"The Egyptian coup might seem unusual because it was preceded by a popular protest, but in fact these protests regularly precede coups, as Jeremy Pressman rightly noted. Work by me and Aaron Belkin and Evan Schofer shows that popular protests are one of the most consistent predictors of coups. What does the coup mean for the future of democracy in Egypt? Powell and I show that coups can increase the likelihood of democratization when they overthrow authoritarian regimes, something that seems to be especially true in the post-Cold War era, when elections come sooner after coups according to the findings of Nikolay Marinov and Hein Goemans. But when there is a coup against a democratically elected government, like Morsi’s in Egypt, the scholarly literature is less optimistic: coups that take place against democracies are bad for democracy."
Posted on: Wed, 24 Jul 2013 15:31:30 +0000
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