Introduction: Military Coup D’état as a Two-Level Game

Abstract

While military coups have become things of the past in several places, they continue to loom large in the political life in the remaining many even in the post-Cold War period. Our understanding of military coups has been constrained however, primarily because civil-military relations have focused lopsidedly on the domestic factors leading to coups at the expense of ignoring their international dimension. Although more students of army-politics relations focus now on the external dimension, the dominant conception of external actors’ roles has been undeservedly positive. The author challenges these perspectives and argues that though the trigger for coups d’etat often is domestic, external or international factors loom large in putschists’ coup plans. By distinguishing motives from opportunities or military’s disposition to intervene from its ability-to-supply a coup, the author discusses the U.S. role in four military coups d’etat in Turkey (1960 and 1980) and Pakistan (1958 and 1977) during the Cold War.