(iPoster) Underdevelopment and Inequality: The Political Economy of Latin American Coups

• In Event: Poster Session: Political Economy; Civic Engagement; & Comparative Politics, Political Economy, and Participation
  In Poster Session: Poster Session: Political Economy

Abstract

Democracy has endured serious setbacks in the past thirty years. While much ink has been spilled interrogating democratic backsliding, the role of coups in the broader story of autocratization has remained understudied, particularly in the Global South. Latin America—a region which historically suffered from frequent, though highly heterogenous, coup waves—offers a fitting test case for longitudinal study of the conditions that generate coups. I employ a century of development and income inequality data to assess the operative forces behind coups in the six largest nations in Latin America. I instrumentalize for financial instability and political fragmentation to explore plausibly causal factors that predict coup events. Preliminary analysis suggests that highly unequal nations are more prone to coups, and that deviations in top earnings are strongly linked to coups, whereas strong labor protections in the form of wages are more associated with stable democratic regimes. This suggests, in developing economies, fluctuations in elite incomes from global financial market instability exert pressure in favor of military intervention, which is ceteris paribus more likely in non-democratic nations.

Author

• A.P. Turek, University of California, Los Angeles