Social Complexity, Economic Development and Military Coups d'Êtat; Convergence and Divergence of Empirical Tests of Theory in Latin America, Asia and Africa

Abstract

In a recent issue of this journal (1973, 1-2) J. Stephen Hoadley's 'Social Complexity, Economic Development, and Military Coups d'Etat in Latin America and Asia, reviews several hypotheses raised in previous articles by Egil Fossum and Alaors S. Passos which had been evaluated using data from Latin America. Hoadley, drawing from his forthcoming study of military coups d'etat in South-east Asia, used his data to ascertain whether the relations Passos and Fossum had observed in Latin America could also be found in Southeast Asia. He found that generally the same relations were observed and concluded that 'I prefer to treat them (the convergent results) as clues that certain broad aspects of civil-military relations are governed by imperatives that transcend case, nation, and region.' We have been similarly occupied on a study of political instability in black Africa (Politics and Violence in Africa: An Empirical Test of a Theory of Political Instability, New York, Free Press, in press) using updated data from an earlier work, Morrison, Mitchell, Paden & Stevenson Black Africa: A Comparative Handbook (New York, Free Press, 1972), where full definitions and appraisals of various political instability events are reported. In this communication, we present an addition to Hoadley's results using data from 32 independent black African states in the period from their independence through 1973, an average of