The most recent non-democratic power transfer on the continent occurred in Gabon recently, after coups in Burkina Faso and Mali in 2022 and Niger in July. However, the putsch in Gabon differs significantly from a string of coup attempts in the Sahel area of Africa, emphasizing the stark regional differences in coup attempts, with elements including history, outside meddling, economy, and military politicization playing a part.

Even though military takeovers frequently share some characteristics, the one in Gabon doesn’t exactly follow the pattern of other recent coups in western Africa; there were no grave security threats, such as the Islamist terror that grips Mali and Burkina Faso in particular; therefore, there was no security justification for the coup. And unlike in Niger, Burkina Faso, and Mali, which at different moments in the previous four decades had made progress toward democratic civilian government, the country’s deposed president, Ali Bongo, was a member of a dynasty dictatorship that had dominated the nation for four decades.

Because of the corruption within the Bongo family, coup leaders from Gabon’s presidential guard, most notably Gen. Brice Clotaire Oligui Nguema, manipulated election results to give Ali Bongo, 64, another victory. The Bongo family and its close collaborators have long benefited from Gabon’s oil riches. Still, the governing elites instead hoarded that income and kept the great majority of the people in poverty rather than investing it in state institutions like infrastructure, healthcare, or education.

However, analysts told Vox that instead of overthrowing that structure, the coup leaders in Gabon chose to carry out a continuity coup, in which only the figurehead would get access to the state’s resources.

So, although there have been several coups in Africa recently, they are not all connected or identical. Even if these incidents often surface on Twitter feeds or in news alerts before being forgotten days later, coup dynamics trends are worth looking into. As Americans know, this is not a phenomenon limited to the Sahel or Latin America; January 6, 2021, has shown that uprisings are still conceivable in nations with ostensibly robust democratic systems. The nations themselves and our current political situation on the world stage may be understood by understanding how these undemocratic transfers of power occur, their variations and similarities, the individuals and forces driving them, and the environment in which they occur.

Why do coups occur?

The political scientists Jonathan Powell and Clayton Thyne have shown that coups are uncommon via their study. According to Powell and Thyne’s analysis, there were 486 coup attempts between 1950 and January 2022, 242 of which were successful, according to a recent Voice of America article.

The continent with the most efforts was Africa, where 214 were made, 106 successful, or little under half. Latin America came in second place with 146 tries. Seventy of them were prosperous.

Both areas were emerging after centuries of colonization, which are still being felt today. Both were the sites of a Cold War-era proxy fight for influence that took advantage of the instability and portrayed a genuine conflict over the best form of government and economic system. Both were also quite impoverished and generally had considerable inequality.

All of those factors have the potential to contribute to coups, but the best indicator of whether one will occur in a particular nation is history – has there ever been a coup attempt? Whether or not the effort was successful, any precedent demonstrates that the circumstances favor a coup and that it is at least feasible to try. Powell, a political science professor at the University of Central Florida, told Vox in an interview: “There are various studies that point to your probability of having a coup in the current year to be something between 25 and 40% if you’ve had a coup attempt in the last three years, controlling for a bunch of different factors, which is high when you think about how rare these events are otherwise.”

That may also motivate coup plotters in other countries with comparable issues or circumstances, such as Mali, Burkina Faso, and Niger, which all deal with Islamist insurgencies to varying degrees. In “circumstances where the government might be seen as providing ineffectual leadership or is not giving the military the tools and the resources that it needs to be able to fight a counterinsurgency successfully,” Powell said, a coup attempt may look enticing.

This also makes it possible for a cascading effect, as was the case with the Sahel coups. In Niger, for example, despite the economic and security situation improving under the democratically elected President Mohamed Bazoum, General Abdourahamane Tchiani and his fellow coup plotters in the presidential guard used the security situation as justification to seize power in July. The Wagner Group, a Russian private military contractor that mounted a challenge to Russia’s military establishment back in June, has been brought in by Mali’s military governments as evidence that military governments do not always deal with security issues better than civilian governments. Due to Wagner’s presence and military authority in Mali, civilian fatalities from violent insurgency-related events have grown.

Are all coup consequences negative?

The revolution in Gabon has striking similarities to the one that deposed long-time autocratic leader Robert Mugabe in Zimbabwe in 2017 and replaced him with Emmerson Mnangagwa, a close supporter and representative of Mugabe’s ZANU-PF party. A significant shift in either situation, such as implementing genuine democratic reforms and having free and fair elections, would actually work against the ruling class’s interests.

That is comparable to Thailand, which has had many military takeovers in recent years. The military’s actions are intended to preserve the Thai monarchy’s authority and effectively prevent the growth of progressive democracy, which would endanger the establishment’s access to resources and power.

Even if the Gabonese junta establishes civilian governance, prior post-coup regimes have shown that this is not the same as democracy.

It’s difficult to argue that holding elections means that the country is operating based on democratic norms in Zimbabwe, where the ruling ZANU-PF party just won the national elections and gave Mnangagwa his second term in office, Joseph Siegle, head of the research and strategic communications program at the Africa Center for Strategic Studies, told Vox in an interview. There is “really no pretense” that a strong electoral authority holds fair elections. They are only doing the motions.

Powell noted that for Western and international organizations that grant help to strengthen democracy in developing countries, that is often sufficient. According to him, Western nations like the US and organizations like the African Union and the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) “became more tolerant of really just any sort of a post-coup election, just so long as you had an election,” he told Vox. “Just so long as whoever won that election was wearing a suit instead of a military uniform, that would be enough to get sanctions lifted,” and help would re-enter the target nation.

That is not to suggest that democracy never occurs after a military coup; in fact, Niger and Mali are two instances of this. But Powell told Vox that’s often “just an accident.” The military finds itself in a situation where it must step back and allow a legitimate civilian government to take over. “In some cases, they might have specifically not wanted to have a democracy, but just because of various things going on — social pressures, international pressure, and things like that,” the author writes.

The 1970s in Portugal, however, saw a military coup overthrow that country’s long-standing fascist regime, ushering in what is now known as the Carnation Revolution. In that case, a military takeover paved the way for genuine, long-lasting, and competitive democracy and “also kind of started what folks refer to as the third wave of democratization where we saw a wave of democratization projects around the world,” according to Powell.

That’s not to say it was all good, and looking back, it’s simple to romanticize it. However, the nation saw several coup attempts, left- and right-wing violence that resulted in hundreds of fatalities, a surge of refugees returning from Portugal’s colonies, and severe economic instability during the Processo Revolucionário Em Curso, or the Ongoing Revolutionary Process.

Recent military takeovers are a part of a wider trend away from democracy.
Undemocratic power transfers don’t necessarily resemble military coups; they may take diverse forms depending on the country and the area.

Although there were a handful of military coups in Latin America throughout the 20th century, efforts to seize power or seize control are more likely to take the shape of an autogolpe, or self-coup, as Pedro Castillo, the populist former president of Peru, did last year. Ecuador’s president, Guillermo Lasso, was also charged with starting an autogolpe when he disbanded the National Assembly in May of this year, as the nation’s constitution permitted. But Lasso opted out of the most recent elections.

The president of Nicaragua, Daniel Ortega, has likewise clung to power via democratic institutions; although he has been elected repeatedly, those elections could not be considered free and fair, and he has continued to weaken opposition groups and institutions inside the nation.

Particularly in the context of a major power struggle between the US and authoritarian regimes like Russia and China, it is helpful to see coups and other non-democratic power transitions as a component of a bigger, global trend away from democracy.

According to Monty Marshall, director of the Center for Systemic Peace, “there is a real tension between the West and the Russian groups for influence, especially in the Sahel region, where the Wagner group is operating quite freely.” The claim that a military reaction is the only possibly effective method to handle the issue is persuasive in certain instances. And because they are dependent on the military to maintain control of the situation, citizens find it very difficult to respond.

Democracy is difficult to maintain since it is costly, especially in nations where the economy and security are reliant on foreign help, according to Marshall. The political situation becomes far more precarious without resources to support a government and a professionalized military, develop national institutions, and incorporate people into a sustainable economy. When authoritarian governments are prepared to step up, foreign assistance without persistent, extensive investment in a nation’s institutions is a formula for democratic failure.

Furthermore, it becomes far more difficult to create civil institutions like labor unions or civic groups that can resist military authority and bargain with governments to meet citizens’ demands in split countries.

According to Marshall, The likelihood of these coup attempts or the outbreak of armed conflict is greatest when the local populace is bitterly split. “We call it polarization, a popular term in our nation. However, polarization is a sign of social breakdown, and for democracy to function, society must be connected.