International Conflict, International Security Environment, and Military Coups

ABSTRACT

Why do some countries repeatedly experience military coups while others seem immune? Are countries more prone to military coups when faced with external threats? The answers to these questions still remain contested: While several scholars hold that countries facing external threats are more vulnerable to coups, others argue that such countries are actually more secure from coups. I argue that by failing to distinguish between immediate and acute threats, caused by wars and militarized conflicts, and chronic threats from a state’s international security environment, the existing literature ignores the possibility that these two types of external threats differently affect the likelihood of coups. I propose that wars and militarized conflicts, infrequent and often short lived, decrease coup propensity, while a threatening security environment increases coup risk. I find strong supporting evidence that the presence of chronic international threats increases the likelihood of coups while acute international conflicts lower that likelihood.

KEYWORDS:

• Civil–military relations
• coups
• democracy
• external threats
• interstate disputes

Supplemental data for this article can be accessed on the publisher’s website.

Notes

¹ I consider both crisis and conflict to capture immediate and acute threats. However, it is worth noting that international crisis is different from international conflict. International crisis requires the occurrence of disruptions in the relationship between two or more states, beginning with a foreign policy crisis perceived by the highest decision makers, while conflict can result from hostile confrontations not directly authorized by the highest decision makers (Brecher 1996).

² Of course, international conflicts are interrelated with a country’s security environment. Interstate conflicts do not spontaneously occur; they usually tend to emerge out of a hostile security environment such as an international rivalry or an intense security competition. Nevertheless, this does not necessarily imply that conflict events and chronic threat environments will have the same effect on coup risk. For example, the recurrence of militarized disputes can produce a rivalry relationship, but the rivalry relationship can influence coups even without the occurrence of militarized disputes.

³ However, results remain similar when I use a binary indicator for any ICB crisis (or any MID). See Table A5.

⁴ Figure B1 provides a descriptive look at how different types of external security threats influence the likelihood of coups, supporting the results of the multivariate analyses.

⁵ See Table A1-A2 of Supporting Appendix for the details of control variables.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the National Research Foundation of Korea (NRF) grant funded by the Korea government (NRF-2017S1A3A2066491).