A coup d'état (/ˌkuːdeɪˈtɑː/ ; French: [ku deta]; lit. 'stroke of state'),[1] or simply a coup, is typically an illegal and overt attempt by a military organization or other government elites to unseat an incumbent leadership.[2][3] A self-coup is when a leader, having come to power through legal means, tries to stay in power through illegal means.[3]
By one estimate, there were 457 coup attempts from 1950 to 2010, half of which were successful.[2] Most coup attempts occurred in the mid-1960s, but there were also large numbers of coup attempts in the mid-1970s and the early 1990s.[2] Coups occurring in the post-Cold War period have been more likely to result in democratic systems than Cold War coups,[4][5][6] though coups still mostly perpetuate authoritarianism.[7]
Many factors may lead to the occurrence of a coup, as well as determine the success or failure of a coup. Once a coup is underway, coup success is driven by coup-makers' ability to get others to believe that the coup attempt will be successful.[8] The number of successful coups has decreased over time.[2] Failed coups in authoritarian systems are likely to strengthen the power of the authoritarian ruler.[9][10] The cumulative number of coups is a strong predictor of future coups, a phenomenon referred to as the "coup trap".[11][12][13][14]
In what is referred to as "coup-proofing", regimes create structures that make it hard for any small group to seize power. These coup-proofing strategies may include the strategic placing of family, ethnic, and religious groups in the military and the fragmenting of military and security agencies.[15] However, coup-proofing reduces military effectiveness as loyalty is prioritized over experience when filling key positions within the military.[16][17][18][19][20][21][22]
The term comes from French coup d'État, literally meaning a 'stroke of state' or 'blow of state'.[23][24][25] In French, the word État (French: [eta]) is capitalized when it denotes a sovereign political entity.[26]
Although the concept of a coup d'état has featured in politics since antiquity, the phrase is of relatively recent coinage.[27] It did not appear within an English text before the 19th 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 use within text translated from French was in 1785 in a printed translation of a letter from a French merchant, commenting on an arbitrary decree, or arrêt, issued by the French king restricting the import of British wool.[28] What may be its first published use within a text composed in English is an editor's note in the London Morning Chronicle,1804, reporting the arrest by Napoleon in France, of Moreau, Berthier, Masséna, and Bernadotte: "There was a report in circulation yesterday of a sort of coup d'état having taken place in France, in consequence of some formidable conspiracy against the existing government."
In the British press, the phrase came to be used to describe the various murders by Napoleon's alleged secret police, the Gens d'Armes d'Elite, who executed 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'état, as butchering, or poisoning, or drowning, en masse, they are exclusively employed."[29]
A self-coup, also called an autocoup (from Spanish autogolpe) or coup from the top, is a form of coup d'état in which a nation's head, having come to power through legal means, stays in power through illegal means.[30] The leader may dissolve or render powerless the national legislature and unlawfully assume extraordinary powers not granted under normal circumstances. Other measures may include annulling the nation's constitution, suspending civil courts, and having the head of government assume dictatorial powers.[31][32]
Between 1946 and the beginning of 2021, an estimated 148 self-coup attempts took place, 110 in autocracies and 38 in democracies.[33]A soft coup, sometimes referred to as a silent coup or a bloodless coup, is an illegal overthrow of a government, but unlike a regular coup d'état it is achieved without the use of force or violence.[34]
A palace coup or palace revolution is a coup in which one faction within the ruling group displaces another faction within a ruling group.[35] Along with popular protests, palace coups are a major threat to dictators.[36] The Harem conspiracy of the 12th century BC was one of the earliest. Palace coups were common in Imperial China.[37] They have also occurred among the Habsburg dynasty in Austria, the Al-Thani dynasty in Qatar,[38] and in Haiti in the 19th to early 20th centuries.[39] The majority of Russian tsars between 1725 and 1801 were either overthrown or usurped power in palace coups.[40]
The term putsch ([pʊtʃ], from Swiss German for 'knock'), denotes the political-military actions of an unsuccessful minority reactionary coup.[41][42] The term was initially coined for the Züriputsch of 6 September 1839 in Switzerland. It was also used for attempted coups in Weimar Germany, such as the 1920 Kapp Putsch, Küstrin Putsch, and Adolf Hitler's 1923 Beer Hall Putsch.[43]
The 1934 Night of the Long Knives was Hitler's purge to eliminate opponents, particularly the paramilitary faction led by Ernst Röhm, but Nazi propaganda justified it as preventing a supposed putsch planned or attempted by Röhm. The Nazi term Röhm-Putsch is still used by Germans to describe the event, often with quotation marks as the 'so-called Röhm Putsch'.[44]
The 1961 Algiers putsch and the 1991 August Putsch also use the term.
The 2023 Wagner Group rebellion has also been described as a putsch, mostly as a thematic parallel comparing Russian President Vladimir Putin to Hitler, and Wagner Group leader Yevgeny Prigozhin to Röhm.[45][46]
Pronunciamiento ('pronouncement') is a term of Spanish origin for a type of coup d'état. Specifically the pronunciamiento is the formal declaration deposing the previous government and justifying the installation of the new government by the golpe de estado. One author distinguishes a coup, in which a military or political faction takes power for itself, from a pronunciamiento, in which the military deposes the existing government and hands over power to a new, ostensibly civilian government.[47]
A "barracks revolt" or cuartelazo is another type of military revolt, from the Spanish term cuartel ('quarter' or 'barracks'), in which the mutiny of specific military garrisons sparks a larger military revolt against the government.[48]
Other types of actual or attempted seizures of power are sometimes called "coups with adjectives". The appropriate term can be subjective and carries normative, analytical, and political implications.[34]
While a coup is usually a conspiracy of a small group, a revolution or rebellion is usually started spontaneously by larger groups of uncoordinated people.[52] The distinction between a revolution and a coup is not always clear. Sometimes, a coup is labelled as a revolution by its plotters to feign democratic legitimacy.[53][54]
According to Clayton Thyne and Jonathan Powell's coup data set, there were 457 coup attempts from 1950 to 2010, of which 227 (49.7%) were successful and 230 (50.3%) were unsuccessful.[2] They find that coups have "been most common in Africa and the Americas (36.5% and 31.9%, respectively). Asia and the Middle East have experienced 13.1% and 15.8% of total global coups, respectively. Europe has experienced by far the fewest coup attempts: 2.6%."[2] Most coup attempts occurred in the mid-1960s, but there were also large numbers of coup attempts in the mid-1970s and the early 1990s.[2] From 1950 to 2010, a majority of coups failed in the Middle East and Latin America. They had a somewhat higher chance of success in Africa and Asia.[7] Numbers of successful coups have decreased over time.[2]
A number of political science datasets document coup attempts around the world and over time, generally starting in the post-World War II period. Major examples include the Global Instances of Coups dataset, the Coups & Political Instability dataset by the Center of Systemic Peace, the Coup d'etat Project by the Cline Center, the Colpus coup dataset, and the Coups and Agency Mechanism dataset. A 2023 study argued that major coup datasets tend to over-rely on international news sources to gather their information, potentially biasing the types of events included.[55] Its findings show that while such a strategy is sufficient for gathering information on successful and failed coups, attempts to gather data on coup plots and rumors require a greater consultation of regional and local-specific sources.
Successful coups are one method of regime change that thwarts the peaceful transition of power.[56]