Abstract
In Vanishing Coup: The Pattern of World History Since 1310, Ivan Perkins asks a first-rate question: why is it that coups d’état are completely inconceivable in some states while they are only too common elsewhere? Why is it, for example, that a military coup could never take place in the United States, Sweden or Belgium but that they happen all the time in Panama, Burkina Faso and Thailand? In some states, that is, the military plays by the political rule-book while in other states the rules are constantly broken. But why does a state belong to the one group rather than the other? The question is important not only for what it says about coups but also about the nature of different societies and their overall political and social development. A coup-free state is likely to be a more democratic state, economically prosperous and free of corruption, while a coup-prone state is more likely to be authoritarian, poor and corruption-ridden. By learning about coups and why they happen we could learn something important about what it is that makes a society and a political system both acceptable and stable.
Perkins’ answer, in brief, is that the military play by the political rule-book to the extent that there is a widely accepted political rule-book to play by. Coups d’état do not happen in states where there is rule of law. The law provides a commitment that is prior to each individual’s commitment to his or her own self-interest, and under such circumstances only fools would talk about coups. There are indeed fools. In a meeting with his Joint Chiefs of Staff in December 1973, Richard Nixon floated the idea of ‘resistance’ against ‘the Eastern liberal establishment,’ but the assembled generals were clearly shocked at the suggestion and the issue was never again raised. A coup, Perkins estimates, will require the collaboration of hundreds of people, but among those hundreds there will always be one or a couple who spill the beans. Instead of winning converts to your cause, you are more likely to be turned over to the authorities or to the madhouse. It was a state of this rule-governed and coup-free kind, says Perkins, which first was established in Venice in the 14th century, in England after the Glorious Revolution of 1688, and in the United States after independence, and it is states of this kind that have been so rare in other, non-Western, parts of the world.
Perkins does indeed ask a first-rate question, but his answer is not convincing. The general problem is that too many of the relevant variables co-vary. States that are coup-free are also far more likely to be democratic, economically prosperous, to espouse liberal rights, to be located in Europe, or to have been settled by Europeans. To call a country coup-free is in the end just another way of calling it ‘Western’. That rule of law is an important feature of this Western mix is beyond doubt, but how the mix itself came to be established Perkins cannot even begin to tell us. To say that rules are followed in states where rules are followed is not to say very much. What is needed here is a far bolder historical sociology. We need to know why it is that some states have institutions that are able to accommodate conflicts and spur social and economic change. Establishing such a sociology is a tall order to be sure, yet constant references to the existence of law-abiding citizens are not nearly enough. Perkins should have thought harder and more creatively about the problem he set himself.
In the end he could not decide what sort of a book he wanted to write. Perkins presents it as a serious historical sociology but he relies at the same time far too heavily on historical anecdotes. Inspired by both Arnold Toynbee and by Malcolm Gladwell, he succeeds in becoming neither. Individual historical characters are, for example, introduced into the analysis in a rather gratuitous manner – George Washington, he says, exuded a ‘virtue charisma’ that made a great difference to the outcome of the constitutional settlement of 1787. Yet such references tell us little about the historical process except how lucky Americans are to be Americans. Perkins’ most obvious omission, however, concerns the Absolutist states that developed in Continental Europe in the course of the 18th century. It was in Germanic Europe after all, and not in Anglo-Saxon, that constitutionalism and the rule of law first came to be established. Perkins says nothing about this. Democracies, according of the wisdom most current at the time, have no need for law since they instead have civic virtue. It was consequently in Prussia and Austria that the first constitutions were written and where the king himself could be taken to court. It was Britain that lacked a written constitution (and still does). That Germanic Europe until very recently appears on Perkins’ maps of coup-prone states indicates that something is wrong with his analysis.
Asking the right questions is far more difficult than it seems, and this Perkins’ book decidedly does. This in itself is an achievement. Unfortunately, providing the right answers to the right questions is far more difficult. The rule of law surely matters to the coup-proneness of nations, but the combination of co-varying variables is more complex than Perkins lets on.