June 2020 CoupCast Update
By: Matt Scott Frank
Tags: Machine Learning, Forecasting, Civil Military Relations, Governance, Data

While Sudan again tops the list of countries most at risk of coup, June’s top-10 features a number of newcomers and surprise inclusions. Madagascar and Zambia come in at second and third, respectively, for the first time this year.

By Pieter Bruegel the Elder. Source: Wikimedia Commons

CoupCast is a machine learning based early warning forecasting platform for estimating the risk of illegal leadership turnover each month for every country across the globe. These updates provide insight into technical changes/updates, notable events in the previous month, and a more in-depth overview of what to expect in the new month coming forward.

The official web dashboard for CoupCast can be found here and information regarding the underlying data (REIGN) and updates to our monthly data can be found here.

Feel free to reach out to either myself (mfrank@oneearthfuture.org) or Clayton Besaw (cbesaw@oneearthfuture.org) for any questions regarding our CoupCast platform or analyses contained in the updates.

NOTE: We will be providing a paired down version of our CoupCast briefings over the next 6–12 months as we free up time/resources for a series of new projects on an interim basis.

June 2020 CoupCast Report

Data and algorithm updates

Updated precipitation (SPI) estimates using NOAA’s May 2020 PREC/L release (https://www.esrl.noaa.gov/psd/data/gridded/data.prel.html).

Risk forecast overview for June 2020:

Though Sudan is no stranger to the top 10 list, this month again sees a variety of countries that are not commonly most at risk for coup. In particular, Madagascar and Zambia crack the top three, despite not having been in the top ten so far this year.

Looking at the complete 2020 trends in coup risk for this month’s top 10 countries, we can see that many of the less common countries have a bump in coup risk this month.

However, these risk trends are projected to flatten out the rest of the year. This is the case with both Madagascar and Zambia.

In contrast, we can see that countries like Sudan and Burundi have generally higher estimated coup risk, even if there are still fluctuations. Both of these countries are frequently in the top 10.

Looking at the global trend for 2020 we can see that we are in the middle of a general downturn in global coup risk that is projected to extend into the fall before gradually increasing later in the fall/winter.

This is reflected in the generally smaller scale of coup risk seen in the top 10 list. While the estimated risk of coup ranges between roughly 0.6% and 0.2% for the ten countries most at risk this month, in March this range was between 1.14% and 0.4%.

One other case to watch outside of those in the top 10 this month is that of Suriname.

The country just held an election on May 25 in which it appears the incumbent president Desi Bouterse lost. Bouterse faces 20 years in prison for ordering the murder of political enemies in 1982 and will no longer have immunity if he leaves office.

Following a switch in power, Bouterse could be incentived to again seize power if it appears the new administration will enforce his sentence. This is further problematic given that Bouterse himself ruled Suriname as a military dictator following the Sergeants Coup in 1980.

The deadline for swearing in a new president is August 13.