Salah Ben Hammou, Ph.D., Rice University
Jonathan Powell, Ph.D., Campbellsville University
Between 2020 and 2025, the world watched as military coups swept across the Sahel, with soldiers turning their guns against their own governments in Mali, Burkina Faso, Chad, Guinea, Guinea-Bissau, and Niger. Once widely regarded as a relic of the Cold War era (e.g., Schiel and Powell 2017), coups reemerged with startling frequency, upending expectations about their long-term decline. It was not only the resurgence of coups that caught observers off guard. In many cases, military takeovers were accompanied by visible—and at times, overtly enthusiastic— signs of civilian support (e.g., Rivero 2023; Ben Hammou 2024a). During the 2023 coup against Nigerien president Mohamed Bazoum, for instance, demonstrators rallied in favor of the putsch, attacking symbols of the incumbent regime and setting fire to the headquarters of the PNDS-Tarayya, Bazoum’s political party (Balima and Askar 2023). Similar dynamics were visible in Mali in 2020, where large demonstrations preceded the overthrow of President Ibrahim Boubacar Keïta and prominent protest coalitions publicly aligned themselves with the coup leaders.
Coverage by popular outlets such as Al Jazeera, Reuters, and The Conversation has often portrayed these displays of civilian support as anomalous features unique to the recent Sahelian coup wave (e.g., Aina and al-Bakri Nyei 2022; Rivero 2023; McAllister 2022). This framing, however, obscures the extent to which civilian endorsement has been a recurring element of military intervention beyond the Sahel region. Earlier coups in Egypt in 2013 and Sudan in 2019 similarly relied on protest movements and organized civilian actors to legitimize military takeovers. Those civilian protestors rarely enjoy the fruits of their enthusiasm, though, instead being cast aside by powerful military actors when their usefulness faded. Despite the frequency of such civilian enthusiasm for military takeovers, existing accounts tell us remarkably little about what happens to civilian allies once military rule is established. We know even less about how durable civilian support proves to be beyond the moment of intervention, or how movements and political organizations attempt to preserve influence as militaries consolidate authority and reconfigure post-coup political orders.
We trace the trajectories of civilian movements that aligned with coups in North Africa and the Sahel between 2013 and 2023, using the broader set of cases to identify common patterns and two detailed examples to illustrate how civil–military relations shift as juntas consolidate power.. We introduce the concept of post-coup buyer’s remorse: a recurring pattern in which civilian supporters of military intervention see their political returns decline after the consolidation of the new regime. Protest movements, political organizations, and civic coalitions often play important roles in enabling and legitimizing coups but struggle to convert short-term influence into durable political authority. We illustrate these dynamics with illustrations from Guinea and Mali. While civilian actors frequently view alignment with the military as a pathway to reshaping power, coup leaders tend to treat their support as conditional and expendable. Once in office, juntas typically narrow the political arena, sidelining former allies through exclusion, repression, or tightly managed incorporation. Civilian support is thus politically consequential at the moment of intervention but delivers rapidly diminishing returns thereafter.
Civilian Support for Military Coups
Military coups across time and space have frequently been accompanied by some degree of civilian support, whether mobilized through organized movements and specific social constituencies or expressed more diffusely across public opinion. Scholars have long recognized that overt signs of public discontent with an incumbent government, which manifest in protests, strikes, and other forms of political instability, can send powerful signals to would-be plotters about the potential opportunity to seize power (e.g., Belkin and Schoeffer 2003; Powell 2012; Casper and Tyson 2014; Johnson and Thyne 2018). In turn, plotters may strategically leverage these signals to justify their seizure of power, portraying their actions as “corrective” or even “revolutionary” interventions. After all, plotters are unlikely to even attempt to seize power unless they contend at least a segment of the population would back their efforts.
Recent work emphasizes greater civilian agency in coup politics than previously assumed (e.g., Lorch 2017; Kinney 2019; Ben Hammou 2024b). In some contexts, civilians actively promote or facilitate coups through mass mobilization or direct coordination with military factions. In earlier research, one of us shows how civilians proximate to power can leverage institutional resources to advance conspiracies with senior officers. In Sudan in 1958, for example, Prime Minister Abdalla Khalil used his concurrent position as defense minister to order General Ibrahim Abboud to seize power and dissolve the civilian government (Ben Hammou 2024b, 1105). This strategy aligns with Acemoglu and Robinson’s (2001) argument that elites may transfer power to trusted military allies to preempt revolutionary threats. Even civilians lacking institutional access can exercise influence through mass-based power albeit through a consolidation mechanism. Social movements and civil society organizations can provide both manpower and legitimacy to fledgling juntas, particularly those led by lower-ranking officers with limited political standing beyond the armed forces.
Such dynamics have been especially visible across Africa’s post-2020 coup wave, where political movements have played active roles in opening the gates for new military governments. In Mali, the removal of President Ibrahim Boubacar Keïta in August 2020 was preceded by mass mobilization led by the June 5 Movement–Rally of Patriotic Forces, a coalition of opposition groups. While the organization did not explicitly call for a coup during their protests, it subsequently endorsed the junta and pledged cooperation during the transition. Niger’s 2023 coup saw significant support from the M62 movement, which emphasized Pan-African ideals in the face of French counterinsurgency efforts in the country. The coalition not only rallied thousands of protestors in the capital during the takeover, but organized in resistance to the Economic Community of West African States’ (ECOWAS) threats of intervention to reinstall President Bazoum.
Such civilian support, however, is rarely unconditional. Movements and political organizations typically anticipate some degree of influence over post-coup governance, transitional arrangements, or policy direction in exchange for their efforts. It is precisely these expectations that set the stage for buyers’ remorse in the aftermath of a coup. Despite the prevalence and political salience of civilian support for military coups, we know little about how durable that backing is once military rulers consolidate power. Existing accounts often assume that civilian backing translates into sustained post-coup influence. In practice, however, such support is frequently front-loaded. It peaks during and immediately after the seizure of power and then rapidly erodes.
The experience of the Sudanese Communist Party illustrates this pattern. Although the party initially gained influence after helping consolidate the 1969 coup, its alliance with the Free Officers unraveled within a year, and by 1971 Colonel Jaafar Nimeiri’s junta was violently repressing its former civilian partners (Gresch 1989, 399). A similar trajectory followed Afghanistan’s 1973 coup. The People’s Democratic Party of Afghanistan (PDPA) backed Mohammed Daoud Khan in exchange for representation, only to be sidelined and eventually purged as Daoud exploited internal party divisions. In both cases, early civilian support facilitated military consolidation but hastened the exclusion—and in some instances, the elimination—of non‑military actors from the political arena.
Such cases point to a broader pattern of post-coup buyers’ remorse. In these moments, former allies come to reassess alliances forged under conditions of uncertainty, as the anticipated returns of supporting military intervention fail to materialize. At best, civilian supporters are excluded from any influential role during transitional moments of regime change. At worst, as the cases of Sudan and Afghanistan demonstrate above, the machinery of repression is turned against the former allies. Buyers’ remorse thus not only captures the erosion of general popular enthusiasm for military rule, but also the recurrent outcome of civilian influence sidelined.
Coup leaders’ incentives help explain why buyer’s remorse is so common. If they are assumed to prioritize autonomy and political survival, former civilian allies quickly shift from assets to liabilities. Movements that unite to topple an incumbent often share little beyond that immediate objective; once the common enemy is removed, their competing agendas can constrain a junta’s freedom of action and introduce new fault lines within the regime. This dynamic parallels the logic of negative coalitions in revolutionary episodes, where disparate actors cooperate to oust a ruler but fragment once victory is secured (e.g., Dix 1984; Beissinger 2022; Abrams 2024). Anticipating these constraints, coup leaders have strong incentives to sideline or neutralize civilian partners before they can impose meaningful costs on the new order.
Marginalizing civilian movements is not without risk. Groups with strong organizational capacity or independent ties to the armed forces can impose significant costs on coup leaders who attempt to sideline them. Protest movements may rekindle mass mobilization and render post-coup governance untenable—a dynamic Sutter (1999, 132) likens to “seizing the bridge of a ship whose engines are inoperable.” Civilian actors with autonomous military networks pose an additional danger, as they can leverage those connections to retaliate directly. The trajectory of the PDPA in Afghanistan illustrates this mechanism. After being excluded by Mohammed Daoud Khan, the party activated its supporters within the military to carry out the 1978 coup that overthrew and killed Daoud and several members of his government. In such cases, efforts to marginalize former civilian allies can inadvertently empower them to destabilize—or even topple—the very juntas they once helped bring to power.
Buyer’s Remorse in the Sahel
How has this dynamic played out in the Sahel? To trace how buyer’s remorse unfolds after military takeovers, we examine the post-coup trajectories of all successful, civilian-supported coups in North Africa and the Sahel between 2013 and 2023. This timeframe spans several pivotal regional junctures, including the aftermath of the 2010–11 Arab Spring, its so-called “second wave” in 2019, and the renewed surge of military coups in the Sahel beginning with Mali in 2020. By capturing this wide variation in political context, the analysis reduces the likelihood that observed patterns of buyer’s remorse are artifacts of any single, anomalous moment. While we showcase the full data in a broader, forthcoming study, here we focus on two illustrative examples in post-coup Guinea and Mali.
We classify a coup as “civilian-supported” when identifiable social or political movements either help precipitate military intervention—by openly advocating a coup in the year preceding it—or contribute to its consolidation through public endorsements, mobilization, or other supportive actions in the year following the takeover. This framework, developed in prior research (Ben Hammou 2024b), captures both the actors that help create the permissive conditions for intervention and those that legitimize juntas once in power. It thus enables us to track how these civil–military relationships evolve as military rulers consolidate authority.
We identify three possible trajectories for civilian supporters following a coup: marginalization, repression, and integration. Marginalization refers to the systematic sidelining of civilian actors from meaningful influence in the post-coup order. Although movements may be consulted, invited to public forums, or invoked in official rhetoric, they remain excluded from genuine decision-making authority. Repression captures cases in which former civilian allies become targets of coercion—arrests, organizational bans, or selective violence—once they are seen as threats to the regime’s autonomy or stability. Integration, by contrast, denotes the far rarer pathway in which civilian supporters secure sustained influence, whether through formal positions in transitional institutions, meaningful policy input, or durable partnerships with the ruling military faction.
We observe a clear sequence emerges in the aftermath of coups from this period. Bouts of overt repression were almost always preceded by the quieter marginalization of erstwhile civilian allies, with coercion emerging only once those actors resisted their exclusion or threatened to become alternative centers of authority. The aftermath of Guinea’s 2021 coup is illustrative. After seizing power, General Mamady Doumbouya moved quickly to sideline leaders of the Union of Democratic Forces of Guinea (UFDG) and the National Front for the Defense of the Constitution (FNDC), despite their initial support for the putsch and their lobbying on behalf of the junta—including calls for ECOWAS to refrain from imposing sanctions. Once a transitional framework was established, these groups found themselves excluded from meaningful decision-making and were offered only token, peripheral roles—positions they ultimately declined after pressing unsuccessfully for a genuine seat at the table (Foucher and Petit 2024). When UFDG and FNDC figures began openly criticizing the transition and mobilizing outside the junta’s preferred channels, the regime escalated from sidelining to arresting prominent figures of the organizations and seizing their assets.
Similar dynamics unfolded after Mali’s 2020 coup, when the influential June 5 Movement–Rally of Patriotic Forces (M5-RFP) openly endorsed the fledgling junta following its ouster of President Ibrahim Boubacar Keïta. The movement, led by influential religious figure Imam Mahmoud Dicko, had previously spent months mobilizing against Keïta’s regime over its inability to contain the Tuareg insurgency and rampant state-led corruption. In the early days of the coup, the M5-RFP chastised the international community’s condemnation of the coup and stated that it would work alongside the military leaders all while organizing pro-coup demonstrations in the capital of Bamako. In practice, this support lent the coupists a degree of public legitimacy, but divisions between the erstwhile allies emerged almost immediately.
By the end of September, meetings between the coalition and the coupists ended with the former categorically rejecting the latter’s political charter. By October, the coalition denounced its exclusion from the new government, bringing attention to the fact that over 70% of the government portfolios had gone to members of the armed forces. The rupture deepened following the junta’s second coup in May 2021, which consolidated power under Colonel Assimi Goïta. Although M5-RFP figure Choguel Kokalla Maïga was appointed prime minister, his authority was widely perceived as constrained, and key security and strategic portfolios remained firmly under military control. Meanwhile, repeated and often unilateral extensions of the electoral timetable fueled accusations that the transition was becoming open-ended. As delays mounted and political space narrowed, segments of the M5-RFP grew more openly critical of the junta they had once defended. By April 2024, the trajectory from partnership to exclusion was unmistakable. The military authorities banned political parties and suspended political activities nationwide, effectively sidelining both former allies and traditional opposition forces alike. Arrests of M5-RFP leadership, such as Bouba K. Traore, coincided with the shrinking civic space, culminating in Maïga’s own ouster in November 2024 and arrest in early 2025.
Despite such developments, an examination of Afrobarometer data in both Mali and Guinea reveals a notable disconnect between diffuse public opinion and the political fate of organized civilian supporters. While movements that backed military interventions have frequently been marginalized or repressed once juntas consolidated power, broader publics in these same countries have often continued to express relatively strong approval of military rule. In Mali, for instance, only 26 percent of respondents approved of military rule in early 2020—just months before the August coup—and only 16.1 percent expressed strong approval. By the following year, however, after the M5-RFP had already shifted into opposition following its marginalization from the transition, support had risen sharply: 47 percent of Malians reported strong approval of military rule. Afrobarometer’s 2024 round shows this support remaining remarkably resilient, with 49 percent of respondents again expressing strong approval.
A similar, though more muted, pattern appears in Guinea. Overall approval of military rule declined only modestly from 35 percent in 2020 to 30 percent in 2024, even as the junta escalated its confrontation with civilian groups such as the FNDC and the UFDG. Indeed, strong approval of military rule increased slightly during the same period, rising from 10.3 percent to 12.1 percent. In other words, the repression and exclusion of organized civilian allies did little to significantly erode broader public receptivity to military governance.
These trends underscore an important implication. Public approval of military rule appears to operate according to a different logic than the organized civilian support that helps enable coups. Movements such as the M5-RFP or the FNDC enter political transitions with identifiable leaders and clear expectations of influence. These attributes make them politically consequential during the moment of intervention but also potentially threatening to juntas once power is secured. Diffuse public sentiment, by contrast, is less organized and less capable of imposing direct constraints on military rulers. Public approval is often shaped by broad performance expectations—such as hopes for improved security or national sovereignty—rather than by specific institutional commitments.
Conclusion
This paper has examined what happens to civilian actors who align themselves with military coups, focusing on cases in North Africa and the Sahel between 2013 and 2023. While existing scholarship increasingly recognizes that civilians can play meaningful roles in coup politics, much less attention has been paid to the trajectories of those actors once military rulers consolidate authority. By introducing the concept of post-coup buyer’s remorse, this study highlights a recurring pattern in which civilian supporters anticipate influence in exchange for their backing but instead experience rapidly diminishing political returns after a coup succeeds.
Across the cases examined here, civilian movements frequently contributed to the conditions that made military intervention possible and, in many instances, helped consolidate the new order through public endorsements, demonstrations, and political advocacy. Yet these alliances rarely translated into durable power-sharing arrangements. Instead, most civilian supporters followed one of three trajectories: marginalization, repression, or—far less commonly—integration. Importantly, the analysis suggests that repression rarely emerges immediately. Rather, it is typically preceded by efforts at marginalization, with coercion escalating only once former allies resist their exclusion or threaten to become alternative centers of authority. In this sense, the erosion of civil–military alliances after coups reflects not simply broken promises but a strategic recalibration by juntas seeking to maximize autonomy and limit potential veto players.
These findings carry broader implications for how scholars and observers understand the political role of civilian actors in coup contexts. First, they suggest that civilian support should not be interpreted as evidence of enduring civil–military partnerships or shared governing projects. Rather, such alliances are often temporary coalitions of convenience formed around the removal of an incumbent regime. Once that objective is achieved, the structural incentives facing military rulers frequently push them toward narrowing the political arena and reducing civilian influence. Second, the analysis highlights the precarious position of social movements and political organizations that align themselves with military interventions. While such alignments may appear to offer an opportunity to reshape political authority, they also expose civilian actors to the risk of rapid marginalization or repression once military leaders consolidate power.
Future research could extend this analysis in several directions. Comparative work across regions could help determine whether the patterns identified here are characteristic of coup politics more broadly or specific to the recent wave of military interventions in North Africa and the Sahel. Additional research might also examine the conditions under which civilian supporters are successfully integrated into post-coup political orders, as well as the strategies movements adopt to maintain relevance when faced with exclusion. Finally, scholars might further explore how the interaction between organized movements and diffuse public opinion shapes the durability and legitimacy of military regimes.
References
Acemoglu, Daron, and James A. Robinson. 2001. “A theory of political transitions.” American Economic Review 91(4): 938-963.
Abrams, Benjamin. 2024. “Movement split: how the structure of revolutionary coalitions shapes revolutionary outcomes.” Public Choice 200(3): 473-495.
Aina, Folahanmi, and Ibrahim al-Bakri Nyei. 2022. “Why have civilians welcomed the recent coups in West Africa?” Al Jazeera. February 11.
Beissinger, Mark R. 2013. “The semblance of democratic revolution: Coalitions in Ukraine’s orange revolution.” American Political Science Review 107(3): 574-592.
Belkin, Aaron, and Evan Schofer. 2003. ‘‘Toward a Structural Understanding of Coup Risk.’’ Journal of Conflict Resolution 47 (5): 594-620.
Ben Hammou, Salah. 2024a. “Civilian support for coups is a bug – not a feature.” The Conversation. October 22.
Ben Hammou, Salah. 2024b. “The varieties of civilian praetorianism: Evidence from Sudan’s coup politics.” Armed Forces & Society 50(4): 1096-1117.
Casper, Brett Allen, and Scott A. Tyson. 2014. “Popular Protest and Elite Coordination in a Coup d’état.” The Journal of Politics76(2): 548-564.
Dix, Robert H. 1984. “Why revolutions succeed & fail.” Polity 16(3): 423-446.
Gresh, Alain. 1989. “The free officers and the comrades: The Sudanese communist party and Nimeiri face-to-Face, 1969–1971.” International Journal of Middle East Studies 21(3): 393-409.
Johnson, Jaclyn, and Clayton L. Thyne. 2018. “Squeaky wheels and troop loyalty: How domestic protests influence coups d’état, 1951–2005.” Journal of conflict resolution 62(3): 597-625.
Kinney, Drew Holland. 2019. “Politicians at arms: Civilian recruitment of soldiers for Middle East Coups.” Armed Forces & Society45(4): 681-701.
Lorch, Jasmin. 2017. “Civil society support for military coups: Bangladesh and the Philippines.” Journal of Civil Society 13(2): 184-201.
Powell, Jonathan. 2012. ‘‘Determinants of the Attempting and Outcome of Coups d’etat.’’ Journal of Conflict Resolution 56 (6): 1017-40.
Sutter, Daniel. 1999. “Legitimacy and military intervention in a democracy: Civilian government as a public good.” American Journal of economics and Sociology 58(1) 129-143.