Military regime

A military regime is one in which officers, acting for the armed forces as an institution, decide who governs and shape policy. It usually begins with a coup d'état, which Jonathan Powell and Clayton Thyne define as an illegal and overt attempt by the military or other elites within the state apparatus to unseat the sitting executive. Power is typically exercised by a junta of service chiefs, with parliament suspended, parties banned or restricted, and courts and media working under emergency decrees.

S. E. Finer (1962) asked why soldiers intervene and argued that the answer lies in the weakness of a society's political culture as much as in the army's strength. Eric Nordlinger (1977) distinguished 'moderators', who intervene briefly, 'guardians', who rule for a few years to restore order, and 'rulers', who seek to transform society. Barbara Geddes argued that officers care most about the unity and budget of the armed forces, so when the junta splits or the economy falters, many prefer to hand power back and return to the barracks.

• Brazil (1964–85), Argentina (1976–83), Chile under Pinochet (1973–90, increasingly personalist) and Uruguay (1973–85).
• Greece under the colonels (1967–74); South Korea under Park Chung-hee and his successors.
• Thailand, where the military has staged repeated coups, most recently in 2014.
• Myanmar, under military rule from 1962 to 2011 and again since the coup of February 2021.
• A wave of coups in the Sahel: Mali (2020 and 2021), Burkina Faso (2022) and Niger (2023).

Military regimes have committed some of the best-documented mass abuses of the late twentieth century. Argentina's truth commission, CONADEP, registered 8,961 people who disappeared under the 1976–83 junta and acknowledged the real number was higher; Chile's commissions documented thousands of killings and tens of thousands of cases of political imprisonment and torture.

Coup leaders usually promise a short, technocratic interlude; in practice transitions are often delayed, and the armed forces may keep vetoes and immunities after leaving office, as in Chile's 1980 constitution or Myanmar's 2008 constitution, which reserved a quarter of parliamentary seats for the military. Some economists credited juntas, such as Chile's, with economic reforms; the comparative evidence does not show military rule improving growth on average.

Coups became rarer after the Cold War, but the 2020s brought a revival in West Africa. Military regimes remain the shortest-lived type of autocracy in comparative data and the most likely to end in negotiated transitions.