What do you call the political upheaval? the conceptual linkage between revolutions and coups

Abstract

ABSTRACT What kind of relationship exists between coup d’états and revolutions? Although these two phenomena have conventionally been studied separately, a close and intricate relationship exists between them on a conceptual level. Since “revolution” has a far more positive connotation than “coup,” the organizers and supporters of a political upheaval will attempt to frame it as a “revolution,” while the ousted leader and other opponents will try to frame it as a “coup,” Thus, each involved party uses the two labellings differently in accordance with their political incentives. Based on this understanding, the present article focuses on three types of events – “revolution,” “pure coup,” and “revolutionary coup”– and considers the preferences of various relevant actors –the military, protesters, the ousted leader, international actors, and the media– on how those events are to be labelled. The validity of the argument is tested using a newly constructed dataset on the labelling of political upheavals between 1975 and 2014 and case studies on Portugal (1974), Philippines (1986), and Burkina Faso (2014).