Politics

Military coups have posed a persistent threat to political stability in Africa— undermining democratization efforts, initiating lasting cycles of intra-military vio-lence, and even descending into civil war. Since decolonization, over 200 coup at-tempts have been made across the continent. This dissertation seeks to understand what causes African militaries to intervene so frequently in the domestic politics of their societies? How did certain countries (but not others) get functionally stuck in coup traps? At the time of independence, military institutions were in a state of deep trans-formation and new African leaders faced an important choice over how they would tie soldiers to the state. This critical juncture set countries on different paths of institutional development—some stable and reinforced through self-perpetuating mechanisms and others unstable, prone to extreme backlash processes of instability. Where leaders chose to build military loyalty on ethnic foundations—where they conditioned recruitment, promotion, and access to patronage on shared identity