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En breve

When civilian resistance threatens to depose a dictator, that dictator may try to short-circuit the people by handing over power to one of his own. This is known as a palace coup, or “faux-verthrow.”

Since mankind’s dawn, a handful of oppressors have accepted the responsibility over our lives that we should have accepted for ourselves.

— V for Vendetta

Orígenes

The coup d’Etat, literally “stroke of the State,” was first conceptualized in France in the 1640s. It was popularized in the late 18th century with the Coup of 18 Bromaire, which installed Napoleon Bonaparte as France’s First Consul, ending the French Revolution. The palace coup, more specifically, refers to the increasingly common 21st-century form of state capture, where a regime under pressure from a popular uprising, deceives civilian resistance by ousting its nominal leader but shifting power over to another one of its own. Control stays within the ruling palace and the economic and political elite.

Dictatorships are becoming sly. At the crucial moment when they’re about to crumble, they shuffle the torch to other members of their inner circles instead of conceding their thrones to popular demands.

People-powered struggles against autocracy must get wise to this “palace coup” (or “faux-verthrow”) manoeuvre and learn to sustain resistance beyond the moment of personnel change at the top.

There’ve been 457 coup attempts worldwide between 1950 and 2010, half of them successful. That’s an average of 1.16 coups per country over just three generations! Whether we like it or not, power grabs are a part of the global political landscape. The phenomenon is particularly prevalent in Africa, which has seen more coups than any other continent.

People-powered struggles against autocracy must get wise to this manoeuver and learn to sustain resistance beyond the moment of personnel change at the top.

But the outright iron fist is out of style for the 21st-century dictator. Inner circles of oligarchies are increasingly cunning in orchestrating coups, shuffling leadership posts amongst their own to retain control while being credited with change.

Autocrats are well aware that establishing democratic pretense is a lucrative business. Foreign aid is loaded with elections funding. Despots stage elections to maintain appearances. With votes rigged before the polls open, they not only retain power, but receive a pat on the back from democratic patrons — and the cash and support that comes with it. Foreign aid for this kind of sham-democracy effectively creates an “economy of the coup.”

In recent years, the palace coup has become the default mechanism for pseudo-democratic transition in Africa. Joseph Kabila, 18-year dictator of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, arranged a backdoor deal to install Felix Tshisekedi as his successor, despite popular support for Martin Fayulu in 2018. As 95-year-old President Robert Mugabe’s popularity among Zimbabweans waned, a ruling party faction favoring Emmerson Mnangagwa recaptured the throne instead of organizing a democratic transition.

Tanzania has also mastered this art of change-without-transition. The once Pan-African socialist Chama Cha Mapinduzi party, Africa’s second-longest serving party, has overseen fairly regular change of leadership while growing increasingly neoliberal and authoritarian.

Sometimes, elites will continue to play the palace coup game even after they’ve been deposed, often intentionally provoking security threats to say that the transition isn't working and they've got to seize power until things "calm down."

Democratic movements that have mobilized popular support for more substantive change must be on their guard against this brand of authoritarian manoeuvering. To achieve a genuine democratic transition, movements must sustain their fights beyond the moment of nominal leadership change.

2019 suggests popular movements are doing just that: In Algeria, citizens who toppled four-term dictator Abdelaziz Bouteflika remain on the streets as of this writing, insisting on a legitimate electoral process. In Sudan, the social movement that forced the military to oust long-time dictator Omar al-Bashir, is now engaged in a fierce fight (occupations, general strikes, mass marches, etc.) to establish a transitional civilian government even while the military violently tries to retain control.

We’re at a crucial moment to set our century’s historical trajectory in the right direction — away from the naivete that a staged change-of-guard will suffice and toward sustained struggles to build the societies we want.