Introduction

So far, we studied situations in which democracy once created persists indefinitely – there are no reversals in the march toward democracy. The reality is quite different, however. There are many instances in which countries become less democratic and democratic regimes are overthrown by military coups, reverting to dictatorship.

The recent history of many Latin American countries is particularly marred by oscillations in and out of democracy. In Argentina, for example, universal male suffrage became effective in 1912, but it was soon overthrown by a coup in 1930 (see Chapter 1). Democracy was reinstated in 1946 but fell to a coup in 1955, recreated again in 1973, subverted again in 1976, and finally reinstalled in 1983. In between, several semidemocratic regimes fell to coups in 1943, 1962, and 1966. Why are there coups against democracy? Why has mass democracy been durable in many Northern European countries, and why has it been so difficult to consolidate this set of political institutions in less developed countries such as those in Latin America?

This chapter provides a framework for analyzing coups against democracy and then combines those ideas with the models developed in Chapter 6 to build a framework to analyze the creation and consolidation of democracy, as well as potential switches between democracy and nondemocracy.

In building our theory of coups, we emphasize the same economic and political incentives that featured prominently in understanding the creation of democracy.