Honduras Bleg
The removal of an elected president by the military, and the installation of a civilian as the new president, leads a friend to ask:
It seems to have become much more common in the post-1989 period for coupsters to hand over at least the nominal reins to some sort of civilian entity as quickly as possible — to pose as a democratic coup, if you will, recognizing the pro-democracy ethos that is pressed by the OAS, AU, UN, etc after coups. This has happened quite frequently in Africa in recent years; see also Thailand and Bangladesh. But do the numbers bear me out?
Does anyone have a sense of systematic data on this subject?
Comments
My friend Joshua Keating at Foreign Policy wrote about one related study in their May/June issue: http://www.foreignpolicy.com/story/cms.php?story_id=4830 / http://blog.foreignpolicy.com/posts/2009/06/29/the_return_of_the_coup
But the study (by Goemans and Marinov, not sure about the specific cite) seems to have used the amount of time it took after the coup for elections to be held as a metric - not sure if this is exactly what your friend is looking for.
Posted by: Ben Regenspan | June 29, 2009 11:42 PM
I don’t have data, but in the case of Latin America, Alfred Stepan famously wrote about the “moderating” model of civil-military relations that prevailed until the early 1960s, replaced by what he (controversially) called the “new professionalism” of taking over the political system rather than handing power over to a new civilian government.
In other words, at least for Latin America we should not automatically ascribe the Honduran situation to the OAS, as this sort of action has a very long history.
Posted by: Greg Weeks | June 30, 2009 08:44 AM