A military coup is the sudden illegal and often violent overthrow of an existing government by armed forces. Coups have proliferated in the last several decades, and scholars have studied them using a variety of methodologies. A recent wave of research has highlighted the centrality of militaries and weakened anti-coup norms as the major causes of these overthrows, and suggested that efforts to train security forces should be balanced by more investment in strengthening civil-military relations.
Although a coup can involve civilians, the term is most commonly applied to a situation in which armed forces take over. This is different from a revolution, which involves the mobilization of large numbers of people to fight for fundamental social and economic change. A coup merely replaces leading members of the government; it rarely alters the nation’s basic political structures or redistributes power among competing groups.
The international community should do more to discourage militaries from supporting self-coups. It should rethink its definition of what counts as a coup d’état and make clearer that aid to states where such actions occur should be suspended. This is an area in which the African Union and other intergovernmental organizations have taken a more robust stance than many European governments.