Overview

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'Etat 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'etat 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.

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9781501751912

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Reviews

De Bruin's How to Prevent Coups d'Etat makes a real contribution to the study of civil-military relations. The most important of which are that counterbalancing institutions do reduce the likelihood of a successful coup, but paradoxically, their very existence may trigger the very act it is designed to prevent... How to Prevent Coups d'Etat should be a staple in any course on civil-military relations and read alongside classics including Eric Nordlinger's Soldiers in Politics, Samuel Finer's The Man on Horseback, and Samuel Huntington's The Soldier and the State. * The Journal of the Middle East and Africa * Erica De Bruin's book offers the most comprehensive account to date of whether counterbalancing (or coup proofing) can deter coup attempts and lower the risk of coups being successful. A major accomplishment of the book is that it offers a quantitative analysis based on an impressive dataset collected by the author... Erica De Bruin's book deserves to be read not only by academics and dictators, but by anyone interested in research on coups. * Journal of Peace Research *

Erica De Bruin's book offers the most comprehensive account to date of whether counterbalancing (or coup proofing) can deter coup attempts and lower the risk of coups being successful. A major accomplishment of the book is that it offers a quantitative analysis based on an impressive dataset collected by the author... Erica De Bruin's book deserves to be read not only by academics and dictators, but by anyone interested in research on coups. * Journal of Peace Research * De Bruin's How to Prevent Coups d'Etat makes a real contribution to the study of civil-military relations. The most important of which are that counterbalancing institutions do reduce the likelihood of a successful coup, but paradoxically, their very existence may trigger the very act it is designed to prevent... How to Prevent Coups d'Etat should be a staple in any course on civil-military relations and read alongside classics including Eric Nordlinger's Soldiers in Politics, Samuel Finer's The Man on Horseback, and Samuel Huntington's The Soldier and the State. * The Journal of the Middle East and Africa *

Author Information

Erica De Bruin is Assistant Professor of Government at Hamilton College in Clinton, New York. Her work has been published in Journal of Peace Research, Journal of Conflict Resolution, and Foreign Affairs. Follow her on X @esdebruin.

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