When Do Rulers Counterbalance? New Evidence from Developing States

• In Event: Designing Security Institutions in Developing Countries

Abstract

For leaders across the developing world, preventing military intervention in politics is a central challenge of governance. Although coups d’état have become less common over the past few decades, they remain frequent and destabilizing events. In the past two years alone, soldiers in Thailand, Yemen, Turkey, Libya, Burundi, Gambia, Lesotho, and Burkina Faso attempted to seize power through a coup. Rulers may adopt a number of strategies to prevent coups; one of the most common is counterbalancing, which involves organizing and deploying domestic security institutions, including republican guards, militarized police, and militia, to counter coups. Despite the prevalence of counterbalancing, we know very little about the conditions under which rulers turn to it rather than (or in addition to) the other coup-prevention strategies at their disposal. This paper draws on a new dataset of state security forces across the developing world, 1960-2010, to identify trends in counterbalancing and the conditions under which rulers use it. The dataset includes information on the command and deployment of each security force, which allows me to distinguish security forces with the potential to impede a coup from those without it, and thus to construct more precise measures of counterbalancing than those possible with existing data. I find that counterbalancing has become more common over time, even as the risk of a coup has decreased. Contrary to common perceptions, counterbalancing is as common in Asia and—since the end of the Cold War—in Eastern Europe as it is in the Middle East. Finally, although counterbalancing is often described as a tool of dictators, I show that it is also common in democracies. After documenting these empirical patterns, I analyze the determinants of counterbalancing in a multivariate setting and find that the international security environment rulers face affects their choice of coup-prevention strategy; in particular, the prospect of conventional warfare limits rulers’ use of counterbalancing. The results suggest a new channel through which international conflict affects domestic political stability.

Author

• Erica Susanne De Bruin, Hamilton College