Beyond coups: terrorism and military involvement in politics

A wealth of research in comparative politics and international relations examines how the military intervenes in politics via coups. We shift attention to broader forms of military involvement in politics beyond coups and claim that terrorist violence and the threat of terror attacks provide a window of opportunity for military intervention, without taking full control of state institutions. We highlight two mechanisms through which terrorism influences military involvement in politics: (1) government authorities demand military expertise to fight terrorism and strengthen national security and “pull” the armed forces into politics, and (2) state armed actors exploit their informational advantage over civilian authorities to “push” their way into politics and policy-making. A panel data analysis shows that domestic terror attacks and perceived threats from domestic and transnational terrorist organizations increase military involvement in politics. We illustrate the theoretical mechanisms with the cases of France (1995–1998 and 2015–2016) and Algeria (1989–1992).

• Publication year

  2019

• Venue

  European Journal of International Relations

• Publication date

  2019-08-20

• Fields of study

  Political Science

• Identifiers
  DOI 10.1177/1354066119866499
• External record

  Open on Semantic Scholar

• Source metadata

  Semantic Scholar

• No claims are published for this paper.

• No concepts are published for this paper.

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