, Mark. 2008. "Civil-Military Relations in Indonesia and the Philippines: Will the Thai Coup Prove Contagious?" Armed Forces & Society, vol. 34: pp. 474–490.
• N'Diaye, Boubacar. 2002. "How Not to Institutionalize Civilian Control: Kenya's Coup Prevention Strategies, 1964–1997." Armed Forces & Society, vol. 28: pp. 619–640

External links

• The dictionary definition of coup d'état at Wiktionary
• Media related to Coups d'état at Wikimedia Commons