Coup d etat

A coup d’état (pronounced /ˌkuːdeɪˈtɑː/, (plural: coups d’état) or coup for short, is the sudden unconstitutional deposition of a government, usually by a small group of the existing state establishment—typically the military—to replace the deposed government with another, either civil or military. A coup d’état succeeds when the usurpers establish their legitimacy if the attacked government fail to thwart them, by allowing their (strategic, tactical, political) consolidation and then receiving the deposed government’s surrender; or the acquiescence of the populace and the non-participant military forces.
Typically, a coup d’état uses the extant government’s power to assume political control of the country. In Coup d’État: A Practical Handbook, military historian Edward Luttwak says: “A coup consists of the infiltration of a small, but critical, segment of the state apparatus, which is then used to displace the government from its control of the remainder”, thus, armed force (either military or paramilitary) is not a defining feature of a coup d’état.

Although the coup d’état features in politics since antiquity, the phrase is of relatively recent coinage;[1] the Oxford Dictionary identifies it is a French expression meaning a “stroke of State”. In 1646, James Howell used the phrase in the book Louis XIII;[citation needed] the first English usage dates from 1811, referring to Napoleon Bonaparte’s deposing the Revolutionary Directory in 1799.[citation needed] Prof. Thomas Childers, of the University of Pennsylvania, indicates that the English language’s lacking a word denoting the sudden, violent change of government derives from England’s stable political traditions and institutions. French and German history are coloured with such politico-military actions.
Since the unsuccessful coups d’état of Wolfgang Kapp in 1920 (the Kapp Putsch), the Swiss German word Putsch (pronounced [ˈpʊtʃ]; coined for the Züriputsch of 1839) also denotes the same politico-military actionis: in Metropolitan France, putsch denoted the 1942 and 1961 anti-government attacks in Algiers, and the 1991 August Putsch in the USSR; the German equivalent is Staatsstreich (state’s blow),[2] yet a putsch is not always a coup d’état, for example, the Beer Hall Putsch was by politicians without paramiltary support.

After the coup d’état, the military face the matter of what type of government to establish. In Latin America, it was common for the post-coup government to be led by a junta, a committee of the chiefs of staff of the armed forces. A common form of African post-coup government is the revolutionary assembly, a quasi-legislative body elected by the army. In Pakistan, the military leader typically assumes the title of chief martial law administrator.
According to Huntington, most leaders of a coup d’état act under the concept of right orders: they believe that the best resolution of the country’s problems is merely to issue correct orders. This view of government underestimates the difficulty of implementing government policy, and the degree of political resistance to certain correct orders. It presupposes that everyone who matters in the country shares a single, common interest, and that the only question is how to pursue that single, common interest.