Coup risk, coup-proofing strategy and leader survival

Under what conditions do political leaders take strategies that allow them to reduce militaries' capabilities to successfully organize a coup? There is a broad consensus among previous studies that political leaders who face a high risk of coup will employ "coup-proofing" strategies. A closer look at their theory and empirical analyses, however, suggests that the presumed relationship between coup risk and coup-proofing should be reexamined. Drawing on insights from formal studies on authoritarian power-sharing, this article proposes that political leaders are less likely to undertake coup-proofing efforts as the coup risk they face increases because militaries can deter leaders from weakening them by threatening a coup. The statistical models in this article estimate a latent coup risk by properly aggregating multiple indicators that capture militaries' willingness and ability to organize a coup. The empirical results strongly support the proposition: Coup-proofing efforts taken by leaders decrease in coup risk

Strategic logic of elite purges in dictatorships

Why do some leaders eliminate rivals from authoritarian regimes and therefore diminish elites' capabilities to remove them via coups, while others do not? By examining both dictators' incentives and opportunities to weaken regime elites, I show that dictators are more likely to eliminate rivals when elites' capabilities to oust dictators via coup is temporarily low. Thus, somewhat paradoxically, my theory predicts that dictators are more likely to weaken elites' capabilities as the threat of coup decreases rather than when coup risk is high. Furthermore, I argue that successful coups that put new dictators in power temporarily diminish elites' capabilities to remove dictators and, thus, provide a window of opportunity for the dictators to take steps to consolidate power. Empirical results using a new dataset on purges of militaries from 1969 to 2003 provide strong evidence for my hypotheses

Purging militaries : introducing the Military Purges in Dictatorships (MPD) dataset

The principal threat most autocratic leaders face stems from within the regime. To control militaries and mitigate the risk of coups d’état, many autocratic leaders repeatedly purge strong officers from the military. What are the causes and consequences of such purges? Despite its importance, scholars rarely have studied the question, as they have lacked a systematic and comprehensive dataset. The Military Purges in Dictatorships (MPD) dataset contains information on the dates and characteristics of 1,007 military purges, and covers 566 political leaders in 116 authoritarian countries over the period 1965 to 2005. In this article, I describe MPD, compare it with other datasets, present descriptive statistics on the data, and suggest its applications. By coding the timing and various characteristics of military purges, MPD facilitates empirical study of the relationships between autocratic leaders and their militaries, and thus is useful for researchers studying political violence, repression, civil-military relations, coup-proofing, leader survival, and regime transition