The Effect of CIA Reforms on Coups Prevalence

• In Event: Covert Action and Regime Change

Abstract

What explains the global decline of coups? I argue that changes to US covert behavior due to a series of congressional and executive actions in the mid-1970s explain in part why coups have become exceedingly rare. I put forth a theory that these foreign policy reforms, which were a response to domestic public scandals, actually constrained US covert involvement in regime change. This in turn affected militaries’ willingness and capacities to execute coup plots. I find support for this theory by drawing on evidence from a regression discontinuity design, time series change point methods, and declassified documents on requests for US support for regime change during the Cold War. This paper provides one of the first systematic analyses of the temporal variation of coups.

Author

• Nandita N. Balakrishnan, Stanford University