STRUCTURAL COUP-PROOFING

“Coordination of efforts is a necessity in a struggle between groups. In large groups it can be achieved only on the basis of subordination and unitary command. The

proposition that unitary command is advantageous in war is so evident that no elaborate proofs are required.”

-Stanislav Andreski, Military Organization and Society (1968, 92)

Geddes (1999) has noted that the worst possible outcome for a military is to have to fight other factions of the armed forces, and over half of successful coups reported by Marshall and Marshall (2009) are indeed bloodless. This reality has led many leaders to reduce the ability of their armed forces to attempt a coup by providing a number of structural obstacles to organizing and executing a conspiracy. Though Svolik (2009, 484) has recently “assumed away” any collective action problem elites may face when

confronting a dictator with a coup, I argue that cohesion obstacles are of paramount importance and are the most visible aspect of coup-proofing.

Cohesion has previously been noted as an important factor in studies on other forms of intrastate conflict. Tilly (2003), a student of Barrington Moore, goes beyond the efforts of his mentor by looking not just at the incentives to seek out political violence, but by considering the opportunities that those with grievances possess. Tilly specifically looks at the ability of people socially interact as a determinant of political violence.

Goodwin (2002) and Brockett (2005) similarly treated large-scale political revolution as a function of the ability of revolutionaries to coordinate. While members of a state’s military may not have to deal with repression from the government, the ability of

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conspirators to organize their effort is of paramount importance, and indeed many leaders attempt to reduce the ability of their militaries to act in a coordinated manner.

Aware of these trends, a limited number of studies have theorized that militaries with less “cohort rivalry” are more likely to attempt coups. However, these efforts have either limited their analyses to single-year data on counter-forces, or have relied on overall military size as a proxy for centrality (e.g., Jenkins and Kposowa 1992; Kposowa and Jenkins 1993). Larger militaries are more likely to be composed of separate units, companies, platoons, or informal cliques, and plotters will have to successfully recruit from those potential rivals. Aside from intra-branch recruiting, plotters may also need to go outside of their own service. Thompson (1976), for example, offered an early test of this inter-branch obstacle by using descriptive statistics to demonstrate that coups attempted with the overt support of more armed service branches were more likely to succeed. Though he does not claim more branches translates directly into fewer attempts, potential plotters are no doubt aware of such obstacles and will be wary of attempting a coup as the number of necessary co-conspirators or potential opponents increase.⁴

Aware of such obstacles, leaders have made efforts to increase either the number of obstacles or the strength of them. The most comprehensive treatment of these actions in the quantitative literature has been undertaken by Belkin and Schofer (2003). They consider the number of military branches, paramilitary organizations, and their respective personnel numbers to create a measure for “counterbalancing.” Their analysis reveals that regimes with heightened vulnerability to a coup do in fact divide “their armies into numerous, mutually suspicious rival forces that check and balance one another” (Belkin

4 Many small African militaries, such as Togo and Burkina Faso, have had their armies, navies, air forces, and gendarmes unified under a single command structure (IISS). These systems could potentially see a plotter face fewer obstacles during the recruiting phase of a coup, making an attempt more likely.

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and Schofer 2003, 596). This effort provides strong support that coup risk can be said to promote efforts to fractionalize militaries in an effort to survive. There are, however, two important extensions to be made to this groundbreaking effort. First, there has been no attempt to systematically investigate whether such efforts successfully reduce the likelihood of a coup. Second, prior efforts to account for coup-proofing in the empirical literature conflate different types of policies that have theoretically distinct implications for the study of conflict.

Belkin and Schofer’s innovative offering essentially aggregates three different types of military coordination obstacles. First, it includes the number of organizations that comprise the regular armed forces, such as the army, navy, and air force. With few exceptions, virtually every country is going to have a unit of ground-capable soldiers (armies) and to a lesser degree an air force, though capabilities of the air force will vary dramatically. Though landlocked nations will usually lack navies, their ability to act as an obstacle to coup-plotters has been called into question (Luttwak 1968). Next, the measure considers the number of paramilitary organizations. First (1970, 429) has noted that numerous African regimes decreased the prospects of a coup by “building up

counter-forces” within their militaries and security services. Meanwhile, Welch (1976) argued that leaders should attempt to deter coups by increasing the degree of

specialization within different entities of a state’s armed forces, thereby creating coordination challenges. Aside from efforts such as developing parallel chains of command, leaders sometimes build entirely independent armed counterweights to their militaries, such as the General Service Unit in Kenya or the Jamahurriyah Guard in Libya. An increase in the number of paramilitary organizations will decrease cohesion in

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the armed forces, essentially creating a collective action problem for the military.

Finally, Belkin and Schofer incorporate the number of personnel in a regime-protecting paramilitary versus the regular armed forces. This aspect looks more directly at the relative power of the paramilitary and regular armed forces. This is an important theoretical distinction from the number of organizations, as it could be the case that the number of competing organizations could differ in its effectiveness from the strength of single paramilitary unit that acts as a military counterweight. For example, the infamous 1982 coup attempt perpetrated by the Kenyan Air Force was violently crushed by

Kenya’s only paramilitary group, the General Services Unit (Frazer 1994; N’Diaye 2002). Meanwhile, Decalo (1990, 160) has noted that Milton Obote’s excessive divisions within the security apparatus ultimately undermined its ability to protect him due to their inability to unify against Idi Amin. Although Amin’s putsch was not supported by the vast majority of the Ugandan army, Obote’s “divide and rule” policies toward his military prevented any would-be protectors from organizing resistance to Amin.

What we see here is a domestic extension of balance of power politics.

Independent of the military’s disposition to attempt a coup, if the army possesses a

preponderance of power over other security services, a leader can be said to be vulnerable to a coup. Leaders, then, will act to tilt the balance of power toward their paramilitary.

In doing so, structural coup-proofing efforts also provide the paramilitary with

(sometimes excessive) materiel and training, while the regular rank-and-file is allowed to whither. Scholars of both civil-military relations and international conflict, for example, have suggested that coup-proofing often hinders state fighting capacity (Quinlivan 1999;

Pilster and Böhmelt 2011; Biddle and Zirkle 1996; Reiter and Stam 1998; Biddle and

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Long 2004). First, when a state puts more resources into coup-proofing, they inevitably do so at the expense of the regular armed forces. This is due to a reduction in personnel, armaments, or in soldier quality due to a lack of training and non-merit recruitment and promotion. Second, in addition to shortages in training or materiel, coup-proofing also undermines the fighting capacity of a military by creating coordination challenges in the field. This is as true for waging battle as it is for attempting a coup. Durrell-Young (1997, 23), for example, has claimed that unity of command is a “sine qua non for successful military operations,” and unity of command is precisely what structural coup-proofing ultimately attempts to avoid.

In short, coup-proofing undermines the ability of militaries to act cohesively and to utilize advanced weaponry and modern strategy, a reality that is in stark contrast to well-trained and well-armed coup-proofing units whom conspirators will have to overtake during the putsch. So while plotters might on occasion attempt a coup in a

“coup-proofed” state, these efforts are generally risky and will be more likely to fail generally fail.

Coup Hypothesis 1: States with stronger military structural coup-proofing (paramilitary size and fractionalization) will have a lower likelihood of a coup.

The first coup hypothesis suggests that structural coup-proofing will significantly reduce the likelihood of a coup attempt. These efforts reflect the leader’s primary goal:

retaining power. While this primary goal may be accomplished through these efforts, coup-proofing has important consequences for state power, especially regarding a leader’s willingness and ability to use force. This reality has important implications for both international and civil conflict.

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3.3 IMPLICATIONS OF STRUCTURAL COUP-PROOFING FOR DIVERSION