Dealing with would be military leaders: reflecting further on dealing with coup d’états in Africa
On November 30, I presented some first thoughts on dealing with coup d’états in Africa and would now like to address some of my reasoning behind that post. In that posting, I suggested the following as a potentially desirable approach:
I’d like to offer the following: the African Union, in its charter, and each country in Africa, each in its constitution, should enshrine a provision that requires that whenever a government is overthrown, the coup plotters must hold elections within nine months. Furthermore, the provision must provide that none of the fifty highest ranking members of the plotters can run for any of the top three offices in the subsequent election.
My reasoning was, basically, to eliminate the “reward” for leading a coup so as to discourage them. Essentially, I am assuming that each person who leads a coup and those who participate in it are making rational decisions. If so, then the potential for participating in a coup and then remaining as leader of the country or in a senior position in the post-coup government serves as an incentive in the rational decision making process for coup plotters. These plotters would weigh all potential benefits against all potential harms. Chief among the “benefits” are power and money. The potential harms include failure of the coup, jail time and possible execution.
My recommendation would make coups unpalatable for most plotters who do not have a greater interest in mind because it attempts to eliminate the possibility of participating in a coup and then gaining power and money if the coup is successful. In other words, a plotter making a rational decision about whether to stage a coup or not will likely decide against it because he has little to gain personally but so much to loose. On the other hand, if staging the coup would provide some greater good (or personal benefit) beyond power and money that is also weighed by the participants as worthy of the risks of staging the coup, then and only then would the plotters stage the coup.
