EBP 1: What Do We Know About Coups? - Barbara Geddes, Joseph Wright and Erica Franzt

On the third chapter of How Dictatorships work: power, personalisation, and collapse, Barbara Geddes, Joseph Wright and Erica Franzt analyse and examine the causes behind the likelihood of coups against either democratic or authoritarian governments. 

At first, they discuss several purposes of coups in changing the political status quo and their associations with officer motivations, political contexts, or social forces. Then, they compare and distinguish the conditions of regime-initiating coups (coups that put an end to democracy) and leader-shuffling coups (coups that replace one dictatorship with another). They also have to deal with the issue that "whether popular mobilisation against economic elites or incumbent political leaders increases the likelihood of military intervention." 

The result of their research does not support the claim that popular mobilization increases the likelihood of coups against either democratic or authoritarian government. Result shows that officers are motivated by their own interests. Regime-initiating coups are less likely to happen when the incumbent government and the officers corps includes representatives of all ethnic groups inside that country. They also retest Svoliks' arguement about the effect of inequality on the likelihood of coups. The result show no support for the idea 

reime-change coups are motivated (directly or indirectly) by elite fears of population opposition or redistribution or in another words, regime-change coups are not related to inequality. These results show a different point of view that the military needs to be treated as an interest group and organized political actor.

In the history of mankind, there are many cases that the military plays an important role in overthrowing regimes or republics with some high ranking officers. In my opinion, the chapter does point out the most important idea that the military is considered as an organized political actor.