What are the most efficient strategies for authoritarian regimes to prevent the execution of coups d’état? ‘Coup-proofing’ measures have been employed by authoritarian incumbents in the Middle East and North Africa quite successfully since the mid-1970s, using substantial financial resources at their disposal generated in their rentier and semi-rentier economies. Yet, while the number of coup attempts has decreased significantly since the late 1970s, it remains unclear which forms of coup-proofing have worked best to keep officers in their barracks. Two rivaling explanations have emerged. First, political incumbents, in their bid to consolidate power, would meet officers’ demands and grievances directly and increase military spending. Alternatively, a widely accepted contention is that poverty, underdevelopment, and social injustice are associated with greater coup risk, for officers would maintain a corporate ethos to represent society and intervene in politics should that be necessary in their view. In this guise, government spending for economic development, poverty reduction, and social equality can be seen as less trivial, but potentially effective coup-proofing strategies as they ameliorate the structural underpinnings of coup risk. The paper uses two original, comprehensive data sets on military coups and government budgets to test the efficiency of alternative economic coup-proofing mechanisms. Military spending and various measures of social spending are correlated with the propensity of coup attempts executed by senior and junior officers. After controlling for various alternative explanations, robust results suggest that senior officers can be kept in the barracks through conventional coup-proofing using military spending. In turn, junior officers are less likely to stage coup attempts when social spending is high, and there is a weaker, though positive correlation with military spending. Our results reveal that incumbents have a strong incentive to maintain high military spending, at the expense of social development, to prevent coups d’état, especially attempted by senior officers. In a region rife with military intervention in politics since the inception of independent states, these findings help explain the reduction of coup attempts, but also protracted social and economic underdevelopment in the Middle East and North Africa.

In February 1991, Saddam Hussein’s military began a chaotic withdrawal from Kuwait, only to find it faced a new conflict: widespread domestic unrest. At the uprising’s height, 14 of Iraq’s 18 provinces were under opposition control. To many observers’ surprise, however, by April the state regained authority throughout the country. Hussein’s ability to re-stabilize his regime and hold onto power for more than a decade after had dire consequences. Citizens’ attempt to rewrite the social contract in Iraq failed and over the course of the 1990s Iraqis suffered in human and economic terms under a corrupt and authoritarian government. Hussein’s regime also threatened security beyond Iraq’s borders. In the years following the uprising the international community attempted to coerce Iraq—via diplomacy and kinetic military operations—to stop stockpiling chemical and more deadly weapons. The 1991 Iraq uprising clearly highlights how citizen aspirations and international security hinge on questions of regime change. Scholars and policymakers thus require a sophisticated understanding of the mechanics of regime change and specifically its primary driver: the armed forces’ defection. What explains variation in soldiers’ compliance with orders to suppress domestic unrest? Amid the Iraqi intifada, of Hussein’s million-man army, an estimated 200-300,000 soldiers defected. Many Kurdish units in the North defected; a number of Shi’a units in the South defected; and the majority of Sunni units remained loyal. My research is motivated by the inability of existing arguments to explain these puzzling loyalty and defection patterns in Iraq. In this paper, I draw on diverse primary sources—including 8 months of field research based in Jordan, 3 months of archival research, and Arabic-language military memoirs—to explain variation in soldiers’ responses to the 1991 Iraqi uprising. I argue that Iraqi soldiers faced significant obstacles to defection, and whether and how these costs were overcome depended on a soldier’s position in the military hierarchy. Specifically, the causes of soldier rebellion varied according to rank because a commander’s interests and constraints differed substantially from those of his subordinates. The paper’s theory explains why commanders consistently repressed demonstrations, and argues that subordinate soldiers fled their posts and even fomented unrest when unit control weakened and personal safety deteriorated. These findings shed light on an under explored yet critical event in Iraqi’s contemporary history. In addition, this research aids practitioners in weighing conflict intervention options and designing meaningful security sector reform in post-conflict settings.

Do economic incentives matter in individuals’ decisions to engage in high-risk behavior? Theories of civil war onset and rebel group formation argue that ‘greed’ is a primary driver of individual behavior in the context of domestic violent conflict. In this paper, I examine the extent to which such hypotheses can be applied to the behavior of members of the Syrian military and security forces in the context of the Syrian crisis. I begin by disaggregating the process into several discrete steps. Soldiers and officers are confronted with three analytically distinct choices: (1) whether or not to defect from the regime in the first place, (2) whether to join the armed opposition or to leave the country, and (3) which armed group to join. I argue that economic incentives matter differently for different people in the various stages of the process. In a nutshell, officers weigh economic considerations when deciding whether to defect but not when deciding whether to join the rebellion or which particular group to join. Soldiers, on the other hand, defect based on grievances rather than greed. Subsequently, however, their decisions about fighting with the rebels and joining or leaving particular groups is significantly shaped by economic considerations. These differences are due to the different positions occupied by officers and soldiers. While officers control substantial resources which they can turn into economic benefits in a war economy, soldiers do not have access to such opportunities. Consequently, officers face strong economic disincentives against defection, while soldiers do not. On the other hand, due to their more precarious economic conditions, soldiers might join the rebellion for material reasons and might be attracted to more wealthy and better-equipped groups that are better able to see after their material needs. I base this argument on empirical data collected in 65 structured interviews with defectors from the Syrian armed and security forces now based in Jordan, Lebanon, and Turkey. In addition, I draw on open-ended interviews with officers and soldiers. I further complement this individual-level data with information of the Syrian war economy drawn from press reports and other secondary sources.