Coups d’état continue to present one of the most extreme risks to democracy and stable governance worldwide. This book examines the unique role played by regional organizations (ROs) following the occurrence of a coup d’état. The book analyses the factors that influence the strength of reactions demonstrated by ROs and explores the different post-coup solutions ROs pursue. It argues that, when confronted with a coup, ROs take both basic democratic standards and regional stability into account before forming their responses. Using a mixed-methods approach, the book concludes that ROs’ response to a coup depends on how detrimental it will be for the state of democracy in a country and how far it risks destabilizing the region.

Using a mixed methods approach, this book examines the role played by regional organisations (ROs) following the occurrence of a coup d’état. It analyses which factors influence the strength of reactions demonstrated by ROs and explores which different post-coup solutions ROs pursue.

This book provides a comprehensive overview of the evolution and particularities of regional organizations across Africa, the Americas, Asia and Europe since 1945. The authors analyze the membership dynamics and policy scopes of 76 organizations, and compare their opportunities and challenges in regional governance. They consider organizations’ competencies in eleven different policy areas, including trade, security and environment, and trace patterns in their development. For those with interests in comparative regionalism, international relations, political science and international law, this is an essential companion to some of the world’s most significant organizations.

Over the past several decades, democracy has taken root or been re-established in a number of countries with support from other democratic states and private groups. While the increase in the number of democracies worldwide has been widely heralded, very little has been written on how democracy can be protected and sustained where it has been chosen by the people of a state. In this first comprehensive guide to preventing and responding to threats to coups and erosions in democracies. Through case studies and in-depth analyses, this book provides legal and policy justification for these processes and discusses how they can be made more effective, combining the findings of an international task force on threats to democracy with contributions from leading scholars and policymakers.

This book examines the role of the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) practitioners in coordinating, creating, and managing regional governance practices in the areas of public health, peace and security, and microfinancial integration. Since 1975, there have been many failed and successful attempts at unconstitutional government changes in West Africa. During this same period, numerous instruments have been designed to promote peace and security in the region. This book examines the role of bureaucratic actors in the ECOWAS in harmonizing regional integration policy in West Africa. Using data from fieldwork in several countries in West Africa, Balogun observes how ECOWAS practitioners network and strategically engage regional stakeholders in health, peace and security, and finance as a means to deepen harmonization between ECOWAS Member States and build a connection with civil society. Balogun argues that the founding conditions of ECOWAS set the organization on an institutional path to adapt its approaches to regional governance. Region-Building in West Africa challenges the idea that self-interested leaders limit regional cooperation. The book also challenges the idea that the bureaucrats in the organization are glorified servants to their governments. Region-Building in West Africa instead focuses on the influence that bureaucrats have in shaping the international policy agenda of ECOWAS. This book will be useful to scholars, students, and practitioners in Africa and beyond who want to better understand the inner workings of African regional organizations, and the processes that drive cooperation across West Africa.

"Before the next National Congress of the Communist Party of China, due in November 2022, President Xi Jinping will be removed from office by a coup d'état mounted by rivals in the top leadership who will end the tyranny of the one-party dictatorship and launch a transition to democracy and the rule of law. The main body of this book, Part 2, explains why it will happen. Parts 1 and 3 tell how it may happen"--

In this lively and provocative book, Erica De Bruin looks at the threats that rulers face from their own armed forces. Can they make their regimes impervious to coups? How to Prevent Coups d'État shows that how leaders organize their coercive institutions has a profound effect on the survival of their regimes. When rulers use presidential guards, militarized police, and militia to counterbalance the regular military, efforts to oust them from power via coups d'état are less likely to succeed. Even as counterbalancing helps to prevent successful interventions, however, the resentment that it generates within the regular military can provoke new coup attempts. And because counterbalancing changes how soldiers and police perceive the costs and benefits of a successful overthrow, it can create incentives for protracted fighting that result in the escalation of a coup into full-blown civil war. Drawing on an original dataset of state security forces in 110 countries over a span of fifty years, as well as case studies of coup attempts in Asia, Africa, Latin America, and the Middle East, De Bruin sheds light on how counterbalancing affects regime survival. Understanding the dynamics of counterbalancing, she shows, can help analysts predict when coups will occur, whether they will succeed, and how violent they are likely to be. The arguments and evidence in this book suggest that while counterbalancing may prevent successful coups, it is a risky strategy to pursue—and one that may weaken regimes in the long term.

This book models the trade-off that rulers of weak, ethnically-divided states face between coups and civil war. Drawing evidence from extensive field research in Sudan and the Democratic Republic of the Congo combined with statistical analysis of most African countries, it develops a framework to understand the causes of state failure.

On 1 February 2021, under the command of General Min Aung Hlaing, Myanmar’s military initiated a coup, apparently drawing to a close Myanmar’s ten-year experiment with democratic rule. State Counsellor Aung San Suu Kyi and President Win Myint were arrested along with other elected officials. Mass protests against the coup ensued, led by Gen Z youths who shaped a values-based democratic revolutionary movement that in character is anti-military regime, anti-China influence, anti-authoritarian, anti-racist, and anti-sexist. Women and minorities have been at the forefront, organizing protests, shaping campaigns, and engaging sectors of society that in the past had been relegated to the periphery of national politics. The protests were broadcast to local and international audiences through social media. Simultaneously, a civil disobedience movement (CDM) arose in the shape of a massive strike mostly led by civil servants. CDM is non-violent and acephalous, a broad “society against the state” movement too large and diffuse for the military to target and dismantle. Semi-autonomous administrative zones in the name of Pa-a-pha or civil administrative organizations emerged out of spontaneously organized neighbourhood watches at the ward and village levels, effectively forming a parallel governance system to the military state. Anti-coup protests moved decisively away from calls for the release of Aung San Suu Kyi and other elected political leaders, or for a return to democracy under the 2008 constitution. Instead, it evolved towards greater inclusivity of all Myanmar peoples in pursuit of a more robust federal democracy. A group of fifteen elected parliamentarians, representing the ideals of Gen Z youths, formed a shadow government called the Committee Representing the Pyidaungsu Hluttaw (CRPH) on 5 February 2021. On 1 March the CRPH declared the military governing body, the State Administrative Council (SAC), a “terrorist group”, and on 31 March, it declared the military’s 2008 constitution abolished. Gen Z’s protests have accomplished what has been elusive to prior generations of anti-regime movements and uprisings. They have severed the Bamar Buddhist nationalist narrative that has gripped state society relations and the military’s ideological control over the political landscape, substituting for it an inclusive democratic ideology.