The Abuse of Greatness

An essay on self-coups and democratic backsliding

By TapTheForwardAssist - Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=98667990

Latin America has a dark track record with coup d’etats, particularly those led by elected officials who change the rules to give themselves dictatorial powers. These are known in Spanish as autogolpes, a word which is often translated into English as self-coups.

The technique - defined as the legitimate head of the government trying to extend executive power by illegitimate means - was developed in France in 1851 by Napoleon III, but the world’s next two self-coups were both in Uruguay (1898 and 1933). Of the 21 successful self-coups listed by Wikipedia, eight have been in Latin America.

Unsuccessful self-coups have been in the news recently. A recent example came from the Latin American left. Former Peruvian President Pedro Castillo tried to escape impeachment by dissolving parliament late last year. The attempt failed when members of his government resigned and the armed forces refused to support the move. He is in prison at the time of writing.

On the right side of the aisle and further north, we have also seen US President Donald Trump refusing to accept a valid election result in 2020-2021. The attempt culminated in a mob storming the Capitol and chanting that they wanted to hang Mike Pence (Trump’s Vice President and running mate). Trump had spread unfounded conspiracy theories about Pence having the right to overturn the election result. The mob came within 40 feet of him.

Constitutional law expert Rosa Brooks recently told The Atlantic that it was only luck that prevented the mob disrupting the certification of the election, which could have provided Trump with an excuse to impose martial law. This is one of the contingent turning points of history that speculative fiction author Harry Turtledove uses as a launchpad for his alternative histories. What would happen if the mob had hanged Pence and Trump had declared martial law? Luckily, in this universe, the coup failed. The former president remains at large at the time of writing, but the House Committee that studied the uprising has recommended criminal referrals.

The attack on the US Capitol had echoes in Brazil recently. Like Trump, outgoing President Jair Bolsonaro refused to accept a valid election result in October 2022. He left the country rather than hand over the country’s presidential sash to the inaugural ceremony. His supporters stormed Congress afterwards, but he denied encouraging them.

Another attempt from the right came in Catalonia in 2017. The region’s illegal independence referendum on 1 October received a lot of attention, but the outrageous referendum law on 6 September and the equally outrageous transitional law of 8 September flew under the radar for many people outside Spain. The first law was passed with 72 votes, while the second law was passed with 71 votes. The Catalan parliament has 135 deputies. Articles 222 and 223 of the region’s statutes of autonomy clearly say that major constitutional changes need a two-thirds majority (or 90 votes).

In the runup to the self-coup, Catalan leader Carles Puigdemont had infamously sent a tweet in April saying that his regional government would ignore court orders that it happened to find inconvenient. He escaped arrest after the coup attempt by moving to Brussels. He could be extradited to Spain in the weeks ahead, although previous attempts to do so have failed.

The description of Puigdemont’s shenanigans as a self-coup can be controversial with some, even though it was clearly a case of a legitimately elected regional government seeking to extend its power by illegitimate means. One argument is that it should be described differently because - in the immortal words of Catalan nationalist leader Clara Ponsatí - it was just a bluff. Unfortunately for Ponsatí, desperate people still get charged with armed robbery even if they use a fake gun.

One reply guy on Mastodon told me that describing the independence push as a self-coup is “right wing.” This is the kind of tribal epistemology that Sharpen Your Axe was designed to combat. Thirty seconds on Google News is enough to show that it is nonsense anyway. Veteran Catalan Socialist Josep Borrell described the events of 2017 as “a coup without tanks, a coup that is taking down a legitimate order in order to impose another order lacking any minimal guarantees.”

Borrell went on to become the European Union’s (EU) High Representative for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy from 2019. The previous year, when he was still a member of the Spanish parliament, a member of Republican Left of Catalonia (ERC), unable to handle vigorous criticism from a true member of the centre-left, allegedly spat at Borrell in public.

The reasoning behind such a disgusting act was a little convoluted. The civic association that was founded to defend the Spanish Constitution in Catalonia in 2014 was backed by people from across the political spectrum. At least one founder was a member of the far right. ERC thinks that this link discredits Borrell, who made his comments about “a coup without tanks” at a demonstration organized by the platform. The fact that ERC itself had a fascist wing in the 1930s and mere months earlier had voted to make far-right Catalan ethno-nationalist extremist Quim Torra regional president is always ignored by unreflective separatists.

One final argument was provided by the author of this guest column. He said that a coup is when someone deposes the leader by illegitimate means; and a self-coup is when the head of government or state entrenches his (or her) position in power by illegitimate means. Catalonia should be considered a separatist revolt, he argues. This is a good point, but I still think it is valid for journalists to keep using the term self-coup, not least because the Catalan separatists wanted to create a new national government by illegitimate means. They also would have removed the head of state and the head of the national government from power in one region, if not elsewhere.

Why were the self-coups from Castillo, Puigdemont and Trump unsuccessful? Any Bayesian would tell you to check the odds. Wikipedia says some 148 self-coups have been attempted between 1946 and 2022. Only 12 have succeeded - a success rate of just 8.1%. The odds are against the plotters of coups. The institutions that have slowly evolved to protect us from toxic leaders tend to be too strong. As we mentioned above in the discussion of the Capitol mob getting close to Pence, coup plotters also need a lot of things to go right on the day.

Self-coups often appeal to populists, who see themselves as the living embodiment of “the will of the people.” Populism can be a particularly attractive worldview for narcissists, who often lack basic organizational skill, as we saw during the first phase of the COVID-19 pandemic. It can be hard to project an image as a wise and enlightened leader while simultaneously planning a seedy coup. It will generate cognitive dissonance. Many populists will neglect the details. And as the great philosophers Prodigy and Havoc of Mobb Deep taught the world in 1995: “There ain't no such thing as half-way crooks.”

Another lesson from the failure of Castillo, Puigdemont and Trump is that they all went too fast. They gave it one shot, but were unprepared. The institutional guardrails in Peru, Spain and the US were strong enough to cope with a one-off attempt to rewrite the rules and the contingencies went the other way. For a contrast, let’s look at two successful self-coups, one from the left (Venezuela) and one from the right (Russia), to see how leaders who weaken institutions first can improve their odds of success.

In March 2017, Venezuela’s Supreme Tribunal of Justice took over legislative powers from the National Assembly. The Tribunal was packed with supporters of President Nicolás Maduro, the hand-picked successor to Hugo Chávez, who ruled the Latin American country from 1999 to his death in 2013, apart from a brief period in 2002. During the 2010s, Chávez and Maduro systematically weakened Venezuela’s institutional guardrails - a process known as democratic backsliding. This meant Maduro’s eventual self-coup had a better chance of success.

Something similar happened in Russia. Vladimir Putin held a self-coup in 2020. The strongman had served continuously as president or prime minister since 1999. During this time, he prepared Russia for his eventual self-coup with a systematic process of democratic backsliding. We have seen a similar process in at least two members of the EU - Hungary and Poland - in recent years.

Why are self-coups and democratic backsliding dangerous? One of the first acts of leaders of successful self-coups is always to suppress any opposition that is loyal to the old constitutional order. Castillo of Peru had accused the opposition of wanting to “blow up democracy” by impeaching him. Meanwhile, believers in the QAnon conspiracy cult had paved the way for Trump’s failed attempt to impose martial law by spreading fantasies about executing senior Democrats for at least a couple of years before the Capitol siege. Meanwhile, the man in charge of writing a new Catalan constitution planned a ban on parties that wanted to reunite with Spain.

Self-coups also have serious long-term implications. We have already seen that power tends to corrupt. Liberal democracy is designed to prevent the very worst governments by giving the population the right to vote out incumbents. Other killer apps of liberal democracy include an independent judiciary enforcing universal laws, individual human rights and a free press to keep an eye on elected officials. These all act as brakes on the government.

Throughout most of world history, there have been few non-violent mechanisms to remove corrupt leaders. A Roman Emperor called Diocletian set an example in 305 CE when he resigned voluntarily to tend to a vegetable garden in what would eventually become Croatia. Meanwhile, the first US President George Washington refused to run for a third term. The third President, Thomas Jefferson, also declined to seek a third term, establishing the precedent.

As slave-owners, Washington and Jefferson are often judged harshly by the modern world. However, life has improved significantly since Washington’s retirement in 1796. Many of the good things that have emerged since then lie downstream of his epoch-making decision to walk away from power. When peaceful transitions of power become common, it creates a safe space for innovators, in particular, who still have to keep very low profiles in autocracies.

If power corrupts and there is no way of removing corrupt leaders, it is easy for the state to act like a gangster, inventing arbitary rules to steal money from any indiscreet citizens who happen to find a way to get rich. On the other hand, elected officials who are constrained by a rule-based system and the threat of losing an election find it much harder to do this. As a result, democracy and societal wealth tend to be correlated, although there is much scholarly debate on the details.

Recent Sharpen Your Axe columns have looked at Spain’s grumpy politics and mutual accusations of illegitimacy across the great divide between the left (and Basque and Catalan nationalists) and the right (including liberals). Having looked at self-coups, we can see why Socialist Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez’s decision to remove sedition from the criminal code is so dangerous - it reduces the risks for future populists who want to give a self-coup a shot. On the other hand, his reform of the judiciary is an example of moderate democratic backsliding and not a self-coup, as his more hysterical opponents on the right sometimes claim.

Finally, we can see why left-wing populist party United We Can (UP) and right-wing populist party Vox are such dangerous allies for mainstream parties. UP’s founders spent many years acting as cheerleaders for Venezuela’s leaders as they destroyed the country’s democracy. Its economic collapse became increasingly serious as its institutions crumbled. Meanwhile, Vox’s leaders openly praise Hungaria’s populist strongman Viktor Orbán as an example to follow. Bringing politicians with such questionable role models into coalition government is unlikely to end well.

To conclude this week’s column, let’s give the last words to William Shakespeare’s Brutus reflecting on Julius Caesar’s lust for power in Ancient Rome:

“…He would be crown'd:
How that might change his nature, there's the question.
It is the bright day that brings forth the adder;
And that craves wary walking. Crown him?--that;--
And then, I grant, we put a sting in him,
That at his will he may do danger with.
The abuse of greatness is, when it disjoins
Remorse from power…”

Since this column will no doubt annoy any extremists who happen to read it, I am turning the comments off for the week. See you Saturday!

Further Reading

What Is Populism? by Jan-Werner Müller

How Democracy Ends by David Runciman

Star Wars: Episode II - Attack of the Clones shows democratic backsliding and a self-coup in a fictional universe

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