“The only force that leaders truly fear is their own military. After all, a leader is far more likely to lose power as a result of a coup than in an election” - Paul Collier, Economics Professor at Oxford University

Paul Collier has written an insightful piece in the print edition of The Africa Report on coups perhaps being a good thing for democracy in Africa. He has presented this theory before, as we have covered when referencing his book, ‘Wars, Guns and Votes’, but I thought it best to include it here also.

For Collier, the unpalatable reality in many of the poorest countries is that military coups are the most effective check on the abuses of power.  Although the introduction of multi-party elections throughout Africa was meant to improve accountability in governance, Collier believes that far too often the ruling parties hold on to power using bribery, intimidation and fraud. Collier therefore suggests that the idea of a ‘good coup‘. The problem? Naturally, coups have been known to be “unguided missiles, indiscriminately replacing both corrupt and decent regimes“.

The solution, he believes, is to improve electoral accountability and to “provide coups with a guidance system“. He proposes a pact under which EU and US forces - with a rapid reaction capacity to deploy in Africa - would guarantee to protect any government that was judged credibly to have come to power through ‘free and fair’ elections.

Although much of the professor’s background analysis adds up, having outsiders encourage soldiers to seize power after questionable elections indeed risks further bloodletting and worsening national schisms, as agreed by the author of the article. Stolen elections by civilian parties have long been a fine enough pretext for coups, but the ensuing military regimes cannot be counted on to hold free elections.

However, its certainly hard to look elsewhere - the African Union’s failure to intervene in four coups over the last twelve months speaks volumes.