Clayton Besaw, University of Central Florida dan Matthew Frank, University of Denver
Trump supporters stormed the US Capitol on Jan. 6, disrupting Congress’s certification of Joe Biden as president-elect. Coup experts explain this violent insurrection wasn’t technically a coup.
When the military intervened against Robert Mugabe in Zimbabwe in 2017, it wasn’t widely called a military coup. New research shows that’s exactly what it was.
History shows that when government elites believe that there is a risk that they may lose control of the capital, they escalate targeted violence against civilians.
Traveling death squads. Sadistic torture techniques. Stolen babies. The US helped it all happen by aiding Argentina’s military regime in the 1970s, according to newly declassified documents.
Martin Plaut, School of Advanced Study, University of London
Al-Bashir’s ability to play a skillful combination of internal and external balancing acts, plus ruthless repression and a divided opposition, kept him in power for three decades.
A coup seems so imminent in Venezuela that people are debating whether Maduro’s overthrow would be good or bad for Venezuelan democracy. But history suggests a coup may be less likely than it seems.
2018 is on track to become only the second coup-free year in a century. Coup risk is way down worldwide, thanks to growing political stability in Latin America. Africa has the highest risk of coup.
The top U.S. foreign policy goals in Africa evidently no longer relate to human rights or democratic freedoms, but to protecting tiny, marginal American industries.
It’s election season in Pakistan, and the Supreme Court is at war with the ruling party. Many Pakistanis wonder whether the nation’s top judge is cleaning up government or staging a judicial coup.
By intervening in Zimbabwe’s politics the military could plunge the country into a prolonged period of uncertainty. Could President Emmerson Mnangagwa be its saviour?
Some observers think Mugabe’s overthrow by the Army might be a good thing for Zimbabwe. An Argentinean expert on Latin America’s bloody military dictatorships disagrees.
Mugabe and his powerful wife have been overthrown in an apparent coup orchestrated by Zimbabwe’s vice president. Will the country transition into democracy or get strapped with yet another dictator?
The protracted political crisis in Zimbabwe has worsened since President Mugabe fired vice president Emmerson Mnangagwa. Now the military has entered the fray, raising fears a coup is imminent.