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A coup d'état (English: /ˌkuːdeɪˈtɑː/, French: [ku deta]; plural: coups d'état; translation: strike (against the) state, literally: strike/blow of state)—also known as a coup, putsch, and overthrow—is the sudden, illegal deposition of a government,[1][2][3][4] usually by a small group of the existing state establishment—typically the military—to replace the deposed government with another body; either civil or military. A coup d'état succeeds if the usurpers establish their dominance when the incumbent government fails to prevent or successfully resist their consolidation of power. If the coup neither fully fails nor achieves overall success, the attempted coup d'état is likely to lead to a civil war.
Typically, a coup d'état uses the extant government's power to assume political control of the country. In Coup d'État: A Practical Handbook, military historian Edward Luttwak says, "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", thus, armed force (either military or paramilitary) is not a defining feature of a coup d'état.
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Although the coup d'état has featured in politics since antiquity, the phrase is of relatively recent coinage;[5] the Oxford Dictionary identifies it as a French expression meaning a “stroke of State”. Prof. Thomas Childers, of the University of Pennsylvania, indicates that the English language's lacking a word denoting the sudden, violent change of government derives from England's stable political traditions and institutions. French and German history are coloured with such politico-military actions.
Since the unsuccessful coups d'état of Wolfgang Kapp in 1920 (the Kapp Putsch), the Swiss German word Putsch (pronounced [ˈpʊtʃ]; coined for the Züriputsch of 1839) also denotes the same politico-military actions: in Metropolitan France, putsch denoted the 1942 and 1961 anti-government attacks in Algiers, and the 1991 August Putsch in the USSR; the German equivalent is Staatsstreich (the German literal translation of coup d'état), yet a putsch is not always a coup d'état, for example, the Beer Hall Putsch was by politicians without military support.
Linguistically, coup d'état denotes a "stroke of state" (French: coup [stroke] d' [of] État [state]).[6] Analogously, the looser, quotidian usage means “gaining advantage on a rival”, (intelligence coup, boardroom coup). Politically, a coup d'état is a usually violent 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 military usurpers, who block the remaining (non-participant) military'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.
The Pronunciamiento (Pronouncement) is a Spanish and Latin American 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 faction deposes the civilian government and assumes power, in the latter, the military depose the civil government and install another civil government.[7]
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.[8] Moreover, as a change-of-government method, the incidence of the coup d'état has declined worldwide, because usually, the threat of one suffices to effect the change of government; the military do not usually assume power, but install a civil leader acceptable to them. The political advantage is the appearance of legitimacy, examples are the collapse of the French Fourth Republic, and the change of government effected in Mauritania, on 3 August 2005, while the president was in Saudi Arabia.
The political scientist Samuel P. Huntington identifies three classes of coup d'état:
A coup d'état is typed according to the military rank of the lead usurper.
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.
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.[9] 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.
After the coup d'état, the military face 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.
| Title | Name | Assumed office | Country | Area of the World |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Sultan | Qaboos of Oman* | 23 July 1970 | Oman | Middle East |
| President | Teodoro Obiang Nguema Mbasogo | 3 August 1979 | Equatorial Guinea | Sub-Saharan Africa |
| President | Blaise Compaoré | 15 October 1987 | Burkina Faso | Sub-Saharan Africa |
| President | Omar Hasan Ahmad al-Bashir | 30 June 1989 | Sudan | Sub-Saharan Africa |
| President | Idriss Déby[10][11][12][13][14] | 2 December 1990 | Chad | Sub-Saharan Africa |
| President | Yahya Jammeh** | 22 July 1994 | The Gambia | Sub-Saharan Africa |
| Emir | Hamad bin Khalifa Al Thani* | 27 June 1995 | Qatar | Middle East |
| President | François Bozizé** | 15 March 2003 | Central African Republic | Sub-Saharan Africa |
| Acting Prime Minister | Frank Bainimarama | 5 December 2006 | Fiji | South Pacific |
| President | Mohamed Ould Abdel Aziz*** | 6 August 2008 | Mauritania | Sub-Saharan Africa |
| President of the High Transitional Authority | Andry Rajoelina | 17 March 2009 | Madagascar | Sub-Saharan Africa |
* Monarchs who overthrew their own fathers.
** Both Jammeh and Bozizé were subsequently confirmed in office by apparently free and fair elections.[15][16] The election confirming Jammeh was marked by repression of the free press and the opposition.[17] An opposition leader described the outcome as a "sham".[17]
*** Mohamed Ould Abdel Aziz was subsequently confirmed by a narrow margin in the Mauritanian presidential election, 2009, which were regarded as "satisfactory" by international observers.
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[18][19] and John Akers of IBM, in 1992 and 1993, respectively.[20][21]
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.[22][23]
Media related to [//commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Coups_d%27%C3%A9tat Coups d'état] at Wikimedia Commons