Worldwide Coup Attempts, 1946 — 2014

These attempts have been concentrated in Africa and Latin America, which accounted for 37 percent and 32 percent, respectively, of total global coups tracked by Powell and Thyne through 2010.

Coup Attempts by Country, 1950 — 2015

There are several theories for why the number of coups has been declining since the 1990s. When the Cold War ended, the U.S. and U.S.S.R. stopped supporting coups in each other’s satellite states, and democracy came to be widely recognized as the sole form of legitimate government. In this new climate, those who interrupted the democratic process frequently found themselves pariahs. Globalization has also made illegal seizures of power costly, since those takeovers, and the instability and uncertainty surrounding them, tend to invite international sanctions, deter foreign investment, and inhibit domestic economic growth. (This may be, in part, why Brazil’s vice president wants to tamp down the president’s coup talk.)

It’s obviously good news that coups are a fading phenomenon. But one troubling byproduct of these trends is that they’ve produced profound confusion over how to classify political upheavals that appear to honor the letter of the law, but not the spirit—what you might call dubious democracy.

Making sense of such developments is particularly difficult in relatively young democracies whose institutions are still fragile and taking form (Brazil transitioned from dictatorship to democracy in 1985). It’s even more difficult when the majority of the public—including, often, a rising middle class intent on restoring political stability and economic growth—backs the dubiously democratic process (roughly 60 percent of Brazilians support Rousseff’s impeachment, though many would prefer that she and the vice president resign, making way for early elections). And it’s more difficult still when much of that public, and their political leaders, are haunted by the ghosts of coups past (between a 1930 coup and 1985, Brazil enjoyed only two decades of democratic governance).

Many Brazilians have no memory of their country’s military coups—the dictatorship ended 31 years ago, and half the country’s population is under the age of 30—but many do. Rousseff herself was imprisoned and tortured for opposing the military regime that seized power in a 1964 coup. Her ghosts are real.

In numerous ways, the events of 2016 have little in common with those of 1964. Rousseff is accused of a genuine violation of the law: hiding a government budget deficit with loans from state banks during her 2014 reelection campaign. An independent judiciary has permitted the impeachment vote in Congress to proceed. That vote is now working its way through Congress as stipulated by the Constitution. Coups are typically abrupt, but the current process is moving with all the speed of a sloth (by the time Rio hosts the Olympics in August, Rousseff could conceivably be suspended but not yet permanently removed from office). No force has been deployed; the military is not an actor in this drama. The lawmakers casting ballots against Rousseff are channeling the will of most Brazilians, who want her out of power not just for her alleged budgetary shenanigans, but also for driving a once-booming economy into recession and failing to address corruption within her party and governing coalition. Graft and irresponsible governance are afflicting the body politic, and its immune system seems to be responding properly. This, in essence, is the argument of those in the not-a-coup camp.