Civilian support for military coups isn’t a bug. It’s a feature

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Civilian support for military coups isn’t a bug. It’s a feature

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In September 2024, authorities in Benin detained the country’s former sports minister and a prominent businessman for allegedly

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against the West ******** nation’s president, Patrice Talon. Had a putsch materialized, Benin would have joined a growing list of ******** countries to have experienced a

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over the past four years.

Dubbed an “

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” by ******* Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres, the resurgence of military takeovers has left many observers perplexed. For one, the

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worldwide

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prior to 2020.

But perhaps even more puzzling is that several of the recent military coups—such as those in Mali, Burkina Faso and Guinea—have been accompanied by

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. Indeed, while various commentaries or

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as

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of this recent coup wave, these perspectives rely on a common misunderstanding.

As I’ve observed over the course of my

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, civilian support is actually a common, if not critical, part of coup politics, and far from unique to this recent resurgence of military takeovers.

How common are civilian-supported coups?

In the popular imagination of a military coup, power-hungry soldiers command tanks down a capital’s streets to seize authority from the political leadership. In this vision, civilians are often passive actors or otherwise assumed to be the opponents of coups. Yet such a setting is belied by numerous examples, both recent and throughout history.

In West *******’s ******, for example, the

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—a coalition of civil society organizations—gathered its members on the streets to support the coup in July 2023,

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prior protests calling for the reinstatement of President Mohamed Bazoum. In neighboring Mali, the

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protest movement served a similar role in the aftermath of the country’s 2020 coup—

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in its relationship with the junta have since surfaced.

Even Benin’s thwarted plot had a civilian dimension. Its alleged masterminds, the sports minister and prominent businessman who were said to have

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, were not soldiers but part of the governing bureaucracy or elite civil society.

To see how common such cases are, I

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on civilian support and involvement in all successful military coups since 1950. Defining coups as “

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” if the soldiers manage to stay in power for at least seven days, that gave me 242 cases over a ******* of nearly 75 years to analyze, spanning different regions like ****** America, sub-Saharan ******* and the Middle East.

Out of the 242 episodes, 189 coups—or nearly 80%—saw some type of civilian support, either in the takeover’s instigation or in the later consolidation of power.

Coups without any sign of civilian support were generally those that saw a military leader ousted by other members of the ruling junta—contexts where soldiers already dominated the political landscape.

Breaking down the numbers over time, civilian-supported coups represented the lion’s share in each decade, even as the overall frequency of coups ebbed by the 1990s with the end of the Cold War.

But in the past two decades, virtually every successful coup has been associated with some level of support outside the military. So while civilian support might not be unique to recent cases, there is evidence that it has become a more common fixture of military coups—at least among the successful ones.

Of course, these stats do not include ******* coups or thwarted conspiracies. But the ******* attempts to instigate a coup in Benin—or, for that matter,

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—suggest that these numbers might underestimate the frequency of civilian support for, and involvement in, coups.

How civilians support coups

In general, civilian support for coups can manifest in different ways. But in a

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, I identified two broad patterns: instigation and consolidation.

Instigation, by default, occurs in the pre-coup stage and involves civilians taking action to spark a coup attempt.

Protests and insurrections in pursuit of a military coup are common methods of instigation. For example, early in 2023, supporters of former Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro

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after weeks of

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on the military to stop President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva’s inauguration. While their efforts ultimately ******* to produce a coup, they are illustrative of the civilian dynamic.

In late 2021, disgruntled members of Sudan’s transitional government organized protests in Khartoum, the capital,

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. The military

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by removing Prime Minister Abdalla Hamdok from power.

Instigation can also involve more targeted actions. For instance, the alleged Benin coup plot involved targeting specific members of the security services with bribes in exchange for their participation. In Brazil, recent court documents

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in coordinating a coup plot and attempting to ensure the participation of top military leaders.

In other cases, political parties developed secret cells in the armed forces to later give the go-ahead for a coup—like in Bolivia in

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, Iraq in

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, Afghanistan in

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and Sudan in

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.

Consolidation, on the other hand, involves actions taken during and in the immediate aftermath of a coup.

This could include actions like taking up arms alongside soldiers during a military takeover, organizing pro-coup protests or assuming important governing tasks alongside a new junta. Here, civilians seek to ensure a coup succeeds and its objectives take root—even against domestic and international opposition.

Among the recent West ******** cases, civilians have especially worked to consolidate coups against international opposition. For example, after the Economic Community of West ******** States threatened military intervention to reverse ******’s coup in 2023, M62 and other civilian-led protest groups

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. Thousands also enlisted in the Volunteers for the Defense of ******, a pro-junta

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created to combat international intervention against the coupists.

Why civilian coup support matters

Soldiers

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to even attempt a coup without confidence that at least some civilians will back their efforts.

Portraying civilian support for military takeovers as exceptional thus misses a critical component of coup politics. And this misconception benefits coupists,

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civilian allies to present their actions as legitimate or even revolutionary, which is what happened in

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.

Coupists can also retain political influence after stepping aside by

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secure power.

Military coups also do not occur in a vacuum. A proper focus on the civilian element of coup politics allows researchers and international observers to better contextualize military takeovers in broader social struggles for the state.

This could lead to greater engagement with the issue of what kinds of civilian segments are instigating and consolidating coups. Are they close to the targeted leader such as in Benin’s alleged plot? Or are they members of the political opposition, like in ****** and Mali?

These nuances should be front and center to researchers, policymakers and diplomats as they seek to understand—and mitigate—sudden and often destabilizing takeovers of a state.

Provided by
The Conversation

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