ABSTRACT

Military coups and the military regimes which follow from them are so much a feature of third world politics that their presence or absence in any given region might almost be taken as a rough and ready touchstone of third worldliness. Like all political generalisations, this one is subject to exceptions. Within Europe, coups have taken place since 1960 in Greece and Portugal-both of which may count among the more ‘third worldly’ of European states-and the installation of a military government in Poland in December 1981 demonstrated that the army cannot aways be insulated from a direct political role even in Marxist-Leninist states. The difference between industrial states, either capitalist or Communist, and the third world is none the less striking. Fully three-quarters of the twenty Latin American regimes have had military coups since 1960, the only exceptions being the socialist state of Cuba, the peculiar family dictatorship of Haiti, and three countries (Mexico, Costa Rica and Venezuela) which appear to have achieved a stable balance of civilian political forces. Just on half the states in third world Asia, and rather more in Africa, have had military coups and governments over the same period, even though (since many states did not become independent until after 1960) these have been less at risk. Within each continent, there have been regions in which military intervention has so far been very limited or non-existent, leaving an increased incidence of coups in other regions. None of the eight African states south of a line from Angola through Zambia and Malawi to Mozambique has yet experienced a successful coup, in part perhaps because of the delayed independence of the former Portuguese

colonies and Zimbabwe, in part because the South African presence may inhibit coups in the three former High Commission territories. In Asia, the traditionalist states of the Arabian peninsula provide the largest coup-free zone, though the constitutionalist regimes of India, Sri Lanka, Malaysia and Singapore have also maintained civilian control over the army. In general, and especially in Africa, the absence of military government reflects the skills and good fortune of a civilian political leader, rather than anything inherently inconducive to military intervention in the state which he governs. The successful coups in Liberia in 1980 and Guinea in 1984, and the unsuccessful ones in The Gambia in 1981 and Kenya in 1982, all indicate the vulnerability of regimes which had often been regarded as among the most stable in Africa. In some cases, such as the francophone African states of Senegal, Ivory Coast and Gabon, coups may be inhibited as much as anything by the support which the regime receives from an external power. The only substantial area of the the third world which has as yet had no military governments is the English-speaking Caribbean, many of the states in which have only recently become independent. Even here, there has been one non-military coup (in Grenada), and the army has had to be disbanded in Dominica.