The Varieties of Coups D’état: Introducing the Colpus Dataset

Interest in authoritarian politics and democratic breakdown has fueled a revival in scholarship on coups d'état. However, this research is held back by the fact that no global coup dataset captures theoretically salient information on the identity of coup-makers, their goals, and the relationship between the coup leaders and the ruling regime. We introduce the Colpus dataset, new global data on coup types and characteristics in the post–World War II era. These data introduce a typology of coups, measurement strategy, and coding procedures to differentiate between whether coups seek to preserve existing ruling coalitions (leader reshuffling coups) or significantly alter ruling coalitions (regime change coups). We show trends in coup types across time and space. Finally, we demonstrate that poverty—an established determinant of coups—only predicts regime change coups. Colpus data will be of use to scholars of political instability and conflict, regime change, leadership accountability, the political economy of democracy and dictatorship, and related topics.

Sustainable Development in Ghana's Petroleum Industry: An Analysis of the Resource Curse

According to the ‘resource curse,’ countries with large endowments of natural resources perform worse than countries who are less endowed. So while Ghana’s recent oil discovery presents tremendous opportunities to assist in poverty alleviation, this so called curse has been unfortunately attributed to economic decline, democratic breakdown, environmental degradation, and civil unrest. Therefore this thesis seeks to evaluate Ghana’s preparedness in dealing with effects of new oil wealth and the impacts of oil exploitation on its environment and society. Interviews with members of civil society organisations, NGOs and government personnel revealed tremendous deficits and constraints in environmental protection, the rule of law, and political will; all of which will be further challenged by the onset of oil development in Ghana. Observations from interviewees, as well as the findings of contextual research provide the foundation for the goal of the research, which is to understand how prepared Ghana is to manage its future petroleum industry so that it encompasses environmental stewardship, economic development and social responsibility.

Sustainable Development in Ghana's Petroleum Industry: An Analysis of the Resource Curse

According to the ‘resource curse,’ countries with large endowments of natural resources perform worse than countries who are less endowed. So while Ghana’s recent oil discovery presents tremendous opportunities to assist in poverty alleviation, this so called curse has been unfortunately attributed to economic decline, democratic breakdown, environmental degradation, and civil unrest. Therefore this thesis seeks to evaluate Ghana’s preparedness in dealing with effects of new oil wealth and the impacts of oil exploitation on its environment and society. Interviews with members of civil society organisations, NGOs and government personnel revealed tremendous deficits and constraints in environmental protection, the rule of law, and political will; all of which will be further challenged by the onset of oil development in Ghana. Observations from interviewees, as well as the findings of contextual research provide the foundation for the goal of the research, which is to understand how prepared Ghana is to manage its future petroleum industry so that it encompasses environmental stewardship, economic development and social responsibility.

Regime Change under the Party of Justice and Development (AKP) in Turkey

This chapter examines Turkey’s transition to an authoritarian regime under the Adalet ve Kalkınma Partisi (Justice and Development Party—AKP). Turkey’s regime transition reflects the broader pattern of “executive aggrandizement,” whereby the accountability of elected governments is progressively eroded. Turkey’s regime has slid gradually from an illiberal democracy constrained by the power of the military to an authoritarian regime in which the president monopolizes political power. The political, economic, and institutional contexts in which elections take place are heavily skewed in favor of the incumbents, and the ballot box serves to legitimize the government rather than holding it accountable. The chapter surveys the primary factors that have influenced the process of regime change. In particular, it focuses on the role of persistent electoral victories early in the AKP’s tenure in government, the marginalization of Erdoğan’s rivals within the AKP, the creation of a pro-government business class that controls the media landscape, the role of social welfare practices, and the party’s capture of judicial and security bureaucracies. While Islamic social movements like the Gülen community, as well as the AKP’s Islamist identity, played a role in regime change, religion’s impact on authoritarian transition was minimal. Studying the process of democratic backsliding in Turkey, a Muslim-majority state, illuminates crucial mechanisms of democratic breakdown and authoritarian regime consolidation more broadly.

When Does Backsliding Lead to Breakdown? Uncertainty and Opposition Strategies in Democracies at Risk

In recent decades, prominent national leaders like Turkey’s Recep Tayyip Erdoğan and Venezuela’s Hugo Chávez gained power through democratic institutions, only to undermine those institutions once in office as part of a broader effort to consolidate authoritarian power. Yet attempts at “executive aggrandizement” have failed in other countries, with varying consequences for democratic institutions. We develop an agency-based perspective to enhance the understanding of aggrandizement and to explain when it results in democratic breakdown. Relying on comparative case studies of five countries—Bolivia, Ecuador, Thailand, Turkey, and Venezuela—our analysis suggests that the contingent decisions of opposition actors during the process of aggrandizement have a significant effect on regime outcomes. Irregular opposition attempts to remove incumbents from office, which are especially likely after electoral defeats, contribute to democratic breakdown. More moderate responses to aggrandizement, on the other hand, help the opposition actors to buy time until the next election, hence offering the possibility for democratic survival.

Studying autocratization in Turkey: political institutions, populism, and neoliberalism

In this review article I classify the literature on the Turkish political regime during Justice and Development Party rule as two waves of studies, and a potential third wave. The first wave was prevalent at least until the Gezi uprisings in 2013. I argue that, in this wave, the main debate was between two rival and largely culturalist perspectives with conceptual toolkits that tended to interpret regime change through the lens of social transformations. I also maintain that scholarly works written from the hegemonic perspective of this wave, utilizing center–periphery and state–society dichotomies, and a narrow range of concepts from the democratization literature (from defective democracy to democratic consolidation), have misidentified/misinterpreted burgeoning autocratization in Turkey as democratization, albeit with problems. The Gezi uprisings brought to the fore already existing authoritarian features of the Turkish political regime and led to the second wave of studies. In the second wave, the focus was on naming Turkey’s new political regime as a diminished subtype of authoritarianism, and thick descriptions of different facets of Turkey’s new authoritarianism. Finally, I suggest that there is a need for a third wave that builds on recent studies and focuses on explaining Turkey’s autocratization process and democratic breakdown, as well as the impact of autocratization on other aspects of Turkish politics and society.

Breaking Down the Meaning of Constitutional Breakdown

This chapter argues that Wojciech Sadurski’s work on the deterioration of Polish democracy suggests the Polish context may present a bridge between two key conceptual frameworks: democratic breakdown and democratic decay. In his 2019 book Poland’s Constitutional Breakdown Wojciech employs the term ‘constitutional breakdown’ to describe how the ruling Law and Justice (PiS) party has seriously degraded the democratic constitutional order since 2015. The concept of ‘breakdown’, which has a long pedigree, has fallen out of favour in contemporary literature on the deterioration of democracy worldwide, which rather emphasizes the decline of total breakdown and argues that slower, subtler dismantling of democracy is the dominant threat. This chapter explores the relationship between these frameworks by reflecting on why Wojciech frames the Polish experience as ‘breakdown’ rather than ‘erosion’ or ‘decay’, whether ‘breakdown’ literature offers useful insights beyond ‘democratic decay’ literature, and why Wojciech refers to ‘constitutional’ rather than ‘democratic’ breakdown.

Previous Military Rule and Democratic Survival

Existing scholarship shows that a history of military rule increases the risk of democratic breakdown. However, scholars overlook the fact that military rule takes two distinct forms: collegial and personalist military rule. I argue that the two types of military rule provide different structural settings for post-authoritarian contexts. Collegial military rule hands over more cohesive and hierarchical militaries to their subsequent democracies than personalist military rule. These militaries remain organized, politicized, and powerful in emerging democracies, which increases the risk of military intervention and coups. I hypothesize that collegial military rule poses a greater threat to the survival of the ensuing democracies than personalist military rule. Empirical analysis reveals that democracies after collegial military rule are more likely to collapse than other democracies, including those emerging from personalist military rule. This shows that the previous finding on the detrimental effect of military rule is largely driven by collegial military rule.