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CHAPTER NINE: Regime Change: Coups, Revolutions, and Democratization

Study

Regime change is the process through which countries go from one type of regime, with its particular set of institutions, to another. Older forms include military coups and social revolutions. Recently, democratization has dominated study of the phenomenon.

Keeping the military loyal is a major challenge for both democratic and authoritarian states. Military coups are the most common and quickest form of regime change, occurring for reasons that include the military's sense that the nation needs to be "rescued," the military's own interests as an organization, and the more particular interests of individual leaders or groups within the institution.

A revolution is a rapid transformation in the political system and social structure of a society that involves mass participation in extra-legal political action to overthrow the prior regime and usually includes violence. Distinctions among revolutions can be made based on the ideology that inspires them and whether the revolution originates from below, as with most classic revolutions, or from above.

The move toward democracy by many poorer countries, with weaker states and national identities and seemingly without democratic cultures, raised doubt about earlier theories that emphasized wealth and an appropriate culture as key to democracy. As many new democracies have struggled, attention has grown around questions of democratic consolidation and how to prevent backsliding to more authoritarian systems. Many formerly democratizing countries are now hybrid regimes, allowing some political rights and civil liberties but short of liberal democracy.