How Mechanization Shapes Coups

• Author: Ioannis Choulis,Marius Mehrl,Abel Escribà-Folch,Tobias Böhmelt
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1177/00104140221100194
• Published date: 01 February 2023
• Date: 01 February 2023
• Subject Matter: Articles

Article

Comparative Political Studies

2023, Vol. 56(2) 267–296

© The Author(s) 2022

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DOI: 10.1177/00104140221100194

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How Mechanization

Shapes Coups

Ioannis Choulis

1

,

Marius Mehrl

2

,

Abel Escrib`

a-Folch

3

, and

Tobias B ¨

ohmelt

1

Abstract

Civil-military relations are characterized by a fundamental dilemma. To lower

coup risk, leaders frequently empower the military, which satisf‌ies the armed

forces with the status quo and enables them to f‌ight against threats challenging

the civilian leadership. Simultaneously, a too powerful military itself consti-

tutes a potential threat that is capable of overthrowing the government. Our

research adds to this debate by examining the impact of mechanization, that is,

the degree to which militaries rely on armored vehicles relative to manpower,

on coup risk. We discuss several (opposing) mechanisms before developing

the theoretical expectation that higher levels of mechanization should lower

the likelihood of a coup due to the increased costs of coup execution.

Empirical evidence strongly supports this claim and, thus, contributes to our

understanding of the emergence of coups as an essential breakdown of civil-

military relations, while adding to the debate surrounding the many trade-offs

leaders face when coup-proof‌ing their regimes.

Keywords

civil-military relations, coups, mechanization, quantitative analysis

1

University of Essex, Colchester, UK

2

Geschwister Scholl Institute of Political Science, University of Munich, Munich, Germany

3

Universitat Pompeu Fabra & Institut Barcelona d’Estudis Internacionals, Catalunya, Spain

Corresponding Author:

Ioannis Choulis, University of Essex, Wivenhoe Park, Colchester CO4 3SQ, UK.

Email: ic17708@essex.ac.uk

Introduction

Well into the 21st century, coups are still a persistent feature of political

dynamics in many parts of the world. In this decade alone, the military have

overthrown governments in Egypt (2013), Zimbabwe (2017), Sudan (2019,

2021), Mali (2020, 2021), and Myanmar (2021); and attempted (but failed) to

do so in Burundi (2015), Burkina Faso (2015), Turkey (2016), Niger (2021),

or Guinea-Bissau (2022), among others. These episodes underscore that a

country’s armed forces are still a central political actor and, importantly, a

potential threat to incumbent governments and internal stability. Yet, the

number of coups has markedly declined over the last few decades.

1

Scholars

have related this decrease in coup incidence to global and political trans-

formations such as an increased international opposition to coups as well as

the emergence of multiparty politics and regular elections in non-democracies

(e.g., Shannon et al., 2015;Bove & Rivera, 2015;Woo & Conrad, 2019).

Little attention, though, has been paid to other changes having directly to

do with the force structure of military forces. To this end, we focus on

mechanization—that is, the extent to which militaries rely on tanks and ar-

mored vehicles relative to manpower (Caverley & Sechser, 2017;Sechser &

Saunders, 2010)—and contend that it likely is a crucial factor that helps

explaining the dynamics in the global incidence of coups. We discuss several

(opposing) mechanisms before developing the main argument suggesting that

mechanization increases the costs of coordination failures during a coup,

thereby deterring potential plotters. Despite substantial cross-national vari-

ation, modern national armies have undergone thorough structural transfor-

mation. This process, importantly, has been mainly driven by strategic factors

relating to diffusion, countries’threat environment, or recent battlef‌ield ex-

periences, but not by institutional inf‌luences (Sechser & Saunders, 2010). As

Lyall and Wilson (2009: 75) explain: “[m]echanization was not a one-time

shock, however. Rather, the lessons learned by the Great Powers in World War

I were codif‌ied in World War II and then gradually diffused throughout the

international system during the Cold War. In particular, the practice of

modeling client states’militaries in their patrons’image ensured that the

modern system was emulated throughout Africa, Latin America, Asia, and the

Middle East.”Likewise, Sechser and Saunders (2010: 506) aver that “we can

understand the broader global trend toward mechanization partly as a self-

reinforcing spiral consistent with the classic logic of the security dilemma.”

The cornerstone of civil-military relations is the so-called guardianship

dilemma: the reliance on armed forces for protection against external and

internal threats situates the military in a pivotal position they can use to take

over power (Besley & Robinson, 2010;Svolik, 2013;McMahon & Slantchev,

2015). The dilemma thus entails that a stronger military should pose a bigger

threat to the state. In Feaver’s (1999: 214) words, the “civil-military

268 Comparative Political Studies 56(2)