The Coup D'Etat Project (CDP)

Coup d'états are important events in the life of a country. They constitute an important subset of irregular transfers of political power that can have important and enduring consequences for a country’s well-being. This notwithstanding, a comprehensive and well-documented inventory of coups has yet to be compiled. The Coup D’état Project (CDP) is an effort to fill that void. It is a two-stage project and the second stage is still in progress. The first stage involved compiling and documenting existing information on coups from various sources, as well as generating quantitative data on each coup. This white paper provides a succinct definition of a coup d’état used by the CDP, an overview of the typology that was developed to differentiate among coup types, and an outline of the quantitative data collected for each coup.