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The military coup of 25 April 1974 in Portugal initiated the ‘third wave’ of democratic transitions in southern Europe. The transition and subsequent process of democratic consolidation evolved in various stages, each with a corresponding phase of ‘transitional truth and justice’ initiatives and counter-initiatives: the first stage, from 1974 to 1976, was the ‘revolutionary’ period, comprising the downfall of the regime and the crisis of state that followed; the second stage, between 1976 and 1982, was a period of ‘normalization’, constitutionalization and incipient democratic consolidation; during the third stage, from 1982 onwards, the process of democratic consolidation has proceeded apace. This chapter examines these stages in different sections: Introduction; A Portuguese Settling of Accounts; The Purge Process; The Dual Legacy Discourse and the Consolidation of Democracy; and Conclusion.

This chapter discusses events following the demise of Iraq's monarchy in 1958. The demise of the monarchy was met with almost universal approval by the Iraqi people. During the first week after the military coup, huge demonstrations filled the streets of the country's major cities, all proclaiming their devotion and commitment for the infant republic and their support for the new military leaders. While the military's initial political moves suggested a promising proclivity for sharing power with like-minded civilians, it would not be long before those who had a monopoly over coercive force would hold sway over all institutions of the state. For the following decade, the military would radically and consequentially impact the ideas and institutions of governance, democracy, and identity.

It is not uncommon for the armed forces to turn against the state that they are supposed to protect. Wherever there is a military, there is a risk of a coup. Since 1950 there have been 232 of them in ninety-four countries, and this is only counting the successful ones where an incumbent government was unseated. The coup risk is a function of what Peter Fever famously called the ‘civil–military problematique’: armed forces with the means to defend their state invariably have the means to attack it as well. This chapter argues that citizens should take the risk of a coup seriously for largely the same reasons that they take the threat of foreign aggression and occupation seriously: both can be expected to compromise their communal self-definition and their enjoyment of human rights.

This chapter discusses events surrounding the 1936 Bakr Sidqi military coup. On October 29, 1936, planes from the infant Royal Iraqi Air Force circled over Baghdad then dropped leaflets demanding the ouster of nationalist Prime Minister Yasin al-Hashimi, who had taken to characterizing himself as the Bismarck of Iraq. It did not take long for Hashimi to tender his resignation to the young King Ghazi, and along with other senior members of the government, including Nuri al-Sa'id, hurriedly left Iraq. By imposing its will on the political leadership, the army, under the leadership of the notorious, yet at the time popular, Kurdish general Bakr Sidqi had executed a successful military coup, which was to become the precursor for a spate of military coups that bedeviled not only Iraq, but most of the Arab world, over the following four decades. Indeed, it is no exaggeration to say that in the 1936 military coup could be found the seeds of the momentous events that were to usher the end of the monarchical period in July 1958.

This chapter discusses the events following the military coup on July 17, 1968, that ushered in the Ba'thist/Saddamist era. The Ba'thists were in no mood to share power with officers claiming fidelity to the nationalist cause but eschewing membership in the Ba'th Party. Particularly adamant on the necessity for the Party to monopolize power was Saddam Husayn. On July 30, a new Cabinet was formed and announced to the Iraqi public. As the names of the Cabinet Ministers were read, no one would have any doubt that this time the Ba'th Party alone would shape the structure, and command the direction, of the Iraqi state.

This chapter relates income, ethnic fractionalization, and external threat levels to the probability of military coups in Africa. It shows that per capita income has a negative effect on the probability of military rule, offering support for the “modernization” theory of democracy. Fractionalization also lowers the probability of military rule, while external threats have a lagged positive effect.

The first year of the counterrevolution under interim President Adly Mansour is covered in chapter 6. In contrast to the period of the Supreme Council of Armed Forces, when men in uniform ruled Egypt, after the ouster of President Mohamed Morsi the authorities created a semblance of civilian rule, installing a civilian interim president, a civilian vice president, and a civilian prime minister. Nonetheless, there was no civilian control of the armed forces. The goal during the first wave of the counterrevolution was not only to eliminate the Muslim Brotherhood from politics but also to crush any group that could mobilize for street protests, regardless of ideology. It was the bloodiest period in modern Egyptian history. After carrying out numerous massacres of the Muslim Brotherhood, the state turned to secular and independent activists next. The Protest Law passed in November 2013 essentially criminalized even small and entirely peaceful protests. The regime was slowly able to regain control of the streets and university campuses. The nature of the coup determined the nature of the crackdown: precisely because it was a “coup from below,” characterized by mass protests that reached deep and wide into Egyptian society, the crackdown had to reach this extent as well.

In the Fiji archipelago no chief established paramount authority. From 1871, a constitutional government based on the person and influence of Seru Ebenezer Cakobau, Vunivalu of Bau, began a process of centralization under stipended provincial chiefs and settler officials, until the ‘kingdom’ was annexed by Britain with the agreement of Fijian chiefs. The first governors incorporated the chiefly hierarchy into a structure of provinces and districts, with taxes and laws under Crown Colony government. The early practice of consulting provincial chiefs was institutionalized within ‘Fijian Administration’ and the internal colonization of Viti Levu was completed with Fijian levies. Fijian leaders did not become civil servants and retained considerable initiative in accessing rents from lands and securing posts for subordinates. The whole structure of local government was called into question from the 1960s by advances in elected representation for Fijians and a large Indian population. Ethnic loyalty and deference to chiefs became an important factor in party politics, as Fiji moved towards independence in 1970 and continued to polarize politics up to the military coups of the 1980s.

The present study examined the processes of regime change in Iran, Turkey, and Egypt. It began with the coups that founded their various regimes and the division of power between military, security, and political institutions. It then traced the collaboration and competition of these institutions across decades, and concluded that regime change is often the by-product of their attempts to modify the power balance. This concluding chapter reviews the literature on coups and compares the Iranian, Turkish, and Egyptian trajectories to consider why one experienced revolution, the other evolved via reform, and the third remains resilient. It argues that understanding the genesis of each new regime and the logic of power it initiates is as important as tracing the shifts and turns that follow. And even though the Iranian, Turkish, and Egyptian regimes continue to change, in one form or another, their history continues to weigh them down.

This chapter identifies the discrepancy between real and perceived political opportunities and the effect this gap had on political mobilization for the June 30th protests in Egypt. The chapter relies on interview data and fieldwork conducted during the 2012 anti-Morsi protests, the 2013 coup, the months following the coup, and at protests in Tahrir Square and at the Rabaa al-Adawiya sit-in. In addition to outlining the politics surrounding President Morsi’s 2012 constitutional declaration, the subsequent protests, and how the Tamarod movement mobilized mass protests against Morsi that took place on June 30, 2013, the chapter also presents the details and step-by-step process of the 2013 military coup. The chapter explains post-coup politics, including the designation of the Muslim Brotherhood as a terrorist organization, the military’s mobilization of the public against the Muslim Brotherhood, the Rabaa al-Adawiya massacre, the cult of General Abdel Fattah el-Sisi, and the 2014 constitutional referendum and presidential elections.

This chapter analyzes the growing divide between political elites in the wake of the military coup. In fact, the aftermath of the Bakr Sidqi coup can be seen as an effort by the out-group to move into the center not just politically, but ideationally as well. The ideational orientation of the new political order was immediately evident in the composition and policies of its political elite. The three pillars of the policy-making group were Sidqi (a Kurd), Sulayman (a Turkomen), and Abu al-Timman (a Shi'ite). The government's first statement to the Iraqi public focused almost exclusively on the country's problems, promising to foster national unity and overcome communal divisions. The government's policies aroused the ire of “Arab” nationalists who objected to the seemingly purposeful distancing of Iraq from what they considered to be its natural habitat.

This chapter discusses Venizelos' departure from the Greek political scene, which came about in the same way that he entered it: in the wake of a military coup. Unlike the other great statesman of twentieth-century Greece, Constantine Karamanlis, who did everything in his power to abstain from activities that called into question constitutional legality, Venizelos more than once acted under the conviction that political requirement must occasionally be allowed to prevail over legitimate government. Unlike Karamanlis also, who prepared for himself the place in history he thought appropriate for a great statesman, Venizelos did not appear to care much about how posterity would judge his actions. From the point of view of respect for established institutions, then, Venizelos belonged to a set of new men, like Camilo di Cavour and Otto von Bismarck, who believed that their nation's interest justified all means, including revolution against legitimate authority.

This concluding chapter looks at the Greece brought into existence by Henry Miller and Lawrence Durrell. The two authors reinvested modern Greece with meaning by stripping it of all political significance. This occurred when Greece itself was under a dictatorship and under the shadow of the impending war, so that the creation of an idyllic Greece during these years was an act of will by both Miller and Durrell. Those writers who came to Greece in the late 1940s and 1950s carrying the books of Miller and Durrell also persisted in turning their eyes from the internal politics of Greece, despite a bitter civil war between the Left and the Right from 1945 to 1949. Greece became repoliticized in Western eyes by the military coup in 1967, partly because leftist political activism in the West viewed the coup as a cause and partly because the unappealing politics within Greece helped to move lotus land elsewhere.

This chapter lays out the historical foundation for understanding state-sponsored torture and murder in Brazil by weaving violence workers' biographies into the three decades of Brazilian history from 1964 to 1985, and considers the Brazilian atrocity within the political and social dynamics that nurtured, supported, and excused it. It suggests that some of the events which led to the development of atrocity include the experience of policing Brazil's military coup, the declaration of the military executive's right to rule without congressional consent in the 1960s, and political decompression.

This chapter defines the key terms used throughout the book: military, military coup, and popular revolution. The military, also known as the armed forces, is the state institution responsible for defending a nation’s borders. Importantly, the military is a separate institution from the state’s security forces. Although journalistic and historical accounts often conflate the military with the security forces, they serve distinct functions. Although most nations employ various measures to keep the military subservient to the civilian government, those measures are effective only if the military chooses to follow them. When the military disregards those measures and unleashes its coercive power against the sitting head of state, the result is a coup d’état. The definition of a coup ordinarily requires that its perpetrators come from a state institution such as the domestic military. Although many features of coups are also present in revolutions and popular movements, the definition of a military coup excludes these events because they are perpetrated by the masses, not members of the military.

This chapter introduces the history of the civilian-military regime, describes its core characteristics, outlines key tenets and ideologies used to legitimize the 1964 coup, and describes the ensuing military reign. It explores the large-scale private propaganda campaigns that paved the way for the coup between 1962 and 1964 and examines the regime's division into different military camps where propaganda was a contested field. Providing a schema for the book's organization, the introduction also briefly discusses the concept of propaganda and introduces new subcategories used throughout the study.