Spotlight 13/23: Back in Business or Never Out? Military Coups and Political Militarization in Sub-Sahara Africa

    by Markus Bayer, Felix S. Bethke, Aurel Croissant and Nikitas Scheeder | To the Publication

    1 Croissant, A.; Kuehn, D.; Chambers, P. & Wolf, S. O. (2010). Beyond the fallacy of coup-ism: Conceptualizing civilian control of the military in emerging democracies. Democratization, 17(5), 950-975.

    2 The data for figure 1 is based on Powell, J. M. & Thyne, C. L. (2011). Global instances of coups from 1950 to 2010: A new dataset. Journal of Peace Research 48(2), 249-259.

    3 United States Department of State (2019). Nigeria 2019 Human Rights Report, Country Reports on Human Rights Practices for 2019, https://www.state.gov/wp-content/uploads/2020/02/NIGERIA-2019-HUMAN-RIGHTS-REPORT.pdf 

    4 Namely Burkina Faso, Chad, Gabon, Guinea, Guinea-Bissau, Mali, Niger, and Sudan. Sao Tome and Principe also witnessed a coup in 2022 but is left out in the analysis since it is not included in the M3-Dataset.

    5 Benin, Botswana, Ivory Coast, Rep. of Congo, Ghana, Lesotho, Malawi, Namibia, Eswatini, and South Africa.

    6 Angola, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Gabon, Guinea, Mali, Mauritania, Sudan, Chad, Uganda, Zambia, and Zimbabwe.

    7 Zimmermann, E. (1983). Political violence, crises and revolutions: Theories and research. Boston: G. K. Hall & Co.