Political violance

 

COULD A COUP D’ETAT HAPPEN IN THE UNITED STATES IN 2020?

As frustration mounts over President Donald Trump’s response to the coronavirus pandemic, where COVID-19 has, according to the latest estimates, killed over 100,000 Americans, some on the American left have apparently taken ill with coup fever. In late April, Hendrik Hertzberg—a journalist at The New Yorker and former chief speechwriter for President Jimmy Carter—took to Twitter to muse about whether it was “time for a military coup.” Hours later, Nick Hanauer, a venture capitalist-turned-critic of economic inequality, tweeted: “At what point do the Joint Chiefs of Staff just come to terms with the fact that the POTUS has lost his marbles and is insane, and just take him out?” Hertzberg backtracked quickly, clarifying that he was being sarcastic. Yet coup-talk, even meant as a joke, is no laughing matter.

President Trump and his allies have insisted that he is the victim of a left-wing media-inspired “deep state” coup conspiracy to deny him the presidency. Last fall, Trump incorrectly decried the House impeachment inquiry as an unconstitutional “coup attempt.” Loose coup talk by media members and political opponents only makes Trump’s claims of a coup cabal more credible/

Would a military coup against Trump be a good thing? Military coups against democratically elected leaders are undemocratic insofar as they substitute the threat or use of armed force for the results of elections—even if there is disagreement about how those elections are run. The controversial “good coup” hypothesis that coups may promote democracy by ousting dictators or autocratic regimes does not apply to a long-established democracy like the United States.

The Colpus dataset distinguishes between two coup types. Regime change coups—or coups de regime—alter the “rules of the game” and identity of the entire ruling group. Leader reshuffling coups—or coups de chef—only alter the identity of the top leader, without making fundamental changes to political institutions. Of the 60 military coups that ousted democratic leaders from 1946 to 2019, 53 (88 percent) led to democratic breakdown; only seven resulted in leader reshuffling, of which six were successful in that they did not lead to a democratic breakdown. In these six “constitutional coups,” democracy survived because the coup makers either handed power to the next in the constitutional line of succession or quickly presided over new democratic elections. In the seventh case, democracy survived because the coup was rolled back in short order.