More than a year after a military coup, Gabonese citizens have held a referendum in which they approved a new draft constitution. The constitutional revisions targeted dynastic rule by introducing presidential term limits and banning family members of a sitting president from running for the office.
A controversial aspect of the new constitution is that it allows coup leader General Brice Oliqui Nguema to run for president in the country’s general presidential election slated for August 2025.
Civil society and opposition figures have expressed concerns about the possibility of the general’s candidacy. They argue that it would contradict the military’s earlier promises of civilian rule. And that it would entrench the armed forces’ role in politics. This is a country that has suffered 56 years – 1967 to 2023 – of authoritarian rule by the Bongo family.
Gabon’s case is no exception. After a notable decline in coups in the last two decades, compared to the cold war period, there has been a wave of military coups in recent years in west Africa.
What’s particularly disturbing is that the armies haven’t returned to the barracks once a coup has been effected.
This wasn’t the case in the past.
We are researchers of the politics of military coups and authoritarian regimes. We looked at the number of days that the armed forces – either as an institution or ass an individual – continuously held power following a coup in the last two decades.
Our analysis of coups across Africa shows that between 2021 and 2023 none of Africa’s eight successful coups saw the armed forces exit power at all. Mahamat Idriss Déby Itno has now remained in power for over 1,300 days in Chad, having since legitimated his rule via a contested election. Aside from Chad, none of Africa’s seven other coups have even seen an election. The median time for the armed forces to remain in power is over 1,000 days (and counting).
This is roughly 50 times longer than what was seen before 2021.
We aren’t suggesting that in the past, all exits signalled the full end of military influence, or that all post-coup governments democratised. However, the behaviour of the armed forces following west Africa’s recent coup wave has dramatically departed from the trends of the past two decades.
Gabon’s new constitution is indicative of a rising norm in which militaries do not even feel the need to pretend to exit the political scene.
Staying in power
Gabon’s coup leaders, of course, aren’t the only ones facing accusations of political entrenchment.
In Guinea, interim president General Mamady Doumbouya recently dissolved over 50 political parties to “clean up the political chessboard”. Doumbouya removed President Alpha Conde in September 2021. But elections have not yet been held.
Similarly, in May, coup leaders in Burkina Faso extended their transition period by five years, reneging on a prior commitment to elections in July 2024.
To map the trends in coups and the periods following them we used data from the Global Instances of Coups data project, a collaborative effort with political scientist Clayton Thyne to document all global coup attempts since 1950.
We depart from the project in two important ways.
First, the data project’s definition of successful coups requires that conspirators do more than just remove the executive. They must specifically seize power. This would exclude important cases in which the armed forces remove the political leadership but immediately retreat from the political scene. This was the case in Guinea-Bissau in 2009.
Second, the dataset classifies coups as successful when a ruler is displaced for at least seven days. Otherwise, it’s classified as a failed coup. For our part, we also examined instances in which the armed forces successfully removed a leader, overcame domestic resistance to the coup, and acted as the de facto authority for at least a day, but where the coup was reversed specifically because of external pressure. An example was the São Tomé and Príncipe coup in 2003.
As our figure shows, between 2002 and 2020, the median number of days that coup leaders remained in power was 22 days, including just hours in 2009 in Madagascar.
In 11 of the 17 coups between 2002 and 2020, the armed forces turned power over to a civilian within 40 days.
Of course, such moves haven’t always been indicative of pro-democratic tendencies.
For example, after Zimbabwe’s 2017 coup, the armed forces quickly delegated political power to former vice-president Emmerson Mnangagwa, a reliable civilian ally within the ruling Zanu-PF party. Mnangagwa would go on to consolidate his rule in the 2018 elections, which were widely condemned by observers as neither free nor fair.
Still, the military’s swift exit from explicit governance suggests that they at least recognised and responded to a norm against overt military rule. This is true whether coup leaders truly hoped for a democratic transition or were simply trying to provide window dressing for an unconstitutional act.
But among more recent coups (2021-2023), militaries no longer even feel the need to pursue legitimacy through designating a civilian leader or holding an election.
Comparing the aftermath of Burkina Faso’s 2014 coup to the aftermath of its two coups in 2022 illustrates the stark difference.
Comparing coups in Burkina Faso
In late 2014, longtime president Blaise Compaoré was overthrown in the wake of mass protests. Elections were held more than a year later, notably free of any candidate from the armed forces. An abortive effort to undo this process collapsed under domestic and international pressure after just a week.
Conversely, Burkina Faso’s two coups in 2022 were not followed by the designation of a civilian leader or an election. Within three weeks of the January 2022 coup, coup leader Lt. Col. Paul-Henri Damaogo Damiba became interim president, promising elections in 2024. Damiba himself was ousted eight months later.
A year after taking power, Captain Ibrahim Traoré said that elections were not a priority and would not be held until the country “was safe for voting”.
The junta’s recent decision to extend the electoral timeline by an additional five years means that Traoré will remain in power until 2029.
The issue of military entrenchment in government extends beyond Burkina Faso. Only one of 10 successful coups since 2019 has seen a subsequent election (won by the coup leader in Chad). Nor have these 10 cases seen the type of military extrication witnessed before 2021.
For example, Sudan (2019) and Mali (2020) saw juntas follow the earlier trend of appointing civilian leaders, within 133 days in Sudan and 39 days in Mali.
But both of their interim civilian leaders would be removed quickly in subsequent coups.
Implications for Gabon
Though Gabon is the youngest of Africa’s coup regimes, its leadership appears to be more interested than some of its regional counterparts in formally moving beyond the “interim” label. Unfortunately, these efforts seem aimed at legitimising the coup rather than transitioning to bona fide civilian governance.
By next year’s elections, Gabon’s coup leaders will have occupied power for over 700 days, assuming the current timeline remains intact. And a victory for General Oligui will obviously prolong that tenure to over a decade, at a minimum, given the constitution’s extension of presidential term lengths to seven years.
Should Oligui win the election, Gabon’s “transition” should not be interpreted as a successful return to civilian rule, but yet another case of soldiers legitimising their seizure of power.
Jonathan Powell, Visiting assistant professor, University of Kentucky
Salah Ben Hammou, Postdoctoral Research Associate, Rice University
