{"id":18980,"date":"2025-12-22T13:11:42","date_gmt":"2025-12-22T13:11:42","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/?p=18980"},"modified":"2025-12-22T13:11:42","modified_gmt":"2025-12-22T13:11:42","slug":"coup-contagion-a-rash-of-african-power-grabs-suggests-copycats-are-taking-note-of-others-success","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/18980\/coup-contagion-a-rash-of-african-power-grabs-suggests-copycats-are-taking-note-of-others-success\/","title":{"rendered":"Coup contagion? A rash of African power grabs suggests copycats are taking note of others\u2019 success"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Salah Ben Hammou<\/a>*, <\/strong>& Jonathan Powell<\/a>*<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

In a scene that has become familiar across parts of Africa of late, a group of armed men in military garb\u00a0appeared on state TV<\/a>\u00a0on Dec. 7, 2025, to announce that they had suspended the constitution and seized control.<\/p>\n

This time it was the West African nation of Benin, and the coup was\u00a0relatively short-lived<\/a>, with the government regaining full control a day later. But a week before, senior military officers in Guinea-Bissau had more success,\u00a0deposing President Umaro Sissoco Embal\u00f3<\/a>\u00a0and effectively annulling\u00a0the Nov. 23 election<\/a>\u00a0in which both Embal\u00f3 and the main opposition leader had claimed victory. A month earlier it was Madagascar, where a\u00a0mass Gen-Z uprising<\/a>\u00a0led to the elite\u00a0CAPSAT unit of the Malagasy military ousting<\/a>\u00a0President Andry Rajoelina and installing Colonel Michael Randrianirina as leader.<\/p>\n

The cluster of coup attempts follows a broader pattern. Since 2020, there have been\u00a011 successful military takeovers<\/a>\u00a0in Africa: one each in Guinea, Guinea-Bissau, Niger, Sudan, Chad, Madagascar and Gabon; and two each in Burkina Faso and Mali. Benin represents the fifth failed coup over the same period.<\/p>\n

The prevalence of military takeovers led United Nations Secretary-General Ant\u00f3nio Guterres to warn as far back as 2021 of a\u00a0coup \u201cepidemic<\/a>.\u201d<\/p>\n

But can coups, like the pathogens of many epidemics, be contagious? Certainly\u00a0observers around<\/a>\u00a0the world<\/a>\u00a0continue to ask whether a military takeover in one country can influence the likelihood of another one happening elsewhere.<\/p>\n

Do coups spread?<\/strong><\/h3>\n

Cross-national research offers little firm evidence that a coup in one country directly increases the chances of another. And some scholars remain skeptical that such a phenomenon exists. Political scientist Naunihal Singh, for instance,\u00a0argues that the recent wave\u2019s coup plotters<\/a>\u00a0are drawing less from contemporary events than from their own countries\u2019 long histories of military intervention.<\/p>\n

In addition, he suggests that any observed regional cluster mostly reflects shared underlying conditions. For example, the countries across the Sahel region that have been the center of post-2020 African coups share a\u00a0common set of coup-prone pressures<\/a>: chronic insecurity driven by insurgencies, weak state capacity and widespread frustration over quality of governance.<\/p>\n

Likewise, Michael Miller and colleagues at George Washington University,\u00a0in a broader analysis<\/a>, contend that would-be plotters pay closer attention to domestic dynamics than to foreign coups when deciding whether to move against their own governments.<\/p>\n

As\u00a0scholars of<\/a>\u00a0military coups<\/a>, we recently explored the phenomenon and have come to a different conclusion.<\/p>\n

Our\u00a0forthcoming study<\/a>\u00a0argues that would-be plotters do indeed pay close attention when contemporaries seize power. A number of dynamics, however, could keep a statistical trend from being realized.<\/p>\n

For one, statistical modeling typically requires contagion to occur within a tight temporal window, often 1 to 3 years.<\/p>\n

Our findings challenge this approach. A wave of so-called \u201cFree Officers\u201d coups \u2013 military takeovers led by junior or mid-ranking nationalist officers, inspired by Egypt\u2019s 1952\u00a0Free Officers movement<\/a>\u00a0\u2013 is a widely invoked example of contagion. The\u00a0original Free Officers ousted King Farouk<\/a>\u00a0and went on to abolish the monarchy and end British influence in Egypt.<\/p>\n

However, it took a full six years before a second \u201cFree Officers\u201d coup occurred in the region, in\u00a0Iraq in 1958<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Rather than blindly follow the lead of Egypt\u2019s coupists, would-be copycats watched closely, took notes and moved only when two factors lined up: the rewards appeared to be worth the risk, and they obtained the ability to make a takeover possible.<\/p>\n

In the case of the post-1952 Middle East, the potential \u201crewards\u201d of emulating Egypt\u2019s Free Officers were not immediately apparent, even in countries with circumstances very similar to Egypt\u2019s.<\/p>\n

It wasn\u2019t until the original Free Officers Movement\u2019s leader, Colonel\u00a0Gamal Abdel Nasser<\/a>, emerged as a revolutionary icon in the region that others attempted to emulate his success. Nasser\u2019s status grew further through his anti-colonial sentiments and victories, like his handling of the\u00a0Suez Crisis of 1956<\/a>.<\/p>\n

As Nasser\u2019s influence grew, the perceived value of a military takeover increased, and Free Officers-inspired plots quickly proliferated against the region\u2019s monarchies. Six years after the Egyptian coup, the first copycat coup succeeded in Iraq, followed by additional successes in\u00a0Yemen<\/a>,\u00a0Libya<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0Sudan<\/a>\u00a0between 1962 and 1969.<\/p>\n

A further complication to establishing a firm trend is that the success of one takeover may actually hinder the immediate progress of another. After all, would-be copycats are not the only observers.<\/p>\n

Vulnerable leaders and their allies can take cues from coups in other countries to try to mitigate their spread at home.<\/p>\n

Thwarted conspiracies in\u00a0Jordan<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0Saudi Arabia<\/a>, which were uncovered between 1955 and 1969, demonstrated that while the sentiment to emulate Egypt\u2019s coup was widespread, not all plotters had the capacity to act. Some governments were better prepared to block these attempts. Foreign partners like\u00a0the United States<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0Great Britain<\/a>\u00a0also played no small role in helping shore up their monarchical allies against coup plots.<\/p>\n

Africa\u2019s coup wave<\/strong><\/h3>\n

The case of the Free Officers Movement shows that plotters wait for clear signals that a coup is worth the risk. In Africa today, those signals are more immediate, even without a monumental figure like Egypt\u2019s Nasser.<\/p>\n

Coupists now see visible domestic support for military takeovers and muted international consequences for those who seize power.<\/p>\n

It is increasingly clear to us that the region has seen a large increase in\u00a0public support for military rule<\/a>\u00a0during this post-2020 wave.<\/p>\n

Military coupists like Burkina Faso\u2019s\u00a0Ibrahim Traor\u00e9<\/a>\u00a0and Mali\u2019s\u00a0Assimi Go\u00efta<\/a>\u00a0have not only attracted domestic support but also regional popularity, lauded for their\u00a0anti-colonial rhetoric<\/a>\u00a0against France and their\u00a0willingness to confront<\/a>\u00a0the Economic Community of West Africa States.<\/p>\n

Data from Afrobarometer<\/a>, which has regularly asked about respondents\u2019 positions on having military rule, illustrate this shift clearly.<\/p>\n