Military Intervention in Politics

Abstract

Direct military intervention in the politics of Third World countries has been a depressingly regular occurrence since the high-water mark of post-war independence. Between 1960 and 1980 three-quarters of Latin American states experienced coups, as did half of the Third World Asian states and over half of the African states (Clapham, 1985, p. 137; see also Woddis, 1977, pp. 7–10). The 1980s saw the trend continue strongly. Not a year passed without there being a coup or an attempted coup in some part of the Third World. Since 1948 there has been at least one coup attempt per developing country every five years (World Bank, 1991, p. 128). So far in the 1990s there have been coups or attempted coups in Chad (1990), Togo (1991), Peru, Sierra Leone and Haiti (1992), Guatemala and Nigeria (1993) and Gambia (1994).