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This article explores the differences between two North African military regimes--Egypt and Algeria--which have been selected due to the continuity of military dominance of the political systems. Still, variations have marked their political development. In particular, the Algerian army's approach to civilian institutions changed after a civilian president was chosen in 1999. This was not the case in Egypt after the demise of the Hosni Mubarak regime of 2011. Other important variations are to be found in the way power has been distributed among the military apparatuses themselves. In the case of Egypt, a principle of collegiality has been generally preserved within a body, the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces (SCAF), which is absent in the case of Algeria, where conflicts between military opposed factions are more likely to arise in case of crisis. How differences generally impact the stability of military rule in these two cases is the main contribution of this paper. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article proposes a theory of coups that centers around coordination and learning. The military is modeled as many officers who only want to join a coup if others join as well (i.e., coordination). If the current regime has survived past coup attempts, it is common knowledge that it is relatively strong (i.e., learning). Combining these effects, once the regime survives the first period, officers know that the regime is strong enough that they may refrain from staging a coup—regardless of how dissatisfied they may become with the status quo—under the mutually enforcing expectation that no other officer will rebel. The model has other equilibria where coup attempts can occur after the first period, allowing for more detailed empirical predictions. The analysis highlights several reasons why new regimes are prone to coups, but among regimes surviving the initial turmoil, structural factors that would seem to predict coup attempts can have an ambiguous effect. The model also makes novel predictions about how the “initial conditions” of a regime as well as what kinds of changes to payoffs affect the likelihood of coups. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]