scholarly journals The Causes and Outcomes of Coup during Civil War

2015 ◽  
Vol 61 (7) ◽  
pp. 1432-1455 ◽  
Author(s):  
Curtis Bell ◽  
Jun Koga Sudduth

Though approximately one in four coup attempts takes place during an ongoing civil war, scholars have not yet analyzed how the incidence of civil war affects coup attempts and outcomes. We conduct the first empirical analysis of the relationship between ongoing civil war and coup activity, finding (1) war increases the risk of a coup attempt, though (2) war-time coup attempts are significantly less likely to be successful, and (3) the risk of war-time coup is much higher when states face stronger rebel groups that pose greater threats to the political survival of the incumbent government. We attribute these findings to the pernicious effect of ongoing war on the welfare of the military elites and soldiers who have the greatest capacity to execute a coup attempt. As war diminishes their welfare and creates uncertainty about the future of the state, potential plotters become more willing to accept riskier coup attempts than they might plot during peace-time. Coup motivations are greatest when incumbents are more likely to lose their wars, and this causes coup plotters to attempt more and riskier coups when rebels are relatively strong.

Author(s):  
Benjamin A. Schupmann

Chapter 2 reinterprets Schmitt’s concept of the political. Schmitt argued that Weimar developments, especially the rise of mass movements politically opposed to the state and constitution, demonstrated that the state did not have any sort of monopoly over the political, contradicting the arguments made by predominant Weimar state theorists, such as Jellinek and Meinecke. Not only was the political independent of the state, Schmitt argued, but it could even be turned against it. Schmitt believed that his contemporaries’ failure to recognize the nature of the political prevented them from adequately responding to the politicization of society, inadvertently risking civil war. This chapter reanalyzes Schmitt’s political from this perspective. Without ignoring enmity, it argues that Schmitt also defines the political in terms of friendship and, importantly, “status par excellence” (the status that relativizes other statuses). It also examines the relationship between the political and Schmitt’s concept of representation.


2019 ◽  
Vol 5 (1) ◽  
pp. 55-71
Author(s):  
Hedva Eyal ◽  
Limor Samimian-Darash

In this article, we examine statements by state officials and individuals from the military and the medical establishment regarding the provision of medical aid by Israel to casualties from the Syrian Civil War. We argue discussions of this project have been characterized by three different discourses, each dominant at different times, which we classify as military, medical, and political-security. We propose “unintended securitization” to describe how the project moved from the military into the medical-civilian and then into the political sphere, and came to be seen as advancing the security interests of the Israeli state. We argue the relationship between humanitarianism and securitization seen here challenges the view that humanitarian apparatuses are often subordinated to military rationales by showing how securitization here emerged from the demilitarization of what was initially a military project.


2014 ◽  
Vol 7 (4) ◽  
pp. 544-564 ◽  
Author(s):  
Federico Battera

This article argues that differences in Arab authoritarian regimes were mainly linked to the relationship between the state, the political party in power and the military. By exploring such differences in Tunisia, Egypt and Syria prior to the 2011 crisis, they are explained in the context of the political changes that ensued in the wake of the crisis. How the army played the dual role of instigating change while impeding it at crucial points in the transitional process is described. The mutual lack of autonomy between the state, the party and the military appears to have been a key factor in impeding change, whereas a clear separation of the functions of these institutions was more likely to enable political change to come about.


1997 ◽  
Vol 40 (3) ◽  
pp. 597-620 ◽  
Author(s):  
ADAM FOX

This essay explores the circulation of rumour and news among those at the lower levels of society in late sixteenth- and early seventeenth-century England. It does so through an analysis of the court records in which people were indicted for spreading false reports or speaking seditious words and which are now preserved in assize files or amid the state papers. These sources reveal the networks of communication by which information was disseminated nationwide and shed light upon the relationship between oral, manuscript and printed media. They show how wild stories could be whipped up in the act of transmission and were fuelled by the political insecurities of this period. At the same time a more sophisticated awareness of current affairs is evident in some illicit conversations which suggest that even humble people were participating in the arguments which anticipated the Civil War.


2018 ◽  
Vol 49 (4) ◽  
pp. 235-253 ◽  
Author(s):  
José Ciro Martínez ◽  
Brent Eng

This article assesses the impact of the Assad regime’s aerial bombardment campaign on a frequently neglected component of Syria’s ongoing civil war: rebel governance. While analysis of the military and humanitarian ramifications of such attacks has been extensive, these perspectives fail to consider how the Assad regime’s counter insurgency efforts subvert governance practices by Syria’s diverse rebel groups. Drawing on performative approaches to the ‘state’, we argue that opposition groups’ daily enactments of ‘stateness’ via two key welfare services – bread and healthcare provision – constitute a historically inflected and locally grounded critique of the incumbent. When executed successfully, such enactments can stabilize relations between rulers and ruled while offering a vision of an alternative polity. They can also attract the attention of rivals. The Assad regime’s aerial bombing campaign of rebel-held areas is thus neither a haphazard military strategy nor simply the product of long-standing sectarian hatreds, but a deliberate tactic through which it seeks to destroy a key threat to its authority.


2011 ◽  
Vol 7 (2) ◽  
pp. 169-186 ◽  
Author(s):  
Chiang Bo-wei

Abstract From 1949, Quemoy became the battlefront between the warring Nationalists and Communists as well as the frontline between Cold War nations. Under military rule, social and ideological control suppressed the community power of traditional clans and severed their connection with fellow countrymen living abroad. For 43 long years up until 1992, Quemoy was transformed from an open hometown of the Chinese diaspora into a closed battlefield and forbidden zone. During the war period, most of the Quemoy diasporic Chinese paid close attention to the state of their hometown including the security of their family members and property. In the early 1950s, they tried to keep themselves informed of the situation in Quemoy through any available medium and build up a new channel of remittances. Furthermore, as formal visits of the overseas Chinese were an important symbol of legitimacy for the KMT, Quemoy emigrants had been invited by the military authority to visit their hometown since 1950. This was in fact the only channel for the Chinese diaspora to go home. Using official files, newspapers and records of oral histories, this article analyzes the relationship between the Chinese diaspora and the battlefield, Quemoy, and takes a look at the interactions between family and clan members of the Chinese diaspora during 1949-1960s. It is a discussion of a special intermittence and continuity of local history.


1974 ◽  
Vol 64 ◽  
pp. 62-78 ◽  
Author(s):  
A. W. Lintott

The battle of Bovillae on 18th January, 52 B.C., which led to Clodius' death, was literally treated by Cicero in a letter to Atticus as the beginning of a new era—he dated the letter by it, although over a year had elapsed. It is difficult to exaggerate the relief it afforded him from fear and humiliation for a few precious years before civil war put him once more in jeopardy. At one stroke Cicero lost his chief inimicus and the Republic lost a hostis and pestis. Moreover, the turmoil led to a political realignment for which Cicero had been striving for the last ten years—a reconciliation between the boni and Pompey, as a result of which Pompey was commissioned to put the state to rights. Cicero's behaviour in this context, especially his return to the centre of the political scene, is, one would have thought, of capital importance to the biographer of Cicero. Yet two recent English biographies have but briefly touched on the topic. It is true that, in the background of Cicero's personal drama, Caesar and Pompey were taking up positions which, as events turned out, would lead to the collapse of the Republic. However, Cicero and Milo were not to know this, nor were their opponents; friendly cooperation between the two super-politicians apparently was continuing. Politicians on all sides were still aiming to secure power and honour through the traditional Republican magistracies, and in this pursuit were prepared to use the odd mixture of violence, bribery and insistence on the strict letter of the constitution, which was becoming a popular recipe. In retrospect their obsession with the customary organs of power has a certain irony. Yet it is a testimony to the political atmosphere then. Their manoeuvres are also important because both the instability caused by the violence of Clodius and Milo, and the eventual confidence in the rule of law established under Pompey's protection, helped to determine the political position of the boni associated with Pompey in 49 B.C. Cicero's relationship with Milo is at first sight one of the more puzzling aspects of his career. What had they in common, except that Milo, like most late Republican politicians, was at one time associated with Pompey? Properly interpreted, however, this relationship may not only illuminate Cicero's own attitudes but illustrate the character of the last years of Republican politics.


Author(s):  
Richard Whiting

In assessing the relationship between trade unions and British politics, this chapter has two focuses. First, it examines the role of trade unions as significant intermediate associations within the political system. They have been significant as the means for the development of citizenship and involvement in society, as well as a restraint upon the power of the state. Their power has also raised questions about the relationship between the role of associations and the freedom of the individual. Second, the chapter considers critical moments when the trade unions challenged the authority of governments, especially in the periods 1918–26 and 1979–85. Both of these lines of inquiry underline the importance of conservatism in the achievement of stability in modern Britain.


Author(s):  
Ruth Patrick

This chapter outlines the rationale behind conducting repeat interviews with out-of-work benefit claimants in an effort to better understand lived experiences of welfare reform. It introduces readers to the political and theoretical context, and highlights the value in employing social citizenship as a theoretical lens in order to tease out citizenship from above and below. The recent context of welfare reform in the UK is also introduced, highlighting the extent to which successive rounds of welfare reform have cumulatively reworked the relationship between the citizen and the state. The research on which this book is based is detailed, and the value in working through and across time by taking a qualitative longitudinal approach highlighted.


1995 ◽  
Vol 29 (2) ◽  
pp. 159-184
Author(s):  
Mark Voss-Hubbard

Historians have long recognized the unprecedented expansion of federal power during the Civil War. Moreover most scholars agree that the expansion of federal power manifested itself most immediately and profoundly in the abolition of slavery. In a sense, through the Emancipation Proclamation, the Republican administration injected the national government into the domain of civil rights, and by doing so imbued federal power with a distinct moral purpose. The passage of the Thirteenth, Fourteenth, and Fifteenth Amendments codified this expression of federal authority, rejecting the bedrock tenet in American republican thought that centralized power constituted the primary threat to individual liberty.


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