Reconsidering the Relation Between Natural Resources and Coup-proofing

• In Event: Politics and History & MENA Virtual Poster Session
  In Virtual Poster Session: MENA Virtual Poster Session

Abstract

Coup-risk presents a fierce threat to incumbent leaders. To face it, they can implement policies to please the selectorate, buy-off rivals in the military, ensuring personal wealth or resort to institutional coup-proofing. Despite this latter strategy is one of the most common there is a wide variation in the extent to which leaders resort to it. I claim that to understand the conditions under which leaders decide to undertake this strategy, it is necessary to consider the interplay between state natural resource revenues and coup-risk. I argue that access to natural resources increases leaders' willingness to undertake institutional coup-proofing efforts when coup-risk is low and decreases it as coup-risk rises. This is because when coup-risk is relatively high and implementing institutional coup-proofing might trigger a preventive coup, leaders who have access to funds that they can allocate discretionally prefer to invest in other coup-proofing strategies than institutional coup-proofing. To test my hypothesis, I resort to a cross-section time-series multivariate two-stage least squares analysis covering 122 countries between 1970 and 2011. Findings support the hypothesis and are robust to different model specifications contributing to shed more light on the relation between coup-risk, natural resources and institutional coup-proofing.

Author

• Marco Nicola Binetti