Coups d'État are important events in the life of a country. They constitute an important subset of irregular transfers of political power that can have significant and enduring consequences for national well-being. There are only a limited number of datasets available to study these events (Powell and Thyne 2011, Marshall and Marshall 2019). Seeking to facilitate research on post-WWII coups by compiling a more comprehensive list and categorization of these events, the Cline Center for Advanced Social Research (previously the Cline Center for Democracy) initiated the Coup d'État Project as part of its Societal Infrastructures and Development (SID) project.

More specifically, this dataset identifies the outcomes of coup events (i.e. realized or successful coups, unrealized coup attempts, or thwarted conspiracies) the type of actor(s) who initiated the coup (i.e. military, rebels, etc.), as well as the fate of the deposed leader.

This current version, Version 2.1.2, adds 6 additional coup events that occurred in 2022 and updates the coding of an attempted coup event in Kazakhstan in January 2022.

Version 2.1.1 corrects a mistake in version 2.1.0, where the designation of “dissident coup” had been dropped in error for coup_id: 00201062021. Version 2.1.1 fixes this omission by marking the case as both a dissident coup and an auto-coup.

Version 2.1.0 added 36 cases to the data set and removes two cases from the v2.0.0 data. This update also added actor coding for 46 coup events and adds executive outcomes to 18 events from version 2.0.0. A few other changes were made to correct inconsistencies in the coup ID variable and the date of the event.

Changes from the previously released data (v2.0.0) also include:

1. Adding additional events and expanding the period covered to 1945-2022
2. Filling in missing actor information
3. Filling in missing information on the outcomes for the incumbent executive
4. Dropping events that were incorrectly coded as coup events


Items in this Dataset

1. Cline Center Coup d'État Codebook v.2.1.2 Codebook.pdf - This 16-page document provides a description of the Cline Center Coup d’État Project Dataset. The first section of this codebook provides a summary of the different versions of the data. The second section provides a succinct definition of a coup d’état used by the Coup d’État Project and an overview of the categories used to differentiate the wide array of events that meet the project's definition. It also defines coup outcomes. The third section describes the methodology used to produce the data. Revised February 2023

2. Coup Data v2.1.2.csv - This CSV (Comma Separated Values) file contains all of the coup event data from the Cline Center Coup d’État Project. It contains 29 variables and 981 observations. Revised February 2023

3. Source Document v2.1.2.pdf - This 315-page document provides the sources used for each of the coup events identified in this dataset. Please use the value in the coup_id variable to identify the sources used to identify that particular event. Revised February 2023

4. README.md - This file contains useful information for the user about the dataset. It is a text file written in markdown language. Revised February 2023

Citation Guidelines

1. To cite the codebook (or any other documentation associated with the Cline Center Coup d’État Project Dataset) please use the following citation:

Peyton, Buddy, Joseph Bajjalieh, Dan Shalmon, Michael Martin, Jonathan Bonaguro, and Scott Althaus. 2023. “Cline Center Coup d’État Project Dataset Codebook”. Cline Center Coup d’État Project Dataset. Cline Center for Advanced Social Research. V.2.1.2. February 23. University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. doi: 10.13012/B2IDB-9651987_V6

2. To cite data from the Cline Center Coup d’État Project Dataset please use the following citation (filling in the correct date of access):

Peyton, Buddy, Joseph Bajjalieh, Dan Shalmon, Michael Martin, Jonathan Bonaguro, and Emilio Soto. 2023. Cline Center Coup d’État Project Dataset. Cline Center for Advanced Social Research. V.2.1.2. February 23. University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. doi: 10.13012/B2IDB-9651987_V6