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The coup in Mali is widely seen as a major setback for democracy, not just in Mali but potentially in the region as a whole. Coups are indeed the single most important proximate cause of the downfall of democratic governments. Yet, a paper by Hein Goemans and Nikolay Marinov provides some grounds for optimism.

Goemans and Marinov find that since the end of the Cold War most coups are quickly followed by competitive elections and a restoration of democracy. This is especially true for countries dependent on Western aid, which Mali is. The previous version of the paper had a pretty pie chart (seriously) to make that point (see here in my post about an earlier version of the paper) but the graph above tells the story very nicely too. Before the Cold War, levels of democracy (Polity scores) were on average low following a coup and remained low for the foreseeable future. After the Cold War, however, democracy levels generally restore quickly after a coup. Two-thirds of the countries in which a coup was held in the post 1991 period also held competitive elections within five years of that coup. We have no way of knowing whether Mali will fall in the other one third of countries but its odds of returning to democracy are improved by its reliance on Western aid. The abstract is below: