Journal article
How to sell a coup: elections as coup legitimation
- Abstract:
- Unlike other political leaders, leaders coming to power through military coups face a dual legitimation challenge: they must justify not only why they should rule but also how they came to power. Little attention has been paid to how coup leaders solve this legitimacy deficit and even less to the audiences of this legitimation. We ask: why do some coup leaders legitimate their coups by holding elections while others do not? Counterintuitively, we argue that coup leaders who oust democratically elected leaders are less likely to hold elections, except when tied to US military aid. We test these hypotheses through a data set of military coup regimes from 1946 to 2014 and trace out mechanisms through case studies of the Nigerian coup of 1983 and the Egyptian coup of 2013. This argument provides a new explanation for the emergence of authoritarian elections and a new perspective on the international dimensions of dictatorship.
- Publication status:
- Published
- Peer review status:
- Peer reviewed
Actions
Access Document
- Files:
-
-
(Preview, Accepted manuscript, 355.0KB, Terms of use)
-
- Publisher copy:
- 10.1177/0022002718770508
Authors
- Publisher:
- SAGE Publications
- Journal:
- Journal of Conflict Resolution More from this journal
- Volume:
- 63
- Issue:
- 4
- Pages:
- 1001-1031
- Publication date:
- 2018-09-17
- Acceptance date:
- 2018-03-21
- DOI:
- EISSN:
-
1552-8766
- ISSN:
-
0022-0027
- Language:
-
English
- Keywords:
- Pubs id:
-
1131237
- Local pid:
-
pubs:1131237
- Deposit date:
-
2020-09-09
Terms of use
- Copyright holder:
- Grewal and Kureshi
- Copyright date:
- 2019
- Rights statement:
- Copyright © 2018The Author(s).
- Notes:
-
This is the accepted manuscript version of the article. The final version is available from SAGE Publications at https://doi.org/10.1177/0022002718770508
If you are the owner of this record, you can report an update to it here: Report update to this record