Has the United States suffered a coup? It was electoral violence typical of a fragile democracy

Clayton Besaw -

The Conversation

Has the United States suffered an attempted coup?

Supporters of President Donald Trump, encouraged by him, stormed the Capitol building on January 6, disrupting the validation of the electoral victory of Democrat Joe Biden as the next president.

Waving Trump banners, hundreds of people broke through barricades and smashed windows to enter the building where Congress meets.

There were four deaths and dozens of police officers were hospitalized. 

[White House resignations and wave of criticism of Trump as voices grow for him to be removed with the 25th Amendment]

Although violent and shocking, what happened on January 6

was not a coup

.

The Trumpist insurrection

was electoral violence

, similar to the electoral violence that affects many fragile democracies.

What is a coup?

Although coups have no single definition, researchers agree on what the key attributes are.

Experts such as Jonathan Powell and Clayton Thyne define a coup as an "obvious attempt by the military or other elites within the state apparatus to

remove the acting head of state

using unconstitutional means."

[Criticism of the police grows after the assault on the Capitol]

Essentially,

three parameters

are used to judge whether an insurrection is a coup event:

Are the perpetrators agents of the state, such as rebel military officers and government officials?

The objective of the insurrection the head of the Executive of the government?

 Do the conspirators use illegal and unconstitutional methods to seize executive power?

"President Trump has promoted these extremists with his language": Biden after the assault on the Capitol

Jan. 7, 202110: 14

Failed and successful coups d'etat

A successful coup occurred in Egypt on July 3, 2013, when the army leader, Abdel Fattah al-Sisi, pushed out the unpopular president, Mohamed Morsi.

Morsi, Egypt's first democratically elected leader, had recently overseen the writing of a new constitution.

Al-Sisi suspended that as well.

This qualifies as a coup because Al-Sisi illegally seized power and introduced his own laws on the ashes of the elected government.

Coups d'etat are not always successful in overthrowing the government.

[Congress declares Biden's victory.

Trump says the transition will be "orderly"]

In 2016, members of the Turkish military attempted to remove Turkey's President Recep Erdoğan from power.

Soldiers seized key areas in Ankara, the capital, and Istanbul, including the Bosphorus Bridge and two airports.

But the coup lacked coordination and crowd support, and quickly failed after Erdoğan called on his followers to confront the conspirators.

Erdoğan remains in power to this day.

They reinforce the security of the Capitol: barriers prevent approach and the National Guard guards the area

Jan. 7, 202 101: 44

What happened at the Capitol?

The assault 

does not meet all three criteria

for a hit.

The rioters who support Trump attacked a branch of the executive authority, Congress, and did it illegally, through invasion and destruction of property.

Categories 2 and 3 are met.

Regarding category 1, the rioters appear to be

civilians who operated under their will, not agents of the state

.

The president incited his supporters to march to the Capitol building less than an hour before the crowd invaded the grounds, insisting that the election had been stolen and saying, "We won't take it anymore."

This comes after months of spreading unsubstantiated lies about the elections and conspiracies that created a perception, in the minds of many Trump supporters, of government misconduct.

[A parallel environment a few blocks from the Capitol: "Trump's people are happy"]

It is unclear if the president's motivation for igniting the ire of his supporters was to attack Congress, and he tepidly told them to go home when the violence escalated.

For now, it appears that the riots in Washington, DC, were carried out without the approval, assistance, or active leadership of government actors such as the military, police, or allied Republican officials.

By disseminating conspiracy theories about voter fraud, numerous Republican senators, including Josh Hawley and Ted Cruz,

created the conditions for political violence

, and specifically election-related violence.

Scholars have documented that

contentious political rhetoric

fuels the risk of election-related violence.

Elections are of great importance;

they represent a transfer of political power.

When government officials degrade and discredit democratic institutions as a result of latent political conflict, contested elections can trigger political violence as crowds try to rule.

Congress declares Joe Biden's victory as president of the United States

Jan. 7, 202101: 28

So what happened?

The events of January 6 were political violence of the kind that, all too often, ruins elections in young or unstable democracies.

Elections in

Bangladesh

suffer from perennial mob violence and political insurrections due to years of government violence and the anger of the opposition.

Their 2015 and 2018 elections looked more like war zones than democratic transitions.

[The most disturbing images of the assault on the US Capitol by pro-Trump protesters]

In

Cameroon

, armed dissidents perpetrated violence in the 2020 elections, targeting government buildings, opposition figures and innocent bystanders alike.

Their goal was to delegitimize the vote in response to sectarian violence and government overreach.

Electoral violence in the United States

differs in cause and context

from that seen in Bangladesh and Cameroon, but the action was similar.

The United States did not have a coup, but this Trump-encouraged insurrection is likely to lead the country down a politically and socially turbulent path.