How Ghana escaped the coup trap

Lessons in political development

I: It is possible to escape coup traps

The recent spate of coups in the Sahel are a reminder that coups beget coups. All else equal, a history of coup incidents is often the best predictor of any given country’s latent coup risk. This truism explains “coup traps”, whereby successful coups are followed by persistent politicization of (interventionist) mil…