Coup Vulnerability
The Coup Vulnerability project resulted in a mature, valid and reliable expert driven model for assessing the vulnerability of a particular Third World country to experiencing a coup d’etat or attempted coup d’etat in the next six months.
This tool is driven by the responses of country analysts to a series of approximately 50 questions about the country and situation of interest. These questions ask analysts to score independent statements such as “Politics in this country are personalist,” on a scale from one (does not describe my county) to seven (describes my country well). The analyst controls the application and can see the implications of each answer provided.
The expert country analyst responses are fed into a structured analysis that looks at four different components of coup vulnerability:
- Predisposition toward Coups D'etat
- Relationship between the Military and Civilians in the Government
- Current Situation
- Coup Triggers and Inhibitors
These four areas are evaluated independently. The reporting module indicates not only whether a coup is likely, but also why – which factors are pointing toward a coup or attempted coup and which are not. The tool projects the relative vulnerability of this country to a coup over the next six months. Six months was chosen after analyses indicated that the information supplied by country experts tends to degrade over that period of time. Coup vulnerability is projected rather than coups being forecast because coup vulnerability can be reduced by governments that take timely actions to alter the situations and perceptions in their countries.
This tool has been widely adopted and used across the intelligence community. Its development was supported by intelligence analysts and managers form four different agencies. It has also been used several times to guide a structured discussion among analysts who disagreed about the relative vulnerability of a specific country to a coup d’etat.