A coup d’état also known simply as a coup, a putsch, golpe, or an overthrow, is an illegal and overt seizure of a state by the military or other elites within the state apparatus.[1]
A 2003 review of the academic literature found that the following factors were associated with coups:
- officers’ personal grievances
- military organizational grievances
- military popularity
- military attitudinal cohesiveness
- economic decline
- domestic political crisis
- contagion from other regional coups
- external threat
- participation in war
- foreign veto power and military’s national security doctrine
- officers’ political culture
- noninclusive institutions
- colonial legacy
- economic development
- undiversified exports
- officers’ class composition
- military size
- strength of civil society
- regime legitimacy and past coups.[18]