a coup d’état or, more briefly, a coup is the overthrow of a lawful ruler through illegal means, often involving force or violence. If force or violence are not used, a coup is sometimes called a soft or bloodless coup. The Cline Center Coup d’Etat Project provides an online database of coups and coup attempts from ancient times to the present.
Coups are often accompanied by violent conflict, including mass human rights abuses. The violent nature of many coups makes them particularly damaging to human rights and can lead to long-term, negative consequences for a country. Coup d’états can also exacerbate pre-existing ethnic, religious, or regional divisions in a country, leading to long-term unrest and instability.
A coup d’état, when successful, often initiates a political transition to democracy, like in 1957 Colombia, or can cause a breakdown of democratic regimes (Thyne and Powell 2016). Such transitions or breakdowns often have far-reaching consequences for the people of the coup-initiated country.
The international community should be vigilant to ensure that security assistance does not encourage or precipitate a coup, but should strive to improve its responses once a coup occurs. Inconsistent reactions to a coup undermine the moral authority of external actors, who tend to label, condemn, and sanction coups with one eye toward principle and another toward their interests in terms of geopolitics, security, arms sales, access to natural resources, refugee and migration flows, and so on. Achieving a better post-coup response can reduce the likelihood of future coups and build stronger, more resilient states.