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

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).

KEYWORDS:

• coup d’état
• revolution
• revolutionary coup
• political upheaval
• labelling

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Correction Statement

This article has been corrected with minor changes. These changes do not impact the academic content of the article.

Notes

1 Powell and Thyne, “Global Instances of Coups,” 252.

2 Tilly, European Revolutions, 234.

3 Lane, “Orange Revolution.”

4 Grewal and Kinney, “What’s in a Name?”

5 As to Revolutionary coups, see Lane, “Orange Revolution.”

6 Marsteintredet and Malamud, “Coup with Adjectives,” 1021-1022.

7 Powell et al., “A Coup at the Capitol?”; Grewal and Kinney, “What’s in a Name?”

8 Casper and Tyson, “Popular Protest and Elite Coordination in a Coup”; Johnson and Thyne, “Squeaky Wheels and Troop Loyalty”; Yukawa et al., “Coup d’état and a Democratic Signal.”

9 Marsteintredet and Malamud, “Coup with Adjectives,” 1030.

10 Alagappa, Political Legitimacy in Southeast Asia; Dukalskis and Gerschewski, “What Autocracies Say.”

11 Grewal and Kureshi, “How to Sell a Coup.”

12 Snow and Benford, “Ideology, Frame Resonance, and Participant Mobilization.”

13 Huntington, The Soldier and the State.

14 Annan, “From the Secretary-General,” 4.

15 Here, it should be emphasized that just because a revolution is viewed as preferable to a coup does not mean that one is legal and the other is illegal. For, as noted above, both are inherently unconstitutional acts. What this paper focuses on is that for the various actors, they have very different meanings when labelling political upheaval.

16 For the types of revolutions and their distribution over time, see Beissinger, “The Semblance of Democratic Revolution”; Beissinger, The Revolutionary City.

17 See note 5 above.

18 Grewal and Kureshi, “How to Sell a Coup”; Yukawa et al., “Coups and Framing.”

19 Barracca, “Military Coups in the Post-Cold War Era.”

20 Brancati, “Pocketbook Protests,” 1520.

21 Thyne et al., “Even Generals Need Friends.”

22 Marinov and Goemans, “Coups and Democracy”; Shannon et al., “The International Community’s Reaction to Coups”; Thyne et al. “Even Generals Need Friends.”

23 Huntington, The Third Wave.

24 The same applies to Table 2 and beyond.

25 Here, even if we restrict Western countries to the United States, the labelling “coup” is used in 18 cases (33.4%), still a considerably high number compared to China and Russia.

26 Goldstone et al. “Toward a Fourth Generation of Revolutionary Theory,” 142.

27 Maxwell, “The Thorns of the Portuguese Revolution.”

28 In fact, GWF coded this event as a coup, not a popular uprising.

29 Maxwell, “The Thorns of the Portuguese Revolution,” 258-259.

30 Varol, “The Democratic Coup,” 301.

31 Bruneau, “From Revolution to Democracy in Portugal,” 145-146.

32 Pinto, “Constitution-Making and the Democratization of Portugal,” 37.

33 Lee, Defect or Defend.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science [Grant/Award Number: 22K13344 and 19K13590].

Notes on contributors

Kaori Kushima

Kaori Kushima is an Assistant Professor at the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, The University of Tokyo, Tokyo, Japan. Her research focuses on the comparative analysis of democratic transitions and political institutions, particularly in Southeast Asian countries.

Taku Yukawa

Taku Yukawa is an Associate Professor at the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, The University of Tokyo, Tokyo, Japan. His research interests include international dimensions of regime transition, international relations in Southeast Asia, and automated text analysis.

Kaoru Hidaka

Kaoru Hidaka is an Assistant Professor at the Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences, University of Tsukuba, Ibaraki, Japan. His research interests are mainly in the field of security studies in international relations and comparative politics, including civil–military relations and regime transition.

Masanori Kubota

Masanori Kubota is a Specially Appointed Lecturer at Osaka School of International Public Policy, Osaka University, Osaka, Japan. His main research interests include issues of nuclear proliferation, international institutions, international norms, and regime transition.