Military Coups d’État and Their Causes

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Fabrice Lehoucq
Keyword(s):  
Quantitative Research ◽  
Data Sets ◽  
Third Wave ◽  
Chief Executives ◽  
The Third ◽  
Limited Dependent Variables ◽  
The 1960S ◽  
The Cold War ◽  
The Military ◽  
Coups D'etat

There have been three waves of scholarship on military coups d’état (or simply “coups”)—the unconstitutional replacement of chief executives by military officers—since the 1960s. The first used case studies to explore why the military overthrows governments. One of its central findings was that military uprisings were an integral part of political succession in many countries. A second wave produced the “aggregate studies” that were the first to deploy cross-national databases to identify the measurable features that distinguished more from less coup-prone political systems. These studies revealed, among other things, that coups proliferated in places with a history of instability. The third and current wave of scholarship takes advantage of the development of statistical software for limited dependent variables—then unavailable, now commonplace—to recast the quantitative research on coups. Two core findings have survived disconfirmation since the start of the third wave. First, higher income countries have fewer coups, though the effects are small (and become even weaker when models only contain developing countries). Second, “political legacy effects” mean that the probability of a coup declines with time since the last military uprising. Much of the latest wave of research pinpoints factors—like coup proofing, less inequality, or the end of the Cold War—that reduce the probability of a coup. The development of ever more sophisticated statistical techniques to divine the causes of instability, nevertheless, relies on off-the-shelf data sets and coup catalogs whose validity—properly understood as accuracy—is questionable. Only a greater attention to accuracy and complementary methods promise to produce a comprehensive account of why the military topples governments in some, but not in other, places.

The 1960 Coup in Turkey: A U.S. Intelligence Failure or a Successful Intervention?

2015 ◽  
Vol 17 (2) ◽  
pp. 103-139 ◽  
Author(s):  
Christopher Gunn
Keyword(s):  
Third World ◽  
The United States ◽  
Regime Changes ◽  
The Third ◽  
The North ◽  
Advantageous Position ◽  
The Third World ◽  
The Cold War ◽  
The Military ◽  
Coups D'etat

Coups d’état were a relatively common means of regime change during the Cold War. From 1945 through 1985, 357 attempted coups d’état occurred in the Third World, and 183 succeeded. The high frequency of coups during this period is unsurprising, especially considering the advantageous position of the military during the rapid and destabilizing pace of modernization and decolonization in Africa, Asia, Latin America, and the Middle East. Coups d’état were not exclusive to the Third World, however. They also occurred in members of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO). Surprisingly, however, few scholars have explored why these extra-constitutional regime changes were tolerated, or how they were even possible, within NATO. This article attempts to answer these questions within the context of the 1960 coup in Turkey by closely evaluating the notion that the United States had no knowledge or warning that a coup was about to unfold.

A construção de uma crise: usos da história por intelectuais argentinos na contestação aos tratados com o Chile nas décadas de 1960 e 1970

Diálogos ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 22 (1) ◽  
pp. 139
Author(s):  
Gabriel Passetti
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
Beagle Channel ◽  
1960S And 1970S ◽  
The 1960S ◽  
Intellectual Production ◽  
The Cold War ◽  
The Military

Em 1978, os governos militares ditatoriais da Argentina e do Chile estavam à beira da guerra por conta do controle sobre três ilhas a leste do canal Beagle. As insatisfações e controvérsias, de ambos os lados, remontavam a tratados quase centenários. O artigo analisa a produção intelectual e os usos da história nas duas décadas antecedentes à “Crise do Beagle”, demonstrando a construção dos pontos de discórdia: o “expansionismo chileno” e a arbitragem internacional e de que forma estes foram aceitos e disseminados entre civis e militares envoltos pelos pensamentos da Guerra Fria. Abstract The construction of a crisis: the uses of history by Argentinean intellectuals and the contest of treaties with Chile in the 1960s and 1970s In 1978, the military dictatorships of Argentina and Chile were close to war. The tension was around the control of three islands east from the Beagle Channel. Insatisfactions and polemics, on both sides, remained to treaties signed one century ago. The paper analyses the intellectual production and the uses of history on the two decades before the “Beagle Crisis”. It presents the construction of the points of conflict: the “Chilean expansionism” and the international arbitrament. It also presents how it was acepted and circulated between civil and the military envolved in the Cold War logics. Resumen La construcción de una crisis: usos de la historia por intelectuales argentinos en la contestación a los tratados con Chile en las decadas de 1960 y 1970 En 1978, los gobiernos de las dictaduras militares de Argentina y Chile se preparaban para la guerra por el contról sobre tres islas a este del canal Beagle. Las insatisfaciones y controversias, de ambos los lados, volvian a tratrados casi centenários. El articulo analisa la producción intelectual y los usos de la história en las dos decadas anteriores a la “Crisis del Beagle”, demonstrando la constucción de los puntos de discórdia: el “expansionismo chileno” y la arbitraje internacional y de que forma estos fueron aceptos y disseminados entre civiles y militares que vivian en los pensamientos de la Guerra Fria.

Creating a “Home Away from Home”: Korean Women’s Performances of the Imaginary American Home at US Military Clubs in South Korea, 1955–64

2020 ◽  
Vol 25 (1) ◽  
pp. 203-236
Author(s):  
Yu Jung Lee
Keyword(s):  
United States Army ◽  
Military Service ◽  
Race And Gender ◽  
Us Military ◽  
And Gender ◽  
The 1960S ◽  
The Cold War ◽  
The Military ◽  
Occupied Zone

Abstract This article considers the proliferation of Korean native camp shows and the roles of Korean women entertainers at the military service clubs of the Eighth United States Army in Korea in the 1950s and the 1960s. The role of the “American sweethearts” in USO camp shows—to create a “home away from home” and boost the morale of the American troops during wartime—was carried out by female Korean entertainers in the occupied zone at a critical moment in US-ROK relations during the Cold War. The article argues that Korean entertainers at military clubs were meant to perform the entertainment of “home” and evoke nostalgia for American soldiers by imitating well-known American singers and songs. However, what they performed as America was not simply the reproduction of American entertainment but often a manifestation of their imagination; they were constructing their own version of the American home. Their hybrid styles of American performance were indicative of how the discourse of the American home itself was constructed around ambivalence, the very site where women entertainers were enabled to exceed the rigid boundaries of race and gender, transcend their roles as imitators, and exercise their agency by productively negotiating this ambivalence.

Anticommunism as regime legitimisation strategy in South Korea in the 1960s

2020 ◽  
Vol 19 (19) ◽  
pp. 117-137
Author(s):  
Natalia Matveeva
Keyword(s):  
South Korea ◽  
Military Regime ◽  
American Military ◽  
Coup D'etat ◽  
South Korean ◽  
Park Chung Hee ◽  
The Us ◽  
The 1960S ◽  
The Cold War ◽  
The Military

Since its founding in 1948, South Korea existed on the forefront of the Cold War divide between the two rival blocs. The 'communist threat' was never far from the South Korean leaders' minds, yet it was not until the 1960s that anti-communism was turned into a strategy for regime legitimisation. In 1961, as a result of a coup d'état, a military regime came to power. Its first and most important goal was to legitimise itself both domestically and internationally. General Park Chung-hee, the leader of the military junta, chose anticommunism as part of his strategy. It was deployed to convince the US of the new regime's commitment to defending the country against any possible threat; to prevent American military and economic withdrawal from Korea, and to justify the intensive drive for rapid economic development, for which the general later became renowned. This article argues that South Korean anticommunism in the early 1960s was a complex and conscious strategy aimed at establishing the foundations for the new military regime and ensuring its continued survival. Based on Park Chung-hee's speeches and books and the available archival sources, the article illustrates the way in which anticommunism was presented and how it was used as part of the regime's legitimising strategy.

Budget Review in the National Assembly of Democratic Korea

2003 ◽  
Vol 3 (3) ◽  
pp. 493-521 ◽  
Author(s):  
Chan Wook Park
Keyword(s):  
Political Action ◽  
Civil Liberties ◽  
Local Elections ◽  
Third Wave ◽  
National Assembly ◽  
Fair Competition ◽  
The Third ◽  
Budgetary Policy ◽  
Democratic System ◽  
The Military

Although Korea has made significant strides to strengthen its democratic system since the successful transition in the late 1980s as part of the “third wave” of global democratization, a look into the process of making budgetary policy in the National Assembly would suggest that Korean democracy is far from consolidation. Korean politics has shed itself for the most part of its authoritarian past, when the military was the main conduit of action and oppression. The principle of free, regular, and fair competition has taken root as the procedural norm in both national and local elections. Korean citizens enjoy civil liberties to a degree unprecedented in the authoritarian era, and civil society transformed into an increasingly open, transparent, and pluralistic field of political action.

Epistemological Exercises: Encyclopedias of world cultural history in twentieth-century Japan

2020 ◽  
pp. 1-34
Author(s):  
MIRIAM KINGSBERG KADIA
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
Cultural History ◽  
Nation Building ◽  
Objective Knowledge ◽  
High Profile ◽  
The Third ◽  
Production And Consumption ◽  
The World ◽  
The 1960S ◽  
The Cold War

Abstract Encyclopedias are purportedly all-encompassing, authoritative presentations of information compiled mainly by experts for an audience of non-specialists. Believed to offer only universal ‘facts’, they have long been associated with objectivity. Yet, by arranging information into a usable form, encyclopedias inevitably convey particular ideologies and ideals. As a result, they offer a lens into the changing ‘truths’ upheld by or expected of readers. This article compares three successive, high-profile Japanese encyclopedias, each bearing the title Sekai bunkashi taikei [Encyclopedia of world cultural history]. Somewhat differently from today, the field of world cultural history purported to ‘objectively’ cover the widest relevant space (earth) and time (the human past). However, the specific concerns and commitments of world cultural historians changed greatly between the 1920s, when the first encyclopedia was published, and the 1960s, when the final volumes of the third series appeared. By looking closely at both the production and consumption of these texts, this article shows the deeply politicized ways in which ‘objective’ knowledge of the world was interpreted, implemented, marketed, and received by the Japanese public during the years of nation-building, imperial expansionism, and the Cold War.

Insurgency and Counterinsurgency, 1961–1968

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gregg A. Brazinsky
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
Third World ◽  
Mao Zedong ◽  
Diverse Group ◽  
The Third ◽  
The World ◽  
The Status ◽  
The 1960S ◽  
The Third World ◽  
The Cold War

Even as the PRC sought to win over radical and neutralist Afro-Asian states through diplomacy, it also sought to gain prestige in the Third World by becoming a leader of revolutionary forces. The PRC befriended a diverse group of Afro-Asian and insurgents guerilla that espoused Maoist doctrines during the 1960s. They believed that doing so would help to spread Mao Zedong thought throughout the world, raising the status of both the PRC and its leader. America’s fear that insurgent victories in countries such as Vietnam, Thailand and the Congo would enhance Chinese prestige and legitimate Maoism played a key role in precipitating some of the most dramatic and costly instances of U.S. intervention of the Cold War.

scholarly journals European Reconfigurations of Transnational Activism: Solidarity and Human Rights Campaigns on Behalf of Chile during the 1970s and 1980s

2018 ◽  
Vol 63 (3) ◽  
pp. 413-448
Author(s):  
Kim Christiaens
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
Third World ◽  
Transnational Activism ◽  
The Third ◽  
Salvador Allende ◽  
Augusto Pinochet ◽  
The Third World ◽  
The Cold War ◽  
The Military ◽  
The Impact

AbstractThe overthrow of the democratically elected socialist president Salvador Allende in Chile and the human rights violations under the military junta of Augusto Pinochet spawned one of the most iconic and sustained human rights campaigns of the Cold War. Human rights scholars have argued that this movement on behalf of Chile signalled the “breakthrough” of human rights as the lingua franca of transnational activism. They have emphasized the global dimensions of these campaigns, which inspired movements mobilizing on behalf of other issues in the Third World. However, such narratives have not been corroborated by research on the campaigns as developed in Europe. Historians have so far focused on the impact of the Chilean crisis in specific countries or on particular organizations, and on the ways in which human rights activism was coloured by local and national contexts. This article aims to shift the scope of the debate by establishing relations with and crossovers from other transnational causes and campaigns, analysing the ways in which campaigns on behalf of Chile became intimately related to campaigns on intra-European issues during the 1970s and 1980s. It explores the so far little-studied connections between campaigns over Chile and simultaneously burgeoning movements on behalf of East–West détente, resistance against authoritarian regimes in Southern Europe, and the plight of dissidents in Eastern Europe. It argues that campaigns on behalf of Chile were reconfigured around European themes, created bonds of solidarity within a divided Europe, and drew on analogies rather than a juxtaposition between Europe and the Third World.

Ordered to Disarm, Encouraged to Rearm: Japan’s Struggles with the Postwar

2020 ◽  
pp. 139-160
Author(s):  
Garren Mulloy
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Cold War ◽  
The United States ◽  
Late Nineteenth Century ◽  
Japanese Military ◽  
History Of ◽  
Military Institution ◽  
The 1960S ◽  
The Cold War ◽  
The Military

In the fall of 1945, the Japanese military institution’s end was sudden and final, one of the central ordering institutions of East Asia since the late-nineteenth century disappeared. Or did it? As Garren Mulloy shows, the Japanese imperial military institutions – its ethos, cultures, and personnel – were recast and reinvented in the Cold War as the United States sought to transform Japan into a key ally. In a detailed historical examination of the imperial roots of the SDF, Mulloy examines how the military institution of the fallen empire was sustained and then reconfigured to serve the new era of democracy and an international order dominated by the United States. In the process he recasts Japanese post-1945 security in a new postimperial key, focusing on the first two decades of security transformation, and showing how once imperial officers latched onto the Cold War help to reinvent the Japanese military as a territorially bound Self Defense Force. In the process he revises the familiar story of demilitarization and pacifism into a more complicated and ambivalent history of transwar martial cultures and practises which continued to flourish deep into the 1960s.

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