Military Coup Research Articles

Beyond Non-Interference: The Improved ASEAN Humanitarian-assistance Mechanism to Respond to the Myanmar Crisis

Since the occurrence of the Myanmar military coup in February 2021, the non-interference principle of the ASEAN Way shows the institutional limitations in dealing with the Myanmar crisis effectively. Simultaneously, some ASEAN scholars suggest that ASEAN may need to improve the regional human-rights mechanism to resolve the crisis by practicing Responsibility to Protect (R2P). Nevertheless, the Myanmar crisis is being trapped in an anarchic political environment, different attitudes of ASEAN and Myanmar toward the crisis not only expanded the conflicts between non-interference and R2P, and resulted in the lack of a synergistic mechanism to cope with this crisis. To solve practical problems, meet the needs of the Myanmar people for humanitarian assistance and alleviate the ripple effects originating from the Myanmar crisis in neighboring countries, this article adopts constructivism of international relations (IR) and the theory of functional synergism to analyze the different attitudes to non-interference and R2P among the region, as well as proposes a strategy of constructing a new synergistic humanitarian-assistance mechanism that beyond the limitations of non-interference to dealing with the Myanmar crisis.

Armed forces and airwaves: media control and military coups in autocracies

ABSTRACT Media play a key role in military coups. Yet, there is little research on information environments and coups. Therefore, this article asks whether the extent of media control affects coup attempts and coup success in dictatorships. It argues that autocracies with extensive media control offer an opaque decision environment for plotters, thus decreasing the likelihood of coup attempts. On the outcome stage, extensive media control is expected to lower the prospects of success as conspirators struggle to control public information. Additionally, coups are disaggregated, arguing that the effect of media control varies between regime change and leader reshuffling coups. The arguments are tested by employing regression analyses. As expected, strong media control renders coup attempts and success less likely. While I do not find robust evidence for a varying effect of media control on different types of coup attempts, its influence on coup success is driven by regime change coups.

Reagan, Congress, and Human Rights: Contesting Morality in US Foreign Policy by Rasmus Sinding Søndergaard

Reviewed by: Reagan, Congress, and Human Rights: Contesting Morality in US Foreign Policy by Rasmus Sinding Søndergaard Aryeh Neier (bio) Rasmus Sinding Søndergaard, Reagan, Congress, and Human Rights: Contesting Morality in US Foreign Policy (Cambridge University Press, 2022), ISBN 9781108495639 (hard-back), 324 pages. Rasmus Sinding Søndergaard, a Danish historian teaching at a Swedish university, has written an excellent account of the way that the United States Congress, through its struggles in the 1980s with the Reagan Administration, helped to make the promotion of international human rights an important ongoing component of American foreign policy. His book, Reagan, Congress, and Human Rights: Contesting Morality in US Foreign Policy, is deeply researched. To one who was a close observer and participant in those struggles as they were taking place, Søndergaard’s highly detailed reporting seems flawless. Most of his judgments seem well-considered and fair. And yet, despite his book’s many virtues, it appears to me that Søndergaard has told only part of the story. It was not only struggles with Congress during the Reagan years that led to an ongoing American commitment to promote human rights. It was also the focus on human rights reporting in the mainstream American press during that period and the emergence of an array of nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) dedicated to the human rights cause. The press coverage and the lobbying by NGOs complemented and contributed to the efforts of those members of Congress who were at the forefront of disputes with the Reagan administration. In turn, of course, the battles waged by members of Congress provided material for press attention to human rights, and NGOs built their constituencies by mobilizing their supporters around struggles in Congress. Before the 1970s, the international human rights cause did not attract much attention. It was rarely an issue in the US Congress. Press coverage was scarce. And a civil society movement to promote human rights barely existed. Amnesty International had been founded in 1961, but while it caught on in a few European countries, it had only a small following in the United States. Also, in those days, it restricted its activities to very few issues. Its main activity was to identify “prisoners of conscience” in a number of countries and to organize letter-writing campaigns for them. All of this changed in the 1970s because human rights became a focal point in the Cold War struggle. The most important developments were the emergence of a small dissident movement, quickly subjected to harsh repression in Moscow, at the heart of the Soviet empire; a military coup that was accompanied by extensive torture and killings that overthrew a democratically elected leftist government in Chile; and large scale protests against the Apartheid government in South Africa that were violently suppressed. The geopolitical alignments of the governments engaged in repression became a central part of the story. Some reacted to abuses because of their political sympathies for certain victims of repression. Others were insistent that all such abuses should be condemned and that human rights should be upheld regardless of Cold War alignments. [End Page 157] A member of Congress who responded to the human rights developments in different parts of the world was Representative Donald Fraser of Minnesota. He conducted hearings on those developments and was the principal author of legislation that would change the way the United States Department of State would deal with human rights. Fraser’s legislation mandated the creation of the post of Assistant Secretary for Human Rights, provided that the Department would issue annual “country reports” on the human rights practices of governments worldwide, and prohibited security aid to governments that had practiced gross abuses of rights. The latter provision was seen as a repudiation of the role of Henry Kissinger in facilitating the military coup in 1973 that brought General Augusto Pinochet to power in Chile. The legislation was vetoed by President Gerald Ford, for whom Kissinger served as Secretary of State. It was adopted by Congress over Ford’s veto. An essential part of the process that secured the votes needed to override Ford’s veto is that the legislation won the support of right-wing members of...

Double Standards in Human Rights Interpretation (Comparison of American and Asian Practices)

This discussion moves on to an understanding of the double standard politics carried out by the United States related to the maintenance of human values and human rights within the framework of democratization on the implications of the Arab Spring political conflict. The United States applies double standards in its response to the military coup case that occurred in Egypt.

THE ROLE OF MILITARISM IN THE POLITICAL AND SOCIAL DYNAMICS OF MYANMAR SOCIETY

This paper discusses how the Myanmar military took back power from the government, the democratic efforts built by the Myanmar government returned to a dream after the coup on 1 February 2021. The conflict between civil society and militarism became something that could not be avoided, people took to the streets and made a ceasefire, thousands of civilians were killed in the democracy they aspired to, some-ASEAN communities condemned the conflict that occurred. The purpose of this paper, to see how the dynamics of the Myanmar state in building a complete democracy with a military coup, as well as the role of the Military in the socio-political dynamics in Myanmar, the methodology used is a qualitative method, with the approach of conflict theory, welfare theory.

Jaime Guzmán, Gremialismo, and the Ideological Origins of the 1980 Constitution

This article seeks to understand the ideological origins of the 1980 Constitution, examining the role that Jaime Guzmán and his movement, gremialismo, played in defining the central concepts that characterized Chile’s new authoritarian order. It argues that both the definition of a new “protected democracy” and the establishment of a “Subsidiary State” integrated the conceptual proposal that Guzmanian gremialismo had formulated ever since its foundation in 1967 and until the military coup d’état in 1973. Divided into four sections, the article first explores the ideological definitions of this early phase of gremialismo. Next, it reviews Guzmán’s position on whether the Chilean dictatorship should follow a transformational vocation, and delves into the gremialistas’ concepts of democracy and the State. Understanding gremialismo in its own terms allows us to rethink both the democratic—or anti-democratic— character of Guzmán’s political project, as well as the relationship between the idea of “Subsidiary State” and neoliberalism.

De/centralization in Argentina, 1862–2020

ABSTRACT Argentina exhibits an overall trend toward centralization, although not linear across time or policy areas, accompanied by strong centralization in the fiscal sphere, and greater politico-institutional autonomy for the provinces. These findings arise from a unique dataset gathered by 22 research assistants and curated by 18 experts for 22 policy areas, 5 fiscal dimensions, and 3 politico-institutional autonomy areas. In 1862, the country was very decentralized, but state building soon consolidated the federal government’s role in policymaking and fiscal relations, while provinces struggled to keep their politico-institutional autonomy until the 1960s, when challenges to their autonomy started to decrease. A centralization peak is observed in 1949, while decentralization junctures took place after the military coups of 1955 and 1976, and during the 1990s. Regime change cannot explain these changes. Instead, policy and fiscal de/centralization is best explained by the state-building process, the strength of presidents, and the economic trends.

When do civilians resist military coup attempts?

When do ordinary civilians mobilise to resist military coup attempts? Existing literature based largely on single case studies puts forward three variables: political culture, popular support for the government, and material (economic) dependency between the government and its supporters. Finding these explanations insufficient, we first utilise existing military coup data sets and identify the universe of cases of civilian resistance (19) to military coups. Taking our next cue from social movement and mobilisation studies, we focus on mobilisation networks and leadership as possible causal conditions. We also follow the approach of searching for the causes-of-effects, working backward from the outcome of interest (civilian resistance) to look for additional causal conditions. A comparative analysis of eight positive (civilian resistance) cases shows that collective yearning for change, transformative leadership, resistance by the leadership and robust mobilisation power in the state capital and largest cities may together carry more explanatory power. Validation of evidence provided by six negative (no civilian resistance) cases indicates that while a collective desire for change and transformative leadership may set the stage for resistance, it is ‘mobilisation power’ and ‘leadership resistance’ that exert more impact on the causal process of emergence of civilian resistance to military coups d’état.

On the Question of the Artistic Transmission of Political Death (II)1

The Curfews period of December 2015 to February 2016 in south-eastern Turkey was a time of collective violence in multiple forms, among which the Cizre Basement Massacres are the most known. The period of the general elections in June 2015, until the later and most recent attempt to carry out a military coup in July 2016, covers multiple curfews and military operations in the south-eastern regions of Turkey, and some social media material shared from the region caught international attention and provoked artistic as well as political responses. Zehra Doğan, a Kurdish journalist and artist, modified and re-shared some footage that was first posted in social media accounts of the special forces in Nusaybin and as a result was sentenced to three years in prison. She continued to produce artworks in prison, even though it was ‘prohibited’ for her to draw. She started to use her own body fluids, hair, newspaper, toilet paper, and any other available daily material in the prison to produce works of art. She also produced a series of work with her menstrual blood. For this article, I conducted two thematic one-to-one discussions with Zehra Doğan and studied her series of works produced with menstrual blood within the scope of mimesis and embodiment theories. Further sections of the article discuss: the function of these series of works for her acting out and working through processes of the collective political violence of which she became both a witness and a victim; methods of artistic transmission of political violence both for the artist and for the audience; and the possible ritualistic functions of using blood while producing work of arts in relation to collective political killings.

The Campus as War Zone: Contemporary Anglophone Fiction, Post-Independence Civil War, and the African University

ABSTRACT This article explores how a set of contemporary Anglophone African novels critically engage the relationship between universities and war. Dinaw Mengestu’s 2014 All Our Names, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s 2006 Half of a Yellow Sun, and Aminatta Forna’s 2010 The Memory of Love are war novels that chronicle the collapse of the postcolonial state in the face of military coups and authoritarian rule in the late 1960s; in all three texts, the university takes on a stealthy significance as the institutional backdrop for that collapse. The transformation of university campuses into war zones in these novels occasions material devastation and both individual and collective trauma. It also exposes deep and longstanding entanglements between war, education, and knowledge production in the postcolony, and invites nuanced reflection on the ambivalent legacy of the 1960s for the present. Beyond these novels’ sober and bleak assessments of post-independence conflict lies an invitation to imagine how war might also serve as a source of knowledge, a means of building and improving upon the anticolonial aspirations that were never fully achieved in the era of independence.

Shé:kon yónnhe ne Kayanerekó:wa tahnon ka’nikonhrí:yo; Rotinonhsyóni wa’ontateri’wanontonhse’ tsi yontatekwenyénhstha’ raotiríhwa, 1924–1977 The Great Law of Peace is Still Alive and Well; the Haudenosaunee Confederacy Asked Them to Respect Their Business, 1924–1977

ABSTRACT This article examines the non-linear and often backwards development of universal human rights for Indigenous peoples in twentieth-century North America. It criticizes the failure of international bodies dedicated to upholding the so-called universal human right to self-determination in the wake of a Canadian military coup at Six Nations of the Grand River in 1924. By assessing the legal grounds upon which the Haudenosaunee Confederacy has repeatedly argued the need for international intervention, to both the League of Nations and the United Nations, the article asserts that international law has perpetually denied the Confederacy equal nationhood status on the world stage, despite meeting all recognized (and quasi-legal) criteria.

By Double Standards, the African Union, and ECOWAS Threatens the Continent’s Political Stability

From the analysis of the relevant literature review described as the methodology, this paper has advanced the argument that indicts the African Union (AU) and Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) for their double standards in dealing with both military coups and institutional or constitutional coups that threaten the political stability of the continent. The paper argued that both the AU and ECOWAS policy instruments or normative frameworks that prescribe penalties for violations that threaten Africa’s political stability are not only applied to military coups but equally to constitutional or institutional coups conceptualized in this paper. Therefore, the paper concludes that AU and ECOWAS courageousness to denounce military coups quickly and openly without regard to constitutional or institutional coups that often provoke popular uprisings serving as the incentives or grounds for military coup is tantamount to the concept of double standards that threaten the continent political stability. The paper recommends equal treatment for both military coup and constitutional or institutional coup will protect the political stability of Africa.

Organic online politics: Farmers, Facebook, and Myanmar's military coup

Despite perennial hope in the democratic possibilities of the internet, the rise of digital authoritarianism threatens online and offline freedom across much of the world. Yet while critical data studies has expanded its geographic focus, limited work to date has examined digital mobilization in the agrarian communities that comprise much of the Global South. This article advances the concept of “organic online politics,” to demonstrate how digital mobilization grows from specific rural conditions, material concerns, and repertoires of resistance, within the constraints of authoritarian violence and internet control. To do so, we examine social media interaction in the wake of the 2021 military coup in Myanmar, an agrarian nation with recent, rapid digital connection that corresponded with a decade-long democratic turn. Analyzing an original archive of over 2000 Facebook posts collected from popular farming pages and groups, we find a massive drop-off in online activity after the military coup and analyze the shifting temporalities of digital mobilization. Crucially, we highlight the embeddedness of online interaction within the material concerns of farming communities, examining how social media become a key forum for negotiating political crisis in Myanmar's countryside. These findings call attention to rural digital subcultures as fertile sites of investigation and point toward the need for future scholarship on data practices that attends to rooted agrarian struggles.

Meeting of the Two Patriarchs. Patriarch Alexy I’s Visit to Constantinople (1960)

From 23 to 26 December 1960, Patriarch Alexy I (Simansky) of Moscow and All Russia paid a visit to Istanbul, where he met with Ecumenical Patriarch Athenagoras (Spirou). This was the first ever visit of a Moscow patriarch to Constantinople. The meeting of the two church leaders completed the non-linear route of rapprochement between Moscow and Constantinople. Relations between the Russian and Constantinople Churches have not been easy. In addition to the weight of Cold War settlements, there were ancient disputes. The troubled events in the eastern Mediterranean — the Cyprus crisis (1955) and the military coup in Turkey (1960) — became the background against which the threads of the relationship between Athenagoras and Alexios, reconstructed from archival documents, were knotted. The relationship between the two Orthodox princes is interconnected with the processes that took place in the field of inter-Christian relations: the convening of the Second Vatican Council by John XXIII and the project of the pan-Orthodox meeting carried out by the Ecumenical Patriarch. The choice of the meeting of the two major patriarchs opened a new page in relations between Moscow and Constantinople. However, the dialogue between the two Churches has never been simple and has often followed confusing and contradictory paths. This will be confirmed after the meeting in Constantinople.

On Coup D’Etats, Military Coup D’Etats and Diplomatic Representation Activities in Crisis Situation and Post-Crisis Period (Spain and Ukraine Cases)

On Coup D’Etats, Military Coup D’Etats and Diplomatic Representation Activities in Crisis Situation and Post-Crisis Period (Spain and Ukraine Cases)

Политический кризис в Буркина-Фасо: внутренние и внешние факторы дестабилизации

The article examines the causes of and prerequisites for the political crisis in Burkina Faso that became almost permanent during the years of its independent development. Burkina Faso is one of Africa’s poorest countries and has witnessed eight military coups, including two in 2022. By the end of the 2010s, it found itself at the epicenter of the Sahel crisis. Burkina Faso also changed its foreign policy orientation, abandoning the neocolonial dependence on France, and adopted a series of economic development plans. The authors analyze military, political and socio economic factors of the emergence of this political crisis against the backdrop of weakening state power, primarily in peripheral areas affected by armed conflict. The article also considers the problem of interference of external actors in the political life of Burkina Faso and the reaction of Economic Community of West African States to a series of military coups in the country. Special attention is paid to the role of tribal militias Koglweogo self defense groups and other similar organizations in the current conflict with Islamists in the northern regions of the country. It is noted that in areas under control of the rebels or, on the contrary, pro government non state actors (militias), the war economy is developing at a rapid pace, and the population is creating new local “self governance” structures that emerge as an alternative to the state power and are led by field commanders. It is concluded that the situation in the country resembles a vicious circle: successive governments are unable to implement development projects due to political instability, while weak economic development, in turn, causes political instability. At the same time, the ongoing strengthening of contacts between Burkina Faso and Russia generates hopes among residents of this West African country for finding a solution to the long term military and political crisis in foreseeable future.

The Chilean Revolution and the USSR: Salvador Allende Viewing from the Offices of the CPSU Central Committee

The Chilean Revolution, which began with the rise to power of Salvador Allende in 1970 and dramatically ended with a military coup d'état and the death of the Chilean President on 11 September 1973, is one of the most significant events of Latin American history in the twentieth century, This revolution had an enormous international resonance, particularly on the political left, arousing wariness in the countries of genuine socialism, above all in the USSR, and hope among the European left, which believed in the success of the cause of socialism under conditions of freedom, democracy, and political pluralism. The person of Allende embodied the principles of the “Chilean way to socialism”, loyalty to democracy and freedom. President Allende was at the centre of attention of all world powers, including the USSR, which watched the socialist experiment in the most distant country in Latin America with keen interest. For Moscow, the ideas, political practice and personal characteristics of the Chilean leader were of great importance in determining both state and party-political policy towards the Chilean experiment. This point of view was not voiced publicly, but had a significant influence on decision-making in Moscow. In this study, the author seeks to reveal the evolution of the attitudes towards Salvador Allende on the part of the Soviet party-state apparatus, drawing on documents of the CPSU Central Committee.

The Agony of “Françafrica”

The long process of decay of the so-called “Françafrica” – a system of indirect control of Paris over its former colonial possessions on the African continent, created over the past half century, – is approaching its end. It is accompanied by the withdrawal of French military contingent, and recall of the French ambassador from Niger at the demand of new authorities, who seized power through military coup. These events were regarded in the world as a defeat not only of France, but also of the collective West in its confrontation with Russia, China, Iran, and other countries.

The revolution is dead, long live the demolition: Education and labor market consequences of student riots

Abstract The 1970s witnessed violent, widespread, and highly-politicized student protests in Turkey. Small protests turned into bloody street clashes, the death toll exceeded 5,000, and a military coup came in—which resulted in mass arrests. The universities were at the center of violent conflict. We study the education and labor market consequences of this political turmoil on the cohorts exposed to educational disruptions. First, we document that the number of new admissions and graduates in post-secondary education declined significantly due to the turmoil. The decline in post-secondary graduation ratio is 6.6 percentage points for the exposed individuals. Second, we estimate a counterfactual wage distribution for the exposed cohorts and check whether the turmoil affected their wage and occupation distributions. We show that the decline in educational attainment pushed the exposed population toward medium- and low-income occupations, and compressed their wages toward the minimum wage. Finally, we use the unexpected decline in post-secondary education as an instrument to estimate returns to college. We find that the college-premium is around 15 percent per year for men.

Military Coup in Niger: The Legacies of Colonialism and the U.S. War on Terror in West Africa

Military Coup in Niger: The Legacies of Colonialism and the U.S. War on Terror in West Africa