ABSTRACT
Militaries reacted to the “Arab Spring” uprisings of 2011 in a variety of ways: By stepping aside to facilitate a transition to democracy, as in Tunisia; by attempting, with greater or lesser success and degrees of fragmentation, to defend the incumbent regime, as in Libya, Yemen, Syria, and Bahrain; or, as in the case of Egypt, by seizing power, at least temporarily, in what may be termed a “coup-volution”—a preemptive coup intended to abort the further intensification of conflict and at least preserve, if not upgrade, the military’s privileged political and economic position.1 As the hyphenated term suggests, the Egyptian military’s intervention did not appear to be a traditional coup, in that military leaders declared they were acting on behalf of the protesters and pledged to facilitate a speedy transition to civilian democracy. Unique, at least for the Middle East, this “coup-volution” provides novel evidence for the study of civil-military relations in a region in which militaries have been described as “ruling but not governing.”2
