Conditions of self-coup success since the end of the Cold War: A qualitative comparative analysis

Self-coups, in which incumbents illegally suspend or circumvent constitutional constraints to concentrate executive power, have become an important mechanism of political regime transformation in the post–Cold War era. While existing research has examined why incumbents attempt self-coups, we know less about why some attempts succeed while others fail. This article addresses this gap by analyzing 46 self-coup attempts in 39 countries between 1991 and 2024. We argue that self-coup outcomes cannot be explained by any single factor alone, but emerge from distinct configurations of coercive, institutional, societal, partisan, and historical conditions. Using a fuzzy-set Qualitative Comparative Analysis (fsQCA), we identify three main findings. First, no individual condition is necessary for either self-coup success or failure. Second, successful self-coups follow two distinct pathways: one centered on military support in the absence of prior coup experience, and another combining weak civil society, weak party institutionalization, low electoral democracy, and prior coup experience. Third, failed self-coups are not simply the inverse of successful ones, but reflect distinct explanatory logics. These findings challenge military-centered and monocausal explanations of self-coup outcomes and show how executive power grabs are enabled or blocked by different combinations of coercive alignment, institutional weakness, societal resistance, party structures, and coup legacies. The article contributes to research on coups, civil-military relations, autocratization, and executive power concentration by advancing a configurational explanation of self-coup success and failure.