Series Of Coups Research Articles

Reconciliation, Heritage and Social Inclusion in the Middle East and North Africa, edited by Iyad Muhsen AlDajani, and Martin Leiner. Springer, Cham. 2022. XXV, 481 pp. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-08713-4.

The idea of ​​reconciliation, heritage and social inclusion in the Middle East and North Africa has been in the spotlight for many decades, as both regions constantly present such dramatic changes that reverberate around the world. In both regions, the geopolitical interests of world and regional powers are closely intertwined, and energy reserves allow you to influence the level of prices for them. In fact, all this becomes the reason for the acute manifestation of religious conflicts, the politicization of religion and tradition, thereby creating a turbulent environment for many actors. It is also worth mentioning the unresolved issues of nation-building and nation-states, the diversity of the ethnic and religious composition of the population in many places, the uneven distribution of income in societies, the level of militarization, and much more, to present the complexity and anxiety of the overall picture.
 The results of the chain of revolutions that took place in these regions did not solve almost any of the urgent problems in any of the countries and at the same time caused a systemic earthquake, a series of coups, civil wars, interventions, as well as unrelenting confrontation in society, leading to rampant terror and repression. Based on a comprehensive theoretical study of the phenomenon of reconciliation, heritage and social integration, this collection of articles presents a deep analysis of events in the Middle East and North Africa, summarizes the results of the previous development of this region, and reveals the causes of social and political failures. The main conclusions of the articles lead the reader to the conclusion that turbulence in both regions is the beginning of a new process that has embraced the reconfiguration of the modern world-system.
 This book contains many interesting facts, generalizations and points of view. Therefore, it will be interesting and useful not only for social scientists, but also for everyone interested in the problems of systemic transformations in the Middle East and North Africa.

‘Monkeys play by sizes’: the reconstruction of military hierarchy in Ghana's armed forces

AbstractGhana's post-independence era has been shaped by a series of coups and numerous attempted military interventions. While the involvement of the Ghana Armed Forces in politics has received widespread academic attention, the detrimental effects of these events on the military as an institution remain largely understudied. Using the coups of 1979 and 1981 as a point of departure, the article explores from an institutional perspective how the disruption of the everyday in the Ghanaian barracks resulted in the temporal breakdown of discipline and the collapse of military hierarchy. The article further examines the measures taken by the Provisional National Defence Council junta to rebuild and nurture hierarchy following its breakdown. It is also argued that restoration of hierarchy in the Ghanaian barracks called not only for an appeal to soldierly values, such as respect for rank and authority, but also for dramatic performances of authority and military hierarchy. The article depicts hierarchy in various settings, while exploring how the military order is expressed and lived in the current constellation. In short, the article not only illustrates a historical evolution, but also demonstrates that the maintenance of order and hierarchy in a closed institution such as the military is an ongoing and continuous negotiation process.

ЭВОЛЮЦИЯ ИНСТИТУТА ПРЕЗИДЕНТСТВА В ПОСТСОВЕТСКИХ РЕСПУБЛИКАХ ЗАКАВКАЗЬЯ И ЦЕНТРАЛЬНОЙ АЗИИ

The article provides a comparative analysis of the political mechanisms and fundamental constitutional principles of the functioning of the institution of the presidency in the post-Soviet republics of the Caucasus and Central Asia. According to the authors, in Georgia and Armenia, the institution of the presidency is evolving in the direction of weakening, which inevitably leads to an increase in the role of the parliament and the Cabinet of Ministers in the political process. Azerbaijan, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan and Tajikistan are following the path of forming personalist political regimes. The presidents of these countries have not only a wide range of formal powers, but also informal political resources that allow them to rule indefinitely and pass power on to their descendants. Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan stand apart. The first country represents an example of successful institutionalization of presidential rule. Kazakhstan is one of the few states of the post-Soviet space, where a systematic and civilized transit of presidential power took place. At the same time, the political system remained stable. The situation in Kyrgyzstan is developing in a fundamentally different way, where a whole series of coups has taken place over the past few years. This country has a president, but the institution of the presidency, de facto, is absent.

TRANSITION TO CIVIL RULE PROGRAMMES IN NIGERIA 1966-1999: HOW SINCERE AND COMMITTED WERE THE MILITARY RULERS?

Within the period of thirty-nine years, 1960-1999, the Nigerian military ruled the country for twenty nine years in a series of coups and counter coup. These coups brought one military government to replace another. These replacements did not convince anyone that the military was sincere to hand over power to the civilians, even when some military governments promised or began the process of transition. Ironsi government promised but was not even allowed to draw up a transition programme before it was overthrown. Another military, Gowon, promised to hand over government but later postponed indefinitely the transition programme. This shows lack of commitment and insincerity. Mohammed learnt a big lesson from Gowon's failure. He overthrew Gowon and started in earnest the process of transition, but again the Nigerian military over threw him and punctuated the transition. Obasanjo derived so many lessons from all of these occurrences and pursued with vigour his transition programme and handed over to a civil rule even though he was not sincere about transition. Again the military over threw the Shagari government. Buhari did not commit himself to hand over power before Babangida over threw him. Babangida tried to transform into civilian president. His attempt failed. But Abacha was not wise enough. After pushing out Shonekan, his attempt to transform into a civilian President was brought to an end by death. Abdulsalami like Obasanjo got the lesson and in a show of determination to prevent another coup, quickly proceeded with transition which brought into power Chief Olusegun Obasanjo as a civilian President under PDP. Thus, circumstances and not sincerity compelled Obasanjo and Abdulsalami to hand over power in 1979 and 1999 respectively. Article visualizations:

The State in Revolution: Imaginary Transformations

The article examines the most important aspects of the process that is commonly called Revolution. In this process, statehood is undergoing transformations in which the state interest as the essence of the State causes, inspires, through a series of coups and transformations, and develops more and more new forms, even though the phenomenon itself remains unchanged. A state coup, dictatorship, states of emergency and terror remain the major stages of the revolutionary transformation being carried out in various historical contexts. Legality as an external form of a process remains relevant at different stages changing its normative shape. Legitimacy is in the constant search for its source, completing it within the boundaries of statehood. An important tool for transformations includes violence that successively takes the form of"divine," "mythological, " normative and enforcing the regime of dictatorship (an emergency situation that acquires a chronic, permanent nature) by necessary means. "Sovereign" dictatorship is opposed to "Commissar" dictatorship, and sovereign violence, as constitutive one, is opposed to law-supporting violence Legal aspects of the revolutionary process appear to be the most articulated and significant, which should attract attention of historians of revolutionary events and ideas.

The economic impact of prolonged political instability: a case study of Fiji

ABSTRACTIt has been long believed that prolonged political instability harms economic growth and development. This paper contributes to this growing empirical literature by studying the case in Fiji, which has faced a long period of political instability caused by a series of coups, military administrations and frequent changes in government since 1987. The impact of political instability on growth is hard to identify empirically because the counterfactual is unobserved and it is difficult to find valid comparisons. To solve this problem, we use the recently developed Synthetic Control Method to construct a counterfactual (or synthetic Fiji) that predicts the growth of a politically stable Fiji. The difference in per capita growth trajectories of the synthetic and the actual Fiji can thus be attributed as the impacts of political instability. Our findings show that the political instability caused by a series of coups since 1987 has indeed led Fiji onto a lower growth path, and that the accumulated effect is getting larger.

Guinea-Bissau: Staff Report for the 2015 Article IV Consultation and Request for a Three-Year Arrangement Under the Extended Credit Facility

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY Context: A series of coups d’état since independence have resulted in chronic political instability and deterred economic and social progress. Guinea-Bissau has re-initiated progress since the assumption of office of the current inclusive government in mid-2014. The economy is now recovering after a decline in 2012 and marginal growth in 2013. Inflation remains low, and socio-political stability seems achievable. The coup d’état of April 2012 stalled implementation of the three-year Extended Credit Facility (ECF)- supported program approved by the Board in May 2010, and the arrangement lapsed subsequently. The Fund’s support under the Rapid Credit Facility (RCF) disbursement of 2014 and the authorities’ commitment to reforms have re-ignited donor confidence. Article IV Discussions. Policy discussions focused on measures to overcome fragility; fiscal consolidation and public financial management reforms; restoring financial stability; borrowing policies and long-term debt sustainability; private sector development and structural reforms to enhance inclusive growth prospects. The Proposed Program. The authorities’ development program, anchored on the Strategic Plan for 2014–18, aims to consolidate the fiscal position through better expenditure management and enhanced revenue mobilization, deepen institutional reform, mitigate vulnerabilities, and develop the private sector to support growth and employment. The program focuses on improving the policy framework by addressing governance and security issues, strengthening budgetary transparency as well as public investment and debt management, and improving compilation of statistics. Structural benchmarks focus on these issues while QPCs include a floor on revenues collection and a ceiling on net credit to government (the anchor of the program). Request for an Extended Credit Facility Arrangement. To support their medium-term economic reform program, the authorities request a three-year arrangement under the ECF in an amount equivalent to SDR 17.04 million (120 percent of quota). Risks to the program include the still fragile political situation, which could delay implementation of reforms, adverse terms of trade developments, and weakening donor confidence, and the heightened risk of incursion of the Ebola virus from neighboring countries.

Crisis in the Central African Republic : Is It a Religious War in a Godforsaken Country or Something Else?

The Central African Republic is a landlocked country located in the centre of Africa. Bordered by seven other countries in the heart of the African continent, it was ruled for most of the years after independence from France in 1960 by the self– styled “Emperor”, Jean–Bédel Bokassa. A series of coups followed, with power changing hands frequently. With more than 80 different ethnic groups, a mix of Christians, Muslims and followers of indigenous faiths, the country is notoriously difficult to rule, despite having a population of only 4.6 million. Despite significant deposits of gold, diamonds and uranium, and vast troves of timber, it is among the poorest nations on Earth, sitting just seven places from the bottom of the UN’s human development index. Chronic poor governance and lack of an efficient state has denied the wider population the benefits of the country’s potential riches. Chaos in the Central African Republic (CAR) is about power, not religion, this is neither jihad nor crusade. Fighting in CAR is over political power and money, with the capitol city Bangui as the prize.

On Military Coups and Mad Utopias

It is never just rage against injustice that leads to mass uprisings, but also the millenarian belief in something better. The better life that the Egyptian and Turkish people fought for has not yet and may never materialize. A fleeting glimpse of an alternative future was, however, actualized in the encampments on Tahrir and Taksim, where utopian communities flourished. In Tahrir, the police state was driven out. In Taksim, money was abolished, and everything was for free. Beyond comparing these utopian dreamscapes, Holmes’s essay also addresses the movements’ relationships with their really-existing military establishments. More than the ideological differences between Nasserism and Kemalism, it was the very different tradition of military coups that shaped the public’s reaction to the armed forces. In Egypt, the Free Officers liberated the country from the British and built their anticolonial legacy around protecting the nation from external threats, leading to a situation in which some parts of the protest movement supported the military intervention that removed President Mohamed Morsi. In Turkey, the series of coups, in 1960, 1971, and 1980, were directed against internal threats: revolutionaries who challenged the state. Hence the vast majority of Gezi Park protesters maintain a critical distance from the military. By comparing the protests in Egypt and Turkey, this essay represents an attempt to step outside the “Arab Spring” paradigm while also thinking together the dystopic and utopic—the military coups and mad utopias that took root, and later perished, in Taksim and Tahrir.

Endemic revolution: HLA Hart, custom and the constitution of the Fiji Islands

The succession of military coups and constitutional revolutions in recent Fijian history poses numerous problems, both urgent practical ones and complex theoretical ones. One set of theoretical questions concerns the issue of legal continuity and discontinuity within a particular society or legal system. Another set of such questions concerns the relationship between formal legal systems and the customs and social conventions of non-western societies. In their application to Fiji, both sets of questions are interrelated, for the lack of constitutional continuity that Fiji has experienced cannot properly be understood without appreciating the influence of cultural beliefs and practices on the operation of Fiji's constitution and legal system.There are numerous attempts in the literature to address these questions of continuity/discontinuity and of the relationship between formal and customary law. HLA Hart sought to address both sets of questions in a theoretically and descriptively integrated way. Law, for Hart, is a special kind of social rule, distinguished from mere customs and conventions because it forms part of a formal legal system, the identity of which is ascertained by reference to the ‘rule of recognition’. On Hart's account, a fully effective constitutional revolution occurs when there is the substitution of one rule of recognition for another. Hart thus has an account of legal revolution. However, it is an account that depends upon a theoretically laden description of certain discrete social practices.The succession of coups and revolutions in recent Fijian history offers an opportunity to test the applicability of these aspects of Hart's theory to a difficult case example. Like many similar countries of the South Pacific and elsewhere, Fiji has a strong set of traditional customs and mores co-existing in a complex relationship with a formal system of law. In addition, however, Fiji has undergone a series of coups and revolutions which have challenged the formal system of law and demonstrated the continuing force of the traditional sources of power within the country. Can Hart's theory account for the state of the ‘law’ in Fiji? That is the question we address in this article. In particular, we use qualitative empirical evidence from interviews with a representative sample of participants within Fijian society to test whether Hart's assumptions and analysis hold true. We find that in certain important respects they do not. We conclude, in essence, that an interesting paradox exists: that the descriptive inadequacy of Hart's theory lies in the fact that it incorporates a set of normative values about the rule of law that are not generally shared, at least in not quite the same way, by the people of Fiji.

An Enduring Commitment: The British Military's Role in Sierra Leone

The 2007 presidential elections in Sierra Leone passed largely unnoticed by the British media. What reports there were in the months before the polls spoke of angry and disillusioned people and the...

Fundamental Characteristics of Thai Labour Law and the Direction of Reform

Abstract: In the context of globalization, it has become necessary to understand Thai labour issues, since Thailand has strong economic ties with advanced capitalist countries. The first Thai Labour Act was introduced in 1956. However, a series of coups d’état were then carried out in Thailand, resulting in the dissolution of trade unions and abolition of labour law, and in about 1960 the Authoritarian Political Regime for Development was established. Under this system trade unions were strictly regulated and terms and conditions of work were regulated by notifications of the Ministry of the Interior. However, as the Thai economy and democracy have developed, Thai labour law has also changed. The Labour Protection Act was introduced in 1998 through deliberations in Parliament. Moreover, deliberations on the amendment bill of Labour Relations Act started at the end of the 1990s and at the moment there is some controversy about the revision. If the draft bill is enacted, the characteristics of labour law under the developmental regime will to some extent be changed. It is therefore necessary to pay attention to the development of legal reforms.

Die Volkszählung in Nigeria 1991 - Geographische Aspekte eines politischen Pokers

The population of Nigeria has been estimated at more than 100 million by various sources. The UN in 1987 estimated it at 87 million, the World Bank at 106.2 million, and the Nigerian National Population Commission at 112.3 million. However, the 1991 census, which was carefully conducted, came up with only 87.5 million, whereas according to the World Bank the number should have exceeded 120 million. The discrepancy of 30 million provoked strong reaction among politicians in the country. 5-year average growth rates between 1970 and 1990 indicated an increase from 26.6% to 37.9%; therefore, the population during the 28-year period from 1963 and 1991 must have approximated 100 million. The figure of 112.3 million would require a growth rate of 34.9%, which was plausible from the early 1970s. The results of the 1991 census have pointed to an enigmatic curiosity: was it an accident that the North has registered the highest annual growth rates dating back to 1963, or even 1952? The political infighting and series of coups d'etat by generals may also be correlated to this numerical distortion, since all these generals were Northerners. An accurate analysis was not possible because of the paucity of data. The census of 1991 has not been fully disclosed until the present time [August 1994], strengthening the case of the skeptics, although the full publication of the figures has to do with the political situation in Nigeria. The democratization process was halted after June 1992, especially after the invalidation of the results of the presidential election and the seizing of power by General Abacha. In the event that a democratic government arises, perhaps the figures of the 1991 census will be published, which could also explain the lower growth rate of the economic centers in the Southwest and the Southeast. Nigeria sorely needs more reliable census data for planning because of a one-sided export structure (95% of foreign currency is earned from oil), neglected agriculture, and migration to the cities.

The Left Guomindang in Opposition, 1927-1931

The source of conflict within the Guomindang (GMD) in the late 1920s was essentially twofold. One factor was the political struggle for succession among party leaders after the death of Sun Yat-sen; the second factor was ideological differences among competing factions. With the death of Sun in March 1925, Hu Hanmin, Liao Zhongkai, and Wang Jingwei emerged as potential successors owing to their respective power and prestige in the party, and to their long-term association with Sun. A series of coups and counter-coups in the following months reflected the essential pattern of confrontation between Hu's group and the group of Liao and Wang, who, because of their active roles in the First United Front, were viewed as "radicals."

National Security and Nationalism in Bangladesh

SINCE ATTAINING INDEPENDENCE in December 1971, golden Bangladesh has been battered and torn by natural disaster and political strife and has taken an about-face in foreign policy. Still reeling under the effects of one of the most vicious and destructive of civil wars, the ravaged country was the victim of a drought in 1972; floods, famine, and a cholera epidemic in 1974; and a series of coups and counter-coups in late 1975. During the relative calm of the past three years-a calm maintained under military rule-Bangladesh has moved from a strongly pro-Indian stance, and an attendant friendly relationship with the USSR, into a blatantly warm liaison with India's long-standing arch-rival and major source of insecurity, the People's Republic of China.1 If we recognize, however, that Bangladesh, though having the world's eighth largest population, remains essentially a microstate and tremendously sensitive not only to nature's phenomena but to the political and strategic environment, we can gain a greater appreciation of the pressures behind the foreign policy shifts and their implications for Bangladesh's national security. A great part of Bangladesh's microstate status can be attributed to the persistence of economic underdevelopment.2 Lacking both a dynamic economy and the resources which might support such an economy, there is little material resilience to withstand the unpredictable

Economic and Social Foundations of Democracy in the Middle East

JT has become commonplace that the parliamentary-democratic 1 form of government has not functioned satisfactorily in the Middle East. During the last few years, a series of coups d'etat have proclaimed, in no uncertain terms, the dissatisfaction of several countries with their parliamentary governments and in more than one country the army has taken over power. The failure of democracy in the Middle East has been attributed to widely divergent, though not necessarily incompatible, causes. One explanation, which is current in the West, is that democracy is a plant of slow growth, which gradually developed, over several centuries, in the congenial climate of Europe and North America and which could not possibly be expected to thrive when suddenly transplanted to an alien Eastern soil which, since the dawn of recorded history, had bred nothing but the thorns and thistles of despotism. The absence of democratic traditions, and of the historical customs, habits, and attitudes required to make democracy work, was one of the first aspects of the East to strike nineteenth-century Europeans and no one has expressed this better than Lord Cromer, who wrote: 'Do not let us for one moment imagine that the fatally simple idea of despotic rule will readily give way to the far more complex conception ' 2 of ordered liberty.. In the Middle East itself, a more popular explanation is that external political factors have been mainly responsible for the inability of democracy to thrive and prosper. The title of Morgan Shuster's book, The Strangling of Persia,3 is indicative of this attitude. It has been cogently argued that no real democracy could develop in Egypt, Iraq, Jordan, Lebanon, and Syria as long as British or French armies of occupation were the determining factor in all political matters and as long as the population continued to be preoccupied, not to say obsessed, with the problem of its relations with the foreign Power. Nor was the situation of unoccupied