Repression after coups: the role of deposed leader partisanship

State repression frequently occurs in the aftermath of coups d’état. However, the scale and intensity of society-wide repression after these events vary substantially. In this article, we argue that the partisanship of the deposed chief executive influences the level of post-coup repression. Because left-wing incumbents rely on a network of various formal organizations with potential for (mass) mobilization such as formal party organizations, trade unions, and other civil society organizations to gain and stay in power, agents overthrowing left-wing incumbents carry out greater levels of repression during and in the immediate aftermath of a coup to repress these organizations and solidify their new rule. We test this argument on a panel of Latin American and Caribbean countries from 1920 to 2021 using new data on regimes and coups as well as data on repression of civil society organizations and civil liberties from the Varieties of Democracy database. We utilize differences between successful and failed coups as an identification strategy. The results show robust evidence in favour of the argument; successful coups against left-wing chief executives are indeed followed by greater levels of repression against civil society organizations and greater drops in civil liberties. These effects are larger in the case of military coups and when the country experiencing the coups is a democracy.