Defect or Splinter? Coup-Proofing and Military Behavior during Mass Uprisings

• In Event: Civil Military Relations: Patterns and Impacts

Abstract

What determines whether and how security forces defect during nonviolent mass uprisings in dictatorships? Why do some security forces defect en masse while others splinter? When authoritarian governments deploy their security forces to put down anti-regime protests, they run the risk that most or all security agents defect and side with the protesters or splinter into rival loyalist and defecting armed groups, escalating the potential for violence. In this paper, we leverage new data on the type of security force defection during mass uprisings and original data on authoritarian security forces structure from 1990 to 2015 that precisely identifies all operationally independent key security organizations, their commanders, as well as the commanders' personal and political associations to the incumbent dictator. We argue that coup-proofing has dual contradictory effects: the "loyalty mechanism" of coup-proofing (building the communal ties between the dictator and the security elites) decreases the likelihood of security forces splintering while the "fragmentation mechanism" of coup-proofing (proliferation of parallel security organizations) increases likelihood of security forces splintering. Our paper sheds light on why security force splintering occurs in autocratic "endgames." Understanding the rival effects of security force personalism is crucial to explain how mass uprisings develop, escalate, and end.

Authors

• John Joseph Chin, Carnegie Mellon University

• Wonjun Song, Hanyang University