On January 6, 2021, the US Capitol building was successfully invaded by several hundred supporters of President Trump. Though their exact goal and plan of action remains unclear (and different groups of rioters likely had different goals and plans), the general aim was to prevent Congress from formally counting the electoral votes won by Joe Biden and declaring him the winner of the 2020 election.
Many in the media and the general public are referring the event as an attempted coup. But was it?
The attack had many of the hallmarks of a coup. First, the rioters were acting extralegally to install a chief executive (in this case, Trump). The rioters also expelled sitting officials from the physical space in which they carry out the business of government.
However, there are some aspects that differ from a typical coup. Military leaders were not involved; the primary actors were members of the public. And while successful coups typically replace the existing government with a new one, the rioters, once they took over the chambers, did not attempt to govern. (Mostly they appear to have milled around and taken selfies…and lecterns).
Political science as a discipline is still debating whether the event was sufficiently coup-like to be called a coup, but I believe it is.
A key distinction between a coup and other sorts of political upheavals is that it is driven by actors already inside the government, rather than by citizens or political challengers. Often this inside actor is the military, but that is not necessary: past coups have involved cabinet members or judges. Coups can also involve the chief executive, who takes illegal action to remain in office rather than handing over power (this kind of coup is called a self-coup or autogolpe).
At the time of writing, there is no evidence that Trump or his allies in government were directly involved in planning, coordinating, or executing the attack on Congress. But it’s increasingly apparent that Trump intended for others to carry out the dirty work of unseating current officials. Trump urged citizens who supported him to attend a rally that preceded the invasion of Congress, and personally exhorted the group – many of whom were armed — to go to Congress and “fight like hell” to overturn the election and save American democracy. For months prior, he and other government officials built support for the rally by asserting (erroneously) that the election was stolen. Trump appears to have made no attempt to stop more explicit — and violent — plans made on easily accessible or public forums.
If a coup is an attempt by government actors to replace the executive through extralegal channels, then this seems to be an attempted coup.
Under a narrower (and more traditional) definition, in which a coup involves overt, illegal action by high-level government officials, there wasn’t an attempted coup on Jan 6. But that definition will, I suspect, miss a lot of recent and future coup attempts in the US or elsewhere. In the modern era, indirect mobilization of insurrection may be the closest to a traditional coup we can expect to see.
In general, coups are frowned upon by the international community. They can trigger economic sanctions, expulsion from international organizations, and military action. However, these actions are costly for the international community as well as for the target country. The decision to intervene is rarely made without hesitation. Sometimes all it takes to prevent international intervention is to offer a barely-plausible justification or avoid describing an event with a particular term. (Older readers will remember the reluctance of the international community to label the Rwandan genocide a genocide because doing so would require them to take action.)
In this context, a leader determined to stage a coup would be well served to keep his hands clean. Making statements that never explicitly order violence, but that nevertheless goad citizens to depose sitting officials or wage violent revolt– and then agreeing to hold office under the guise of appeasing the public and keeping the peace – could allow a leader to organize a coup while leaving just enough space between himself and the violence to claim that there was no coup.
Could that work? Could a leader disguise a coup as insurrection and get away with it? Possibly not. But the ongoing debate among both experts and the public as to whether Trump staged a coup suggests that it might.
Wait! We can explain! 