Politicians at Arms: Coup Advocacy in the Post-Colonial Middle East, 1936-2016 (book monograph), revise & resubmit, Cambridge University Press.

Civilians have long been portrayed as the passive victims of military takeovers, but they are often coup perpetrators. Helping soldiers seize power not only violates social and political norms, but also puts political leaders and their constituencies at risk of physical danger. When civilians transfer their social and political capital to armed agents, they increase their country’s coup-proneness by offering soldiers the dangerous combination of the sword and the pen. This is the puzzle from which Politicians at Arms derives its research question: why would politicians and political parties infiltrate their military and enlist soldiers in coup conspiracies? The book is the first systematic and comprehensive account of the crucial role that civilians play in advocating for Middle East coups. With over four-dozen accounts of twentieth century coups and attempts, the book tells the story of revolutionary party leaders who lurked behind the scenes while their partisans’s tanks occupied Damascus, Baghdad, Ankara, and Tehran. Their alliances with soldiers challenge the narrative that in coup-prone states those who possess the weapons dictate political outcomes.

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“Trump-World on Horseback: Conservative Coup Advocacy in the United States,” revise & resubmit, International Studies  Review (forum, organized by Jonathan Powell, Central Florida, and Erica De Bruin, Hamilton College).

This article uses research on civilian support for and involvement in Middle East coups to contribute to the debate about Donald Trump’s efforts to remain in power beyond his legal term as President of the United States. I argue in favor of a simple definition of a coup d’état: a coordinated and rapid attempt to seize executive authority. This definition centers classification of coups on the aims and actions of perpetrators, rather than their identity), and is broad enough to capture both traditional coups and “self-coups.” I argue that the storming of the U.S. Capitol on January 6 fits this definition. I classify this coup attempt under the rubric of civilian coup advocacy—or efforts by civilians to promote a coup in support of a wider political cause—which expands the scope of politically important “coup-adjacent” events worthy of study. Additionally, the plan that retired General Michael Flynn publicly floated, and that President Trump later pushed privately in the White House in December 2020, amounted to an invitation for the United States military to weigh-in on a civilian political dispute in favor of conservatives. Civilian coup advocacy such as this undermines norms needed to preserve democratic life, such as the prohibition against extra-legal and violent political competition, as well as the norm of civilian supremacy over the military. It signals to the conservative bloc that in exceptional political circumstances the army’s assistance is crucial, not forbidden.

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“The Coup Taboo: A Global Anti-Coup Norm and Its Effects in Egypt and Turkey,” under review.

Is there a normative proscription against military coups? Using literatures on the legitimacy of military rule and anti-coup norms, this essay articulates the normative boundaries of stigmatized coups politics. The study assesses the operation of a coup taboo with case comparisons of Egypt (2013) and Turkey (2016)—as well as a brief historical survey of Iraq (1936-41), Syria (1949-70), and Turkey (1960-2011). Research is based on Arabic language memoirs and newspapers; interviews; reports from the British Foreign Office; fieldwork in Egypt in July 2013; and secondary sources in English and Arabic. First, the taboo regulates social behavior in situations where public discourse focuses on the legitimacy of coups. Second, anti-coup norms define membership to a community of legitimate states. Third, there are two unintended consequences of the coup taboo: (a) regimes that survive coup attempts use anti-coup norms to justify repression (Turkey, 2016); and (b) coup-makers have developed parallel norms to circumvent the taboo, like calling their behavior revolutionary (Egypt, 2013).

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“Debating Revolution, Gambling on Coups: Party Debates over the Role of Soldiers in Syrian and Iraqi Revolution,” under review.

Soldiers and political elites in the Middle East have joined forces to stage coups since at least the Ottoman Young Turk movement. This activity is as puzzling as it is common. When civilians advocate for coups they not only put their followers and constituents at risk but also violate socio-political norms prohibiting the armed forces’s entrance into civilian political affairs. This essay demonstrates that revolutionary post-colonial Syrian and Iraqi party leaders (e.g., Ba‘thists, Syrian and Iraqi Communists, Arab Socialists, Syrian Social Nationalists) were well aware of their normative transgressions and expressed discomfort with inviting soldiers into politics. Their concern stemmed from contestation typical of any new nation-state: its development demarcated an analytical boundary between civilian elites and soldiers who were meant to serve the state. The essay is centered around these political figures’ internal and public deliberations about the proper role that soldiers should play in their revolutionary movements. The Turkish coup movement, Yön-Devrim, is also discussed by way of comparison. Research for the study is based on a variety of primary sources, such as Arabic language newspapers, biographies, and memoirs; de-classified CIA memos; British Foreign Office records; documents from the French Ministry of Foreign Affairs.