What is the effect of coups d’état on repression? Do ‘bad’ coups against democracies decrease respect for physical integrity rights? Does it make a difference whether a coup d’état is staged by the military or a civilian leader? We argue that the impact of coups on repression varies with regime type as this determines the relative costs of repression and buying political support. Combining updated panel datasets on democracy and coups d’état from 1960 to 2010, we provide an analysis of the effects of coups on physical integrity rights, differentiating post-coup regime type. We find that post-coup respect for physical integrity rights decreases when non-democratic regimes depose democratic regimes through a coup d’état - an effect which is fading over time. As opposed to military autocracies, civilian-led regimes are more repressive in the year after successfully ousting the previous government. Together with supplementary findings on democracy-inducing and failed coups, our findings show that differences in regime types do matter in research of coups d’état.

政变对镇压有什么影响？反对民主的“坏”政变是否会降低对人身安全权的尊重？政变是由军方还是由文职领导人策划有区别吗？我们认为政变对镇压的影响因政权类型而异，因为这决定了镇压和购买政治支持的相对成本。结合 1960 年至 2010 年关于民主和政变的更新面板数据集，我们分析了政变对人身完整权利的影响，区分政变后政权类型。我们发现，当非民主政权通过政变推翻民主政权时，政变后对人身安全权的尊重就会降低——这种影响随着时间的推移而逐渐消退。与军事独裁相反，文职领导的政权在成功推翻前政府后的一年中更加镇压。连同关于引发民主的政变和失败政变的补充调查结果，我们的调查结果表明，政变类型的差异在政变研究中确实很重要。