Silent Guns: Examining the Two-Year Absence of Coups in Africa

U.S. Army photo by Staff Sgt. Candace Mundt/Released

Rebecca Schiel, PhD Candidate in Security Studies, and Jonathan Powell, Assistant Professor in the Political Science Department, recently published a blog post in Political Violence at a Glance examining the two-year absence of Coups d’état in Africa. The blog post addresses the two-year anniversary of the coup in Burkina Faso and the subsequent two-year absence of coups in Africa. The research findings highlighted in the post include the decreasing prevalence of coups in Africa and the effects of domestic and international reactions on this trend. Specifically, the authors highlight how reactions to the 2015 Burkina Faso coup d’état affected the outcome of the coup, and how these dynamics fit into recent scholarly work. Schiel and Powell point to swift reactions by international and regional organizations in dissuading coup plotters from continuing their fight for power and how this might also act as a deterrent to would-be coup plotters elsewhere on the continent. Read the blog post.