About Military coup
A military coup involves a violent seizure of power from an established authority or government. Coups are often accompanied by a regime change or institutionalization of martial law. This can lead to authoritarianism, a form of government characterized by centralized control and limited civil rights. Military coups can also be followed by insurgency, a violent resistance against an established government or authority led by rebels with the goal of achieving political goals through guerilla warfare and other tactics. The complexity of these interactions makes understanding the dynamics of military takeovers particularly challenging.
Coups have long been a common feature of African politics, but in recent years they have become more frequent and have taken on new forms. These changes reflect the growing frustration of many citizens with failings in elected governments to provide security, economic opportunity, and other basic services, as well as a sense that their leaders lack the legitimacy to govern effectively.
The intricacies of military coups include not only the planning and execution of the actual seizure of power but also the broader processes of instigation and consolidation. Instigation involves activities that can be as simple as providing bribes to officers to support a plot, as in the case of the alleged Benin coup plot, or as complex as building secret cells within the armed forces to give the coup d’etat the go-ahead, as in the 1999 Pakistani coup. Consolidation, meanwhile, includes actions that happen in the immediate aftermath of a coup, including the institution of martial law and other policies like curfews and state-controlled media.
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