Who Punishes the Leader? Leader Culpability and Coups during Civil War

• Author: Jun Koga Sudduth
• Published date: 01 February 2021
• Date: 01 February 2021
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1177/0022002720950429
• Subject Matter: Articles

Article

Who Punishes the

Leader? Leader

Culpability and Coups

during Civil War

Jun Koga Sudduth

1

Abstract

Who punishes leaders via coups during civil war? By distinguishing between different

types of internal audiences within the government and their attempts to remove a

leader forcefully, I illuminate the mechanisms that explain variation in who punishes

the leader during wartime. I claim that whether leaders are culpable for the initiation

of the war has an important implication for whether they are punished by members

of the ruling coalition (i.e., those with access to decision-making and political power),

or by those outside the ruling coalition. Empirical evidence supports my hypotheses:

(i) culpable leaders are more likely to experience coup attempts led by those outside

the leaders’ ruling coalition, should the war go poorly; and (ii) nonculpable leaders

are more likely to experience coups executed by members of their ruling coalition.

The findings have important implications for how leaders respond to audience

pressures as they consider whether to fight or settle.

Keywords

political survival, conflict, civil wars, coups, civil-military relations

Introduction

Who punishes leaders via coups during civil war? State leaders face dual threats to

their political power during civil war. They face threats not only from rebels outside

1

University of Strathclyde, Glasgow, United Kingdom

Corresponding Author:

Jun Koga Sudduth, University of Strathclyde, McCance Building, 16 Richmond Street, Glasgow G1 1QX,

United Kingdom.

Email: jun.koga@strath.ac.uk

Journal of Conflict Resolution

2021, Vol. 65(2-3) 427-452

ªThe Author(s) 2020

Article reuse guidelines:

sagepub.com/journals-permissions

DOI: 10.1177/0022002720950429

journals.sagepub.com/home/jcr

the regime, but also from within th e regime. As the military is the inst itution of

violence capable of defeating rebellions, leaders need to invest enough resources in

strengthening their militaries,and yet if they do so they confront the problem that these

stronger military institutions will be better able to overthrow them (e.g. Huntington

1957; Feaver 1999; Svolik 2012; Acemoglu, Ticchi, and Vindigni 2010).

1

How lead-

ers cope with coup threats when they confront threats coming from outside the regime

has been a long-standing theme in studies of civil-military relations (e.g. Desch 1999;

McMahon and Slantchev 2015). Indeed, empirical evidence shows that the likelihood

of coup attempts increases by about 82 percent during an ongoing civil war, relative to

peace-time, and, globally, nearly one in four of the coups attempted since 1950

occurred in the context of civil war (Bell and Sudduth 2017). Leaders are also vul-

nerable to coup risks immediately after a civil war (White 2020). Though existing

research has highlighted an increased threat of coups during civil war and improved

our understanding of the linkages between coups and civil war (e.g. Roessler 2016;

Aksoy, Carter, and Wright 2015; Powell 2015; Thyne 2015), we know very little about

the variations within wartime coups. More generally, though the notion that variations

in the anticipation of punishment in the form of losing office shape state leaders’

wartime decisions underpins many prominent theories of both civil war (Prorok

2016, 2018) and interstate war (e.g. Bueno de Mesquita et al. 2003; Chiozza and

Goemans 2004), we know very little about leader punishment during ongoing wars.

In this article, I propose a theoretical mechanism that explains the variations in

who punishes wartime leaders via coups, by introducing a new distinction between

different types of internal audiences (i.e., individuals and groups within the state

apparatus).

2

I explain why some wartime leaders experience coup attempts led by

members of the leaders’ ruling coalition with access to the decision-making body

and political power of the regime (i.e., coalition insiders), while others are chal-

lenged by those outside the ruling coalition (i.e., coalition outsiders). Sierra Leone,

for example, experienced wartime coups both in 1992 and in 1996 during the war

with the Revolutionary United Front. Though these coups occurred only a few years

apart during the same war, the types of plotters greatly differed. The 1992 coup was

led by a group of young junior officers and soldiers, while the 1996 coup was led by

a group of high-ranking members of the military junta, including the Chief of

Defense Staff. My proposed theory can explain such variations. Focusing on the

question of who punishes leaders is important because the types of new leaders,

rather than a leader change itself, matter in predicting how the new leaders make

decisions on whether to continue a costly war or settle (e.g. Prorok 2016). As

I discuss further below, my findings have important implications for the process

and outcome of civil war. Moreover, as a growing body of coup literature demon-

strates, coups led by different types of plotters are fundamentally different in terms

of their causes and consequences (e.g. Albrecht and Eibl 2018; Aksoy, Carter, and

Wright 2015; Bruin 2019). Lumping together these different types of coups would

prevent us from fully understanding the causal mechanism behind wartime coups as

well as their impacts on the trajectory of civil war.

428 Journal of Conflict Resolution 65(2-3)