IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/sae/joupea/v48y2011i2p249-259.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Global instances of coups from 1950 to 2010: A new dataset

Author

Listed:
  • Jonathan M Powell

    (Department of Political Science, University of Kentucky)

  • Clayton L Thyne

    (Department of Political Science, University of Kentucky, clayton.thyne@uky.edu)

Abstract

Once considered a ‘hot topic’ among scholars, research on coups d’état has waned in recent years. This decline is surprising given that 7 coups have happened between January 2008 and December 2010, bringing the last decade’s total to almost three dozen. One explanation for the lack of coup research is the absence of a temporally and spatially comprehensive dataset to test theories. Also absent is a discussion of what makes coups distinct from other forms of anti-regime activity. This article seeks to remedy these problems. The authors present a new dataset on coups from 1950 to 2010. They begin by explaining their theoretical definition and coding procedures. Next, they examine general trends in the data across time and space. The authors conclude by explaining why scholars studying a variety of topics, including civil wars, regime stability, and democratization, would benefit by paying closer attention to coups.

Suggested Citation

  • Jonathan M Powell & Clayton L Thyne, 2011. "Global instances of coups from 1950 to 2010: A new dataset," Journal of Peace Research, Peace Research Institute Oslo, vol. 48(2), pages 249-259, March.
  • Handle: RePEc:sae:joupea:v:48:y:2011:i:2:p:249-259
    DOI: 10.1177/0022343310397436
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0022343310397436
    Download Restriction: no

    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1177/0022343310397436?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Alesina, Alberto & Özler, Sule & Roubini, Nouriel & Swagel, Phillip, 1996. "Political Instability and Economic Growth," Journal of Economic Growth, Springer, vol. 1(2), pages 189-211, June.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Stefan Lindemann, 2011. "The Ethnic Politics of Coup Avoidance: Evidence from Zambia and Uganda," Africa Spectrum, Institute of African Affairs, GIGA German Institute of Global and Area Studies, Hamburg, vol. 46(2), pages 3-41.
    2. Masaki, Takaaki, 2016. "Coups d’État and Foreign Aid," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 79(C), pages 51-68.
    3. Vincenzo Bove & Roberto Nisticò, 2014. "Coups d’état and defense spending: a counterfactual analysis," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 161(3), pages 321-344, December.
    4. Elisabeth Nindl, 2014. "An empirical assessment of Fairtrade: A perspective for low- and middle-income countries?," Department of Economics Working Papers wuwp160, Vienna University of Economics and Business, Department of Economics.
    5. Frédéric Gaspart & Pierre Pecher, 2019. "Ethnic Inclusiveness of the Central State Government and Economic Growth in Sub-Saharan Africa," Journal of African Economies, Centre for the Study of African Economies, vol. 28(2), pages 176-201.
    6. Martin Gassebner & Jerg Gutmann & Stefan Voigt, 2016. "When to expect a coup d’état? An extreme bounds analysis of coup determinants," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 169(3), pages 293-313, December.
    7. Bank, André & Richter, Thomas & Sunik, Anna, 2013. "Long-Term Monarchical Survival in the Middle East: A Configurational Comparison, 1945-2012," GIGA Working Papers 215, GIGA German Institute of Global and Area Studies.
    8. Massimiliano Calì & Alen Mulabdic, 2017. "Trade and civil conflict: Revisiting the cross-country evidence," Review of International Economics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 25(1), pages 195-232, February.
    9. Konyukhovskiy, Pavel V. & Grigoriadis, Theocharis, 2018. "Proxy wars," Discussion Papers 2018/4, Free University Berlin, School of Business & Economics.
    10. Gerling, Lena, 2017. "Riots and the window of opportunity for coup plotters: Evidence on the link between urban protests and coups d'état," CIW Discussion Papers 2/2017, University of Münster, Center for Interdisciplinary Economics (CIW).
    11. Christopher A. Hartwell & Roman Horvath & Eva Horvathova & Olga Popova, 2019. "Democratic Institutions, Natural Resources, and Income Inequality," Comparative Economic Studies, Palgrave Macmillan;Association for Comparative Economic Studies, vol. 61(4), pages 531-550, December.
    12. Brast, Benjamin, 2017. "Liberal Statebuilding Interventions and the Monopoly on Violence," SocArXiv yqk9v, Center for Open Science.
    13. Beger, Andreas & Dorff, Cassy L. & Ward, Michael D., 2016. "Irregular leadership changes in 2014: Forecasts using ensemble, split-population duration models," International Journal of Forecasting, Elsevier, vol. 32(1), pages 98-111.
    14. Frode Martin Nordvik, 2014. "Does Oil Promote or Prevent Coups?," Working Papers No 7/2014, Centre for Applied Macro- and Petroleum economics (CAMP), BI Norwegian Business School.
    15. Samuel Bazzi, Christopher Blattman, 2011. "Economic Shocks and Conflict: The (Absence of?) Evidence from Commodity Price- Working Paper 274," Working Papers 274, Center for Global Development.
    16. Rafi Amir-ud-Din & Muhammad Usman & Faisal Abbas & Sajid Amin Javed, 2019. "Human versus physical capital: issues of accumulation, interaction and endogeneity," Economic Change and Restructuring, Springer, vol. 52(4), pages 351-382, November.
    17. Paul Maarek & Michael T. Dorsch, 2015. "Rent seeking, revolutionary threat and coups in non-democracies," THEMA Working Papers 2015-13, THEMA (THéorie Economique, Modélisation et Applications), Université de Cergy-Pontoise.
    18. Kawaura, Akihiko, 2018. "Generals in defense of allocation: Coups and military budgets in Thailand," Journal of Asian Economics, Elsevier, vol. 58(C), pages 72-78.
    19. Gerling, Lena, 2017. "Riots and the Window of Opportunity for Coup Plotters: Evidence on the Link between Urban Protests and Coups d’État," VfS Annual Conference 2017 (Vienna): Alternative Structures for Money and Banking 168054, Verein für Socialpolitik / German Economic Association.
    20. Bergh, Andreas & Bjørnskov, Christian, 2016. "Burying the Bumblebee Once and for All:," Working Paper Series 1119, Research Institute of Industrial Economics.
    21. Hübner, Malte & Vannoorenberghe, Gonzague, 2015. "Patience and Inflation," MPRA Paper 65811, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    22. Ali Akarca, 2018. "Political Determinants of Government Structure and Economic Performance in Turkey since 1950," Working Papers 1241, Economic Research Forum, revised 23 Oct 2018.
    23. Bennett, Daniel L. & Bjørnskov, Christian & Gohmann, Stephan F., 2019. "Coups, Regime Transitions, and Institutional Change," Working Paper Series 1281, Research Institute of Industrial Economics.
    24. Cullen S. Hendrix & Idean Salehyan, 2015. "No News Is Good News: Mark and Recapture for Event Data When Reporting Probabilities Are Less Than One," International Interactions, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 41(2), pages 392-406, March.
    25. Dorsch, Michael T. & Maarek, Paul, 2018. "Rent extraction, revolutionary threat, and coups in non-democracies," Journal of Comparative Economics, Elsevier, vol. 46(4), pages 1082-1103.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Jeffrey Frankel, 2014. "Mauritius: African Success Story," NBER Chapters, in: African Successes, Volume IV: Sustainable Growth, pages 295-342, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    2. Daniel Diermeier & Hulya Eraslan & Antonio Merlo, 2003. "The Effects of Constitutions on Coalition Governments in Parliamentary Democracies," PIER Working Paper Archive 03-037, Penn Institute for Economic Research, Department of Economics, University of Pennsylvania.
    3. Balima, Hippolyte Weneyam, 2020. "Coups d’état and the cost of debt," Journal of Comparative Economics, Elsevier, vol. 48(3), pages 509-528.
    4. Robert MacCulloch & Silvia Pezzini, 2010. "The Roles of Freedom, Growth, and Religion in the Taste for Revolution," Journal of Law and Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 53(2), pages 329-358, May.
    5. Mare Sarr & Erwin Bulte & Chris Meissner & Tim Swanson, 2011. "On the looting of nations," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 148(3), pages 353-380, September.
    6. Nahapetyan Yervand, 2019. "The benefits of the Velvet Revolution in Armenia: Estimation of the short-term economic gains using deep neural networks," Central European Economic Journal, Sciendo, vol. 6(53), pages 286-303, January.
    7. Jian-Guang Shen, 2002. "Democracy and growth: An alternative empirical approach," Development and Comp Systems 0212002, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    8. Ahmet Faruk Aysan & …mer Faruk Baykal & Marie-Ange Véganzonès–Varoudakis, 2011. "The Effects of Convergence in Governance on Capital Accumulation in the Black Sea Economic Cooperation Countries," Chapters, in: Mehmet Ugur & David Sunderland (ed.), Does Economic Governance Matter?, chapter 6, Edward Elgar Publishing.
    9. Chen, Mo & Xue, Wei-Xian & Zhao, Xin-Xin & Chang, Chun-Ping & Liu, Xiaoxia, 2024. "The impact of economic sanctions on the COVID-19 pandemic," Economic Analysis and Policy, Elsevier, vol. 82(C), pages 163-174.
    10. Johannes Blum & Klaus Gründler, 2020. "Political Stability and Economic Prosperity: Are Coups Bad for Growth?," CESifo Working Paper Series 8317, CESifo.
    11. Ahmet Faruk AYSAN & Mustapha Kamel NABLI & Marie‐Ange VÉGANZONÈS‐VAROUDAKIS, 2007. "Governance Institutions And Private Investment: An Application To The Middle East And North Africa," The Developing Economies, Institute of Developing Economies, vol. 45(3), pages 339-377, September.
    12. Marattin, Luigi & Marzo, Massimiliano & Zagaglia, Paolo, 2013. "Distortionary tax instruments and implementable monetary policy," International Review of Economics & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 25(C), pages 219-243.
    13. Amir-ud-Din, Rafi & Rashid, Abdul & Ahmad, Shabbir, 2008. "Democracy, Inequality and Economic Development: The Case of Pakistan," MPRA Paper 26935, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    14. Shaukat, Badiea & Zhu, Qigui & Khan, M. Ijaz, 2019. "Real interest rate and economic growth: A statistical exploration for transitory economies," Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications, Elsevier, vol. 534(C).
    15. Philip Barrett & Mariia Bondar & Sophia Chen & Mali Chivakul & Deniz Igan, 2024. "Pricing protest: the response of financial markets to social unrest," Review of Finance, European Finance Association, vol. 28(4), pages 1419-1450.
    16. Andrea Asoni, 2008. "Protection Of Property Rights And Growth As Political Equilibria," Journal of Economic Surveys, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 22(5), pages 953-987, December.
    17. James A Kahn & Jong-Soo Lim, 2001. "Finite Horizons, Political Economy, and Growth," Review of Economic Dynamics, Elsevier for the Society for Economic Dynamics, vol. 4(1), pages 1-25, January.
    18. Campos, Nauro & Nugent, Jeffrey B, 2000. "Investment and Instability," CEPR Discussion Papers 2609, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
    19. Chandan Sharma, 2021. "Does Corruption Sand The Wheels Of Financial Sector Development? Evidence From Global Panel Data," Journal of Financial Management, Markets and Institutions (JFMMI), World Scientific Publishing Co. Pte. Ltd., vol. 9(02), pages 1-32, December.
    20. Ramey, Garey & Ramey, Valerie A, 1995. "Cross-Country Evidence on the Link between Volatility and Growth," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 85(5), pages 1138-1151, December.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:sae:joupea:v:48:y:2011:i:2:p:249-259. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: SAGE Publications (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.prio.no/ .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.