Where have all the coups gone?
Abstract/Contents
- Abstract
- Between 1960-1980, the world saw at least ten coups a year, but today coups are extremely rare, shocking events. Why have military coups been facing a global decline? While a rich existing literature on civil-military relations provides numerous explanations for why hostilities might arise between a government and its military, these studies fail to account for why there might be changes over time. Using a multi-methods approach, my dissertation examines how both international and domestic factors explain this dramatic change. I begin by drawing on findings from the existing coup literature to explore conventional explanations for this phenomenon. Conventional explanations are those that might plausibly explain the decline given what is already known about the conditions that lead to coups. These include hypotheses pertaining to the end of the Cold War, democratization, decolonization, and coup-proofing. Upon demonstrating that these conventional explanations are insufficient for explaining the global temporal trend, I introduce two original theories. I first examine changes to covert intervention via coups by the United States and the Soviet Union during the Cold War and argue that both major powers' decisions to move away from supporting coups in part explain the decline. Second, I look at how changes in the domestic political system and civil-military relations has led to changes in the manner by which autocrats exit from office — away from coups and in favor of negotiated settlements with the military and other elites. These findings taken together suggest that the decline in coups does not necessarily indicate improved civil-military relations
Description
| Type of resource | text |
|---|---|
| Form | electronic resource; remote; computer; online resource |
| Extent | 1 online resource |
| Place | California |
| Place | [Stanford, California] |
| Publisher | [Stanford University] |
| Copyright date | 2020; ©2020 |
| Publication date | 2020; 2020 |
| Issuance | monographic |
| Language | English |
Creators/Contributors
| Author | Balakrishnan, Nandita N |
|---|---|
| Degree supervisor | Fearon, James D |
| Thesis advisor | Fearon, James D |
| Thesis advisor | Haber, Stephen H, 1957- |
| Thesis advisor | Schultz, Kenneth |
| Thesis advisor | Tomz, Michael |
| Degree committee member | Haber, Stephen H, 1957- |
| Degree committee member | Schultz, Kenneth |
| Degree committee member | Tomz, Michael |
| Associated with | Stanford University, Department of Political Science. |
Subjects
| Genre | Theses |
|---|---|
| Genre | Text |
Bibliographic information
| Statement of responsibility | Nandita N. Balakrishnan |
|---|---|
| Note | Submitted to the Department of Political Science |
| Thesis | Thesis Ph.D. Stanford University 2020 |
| Location | electronic resource |
Access conditions
- Copyright
- © 2020 by Nandita N. Balakrishnan
- License
- This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial 3.0 Unported license (CC BY-NC).
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