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In many African countries, recent political transitions reveal a striking paradox: The more people aspire to a frank break with authoritarian regimes that sternize, the more the dynamics supposed to open up a new horizon of emancipation seem to precipitate societies into strengthened forms of domination.
Young people, in particular, invest coups d'état powerful symbolic charges, seeing them as revolutionary acts capable of brutally interrupting the cycle of corruption, impunity and stagnation. Yet the real trajectory of these events confirms with remarkable consistency a phenomenon well known to historians: revolutions, when not structurally controlled, rarely lead to the political order dreamed of by their initiators. Very often they become the instrument of an authoritarian recomposition even harder than the regime they have reversed. The recent experience of many African States is a troubling example of this age-old pattern.
Revolutionary imagination as a horizon of salvation
The starting point of this dynamic is the way in which people, especially urban youth, project a possibility of national regeneration into the coup d'état. After decades of personal government or oligarchic domination, institutions lose credibility, elections no longer play their regulatory role and public resources are captured by consolidated clientelist networks.
In this context, the formal mechanisms of democratic alternation become inoperative, transforming the political scene into a closed space where the reproduction of elites continues independently of social aspirations.
The coup d'état then appears as the eruption of a radical act, carrying a promise of total rupture. Unlike civilian mobilizations, often dispersed or repressed, the putsch possesses the mechanical efficiency of a unilateral gesture that instantly reverses the political hierarchy. It becomes a sort of historical shortcut, a « revolutionary moment » many perceive as a means of purge the political order of his pathologies.
This symbolic dimension explains that, even in societies that resist military solutions, the army's invasion is seen as a relief or as an act of political hygiene.
The collective imagination attributes to the military institution a moral purity that civilian actors no longer possess: discipline, disinterest, patriotism, sense of state. This is a recurring but powerful illusion that provides immediate legitimacy to coups d'état.
Fundamental asymmetry between popular mobilizations and institutional capture
However, this moment of hope is accompanied by a deep structural gap between the forces that made the coup possible and those that inherit it politically. The popular masses, whose mobilization provides the initial legitimacy, are rarely organized in a sustainable manner.
They have an emotional strength, sometimes an insurgency capacity, but very rarely institutional instruments for governance. On the other hand, military personnel form a stable hierarchical organisation with material resources, internal discipline and immediate access to the levers of coercive power. In this structural imbalance is the first step in the confiscation of the revolutionary process: the army, which intervenes on behalf of the people, quickly becomes the only actor capable of translating politically the insurrectional moment.
This is exactly the phenomenon observed in the great historical revolutions. Whenever popular actors lack sustainable structures (parties, autonomous unions, institutional counter-powers), the most organized apparatus captures the revolutionary moment and directs it in a way consistent with its own interests.
In France of 1793 as in Russia of 1917, this asymmetry of organization allowed the establishment of an authoritarian power based on the preservation of national unity and extreme centralization, regardless of the ideology displayed.
The state of exception as a matrix of new authoritarianism
Once in power, military personnel face a major contradiction: they are driven by the hope of immediate transformation, but lack the economic levers and institutional legitimacy to meet expectations. Then begins a well-known process of revolution historians: the construction of an emergency story. The state is declared in a state of peril, society would be on the brink of chaos, internal or external threats would justify recourse to an exception regime. Under cover of « stabilisation »,The army suspends the constitutional order, restricts public freedoms and delays elections in the name of the necessary order restoration.
This mechanism recalls the post-insurgency phases of many revolutions: the Terror in France, the Bolshevik exceptional laws, Maoist purges or anti-colonial revolutions leading to centralized party states.
Power invokes the need for public salvation to legitimize the consolidation of authoritarian structures. Language changes, but logic remains: the transition is presented as a fragile process, threatened by division, and requiring unity under firm leadership. Thus, the promise of liberation gradually turns into a discourse of order, discipline and control.
The militarization of the State and the programmed failure of socio-economic transformation
The militarization of power mechanically leads to institutional reconfiguration. The army occupies key ministries, restructures internal security, imposes increased media surveillance, supervises civil society and is the sole guarantor of national unity. This shift from the centre of political gravity makes it almost impossible to achieve ambitious structural reform: the technocratic expertise is lacking, the planning mechanisms are insufficient, and the initial popular legitimacy is eroded as the reality of coercive power increases.
In most cases, the army quickly discovers the limits of its ability to transform the economy, combat poverty or achieve an equitable redistribution of resources. Social expectations, extremely high at the time of the coup, become unsustainable for a group whose vocation is neither economic nor social.
The disappointment is all the more profound as the initial discourse promised a radical rupture. Unable to respond to demands, power strengthens repressive mechanisms, which helps to close the authoritarian circle.
The recycling of old logics of domination
One of the most striking paradoxes of the coups d'état presented as revolutionary is their tendency to reproduce, sometimes to amplify, the mechanisms of domination of the previous regime.
Clientelist networks are reconfiguring, public resources are redistributed to the benefit of the new security elites, and the bureaucratic apparatus is rigidized around opaque governance where strategic decisions are beyond public debate. Under the guise of saving the nation, a new system of privileges emerges, often more difficult to challenge because it is based on the symbolic legitimacy of the army and on a discourse defending national sovereignty.
This phenomenon directly recalls the trajectory of historical revolutions where the popular ideal has given way to centralized powers based on effective repressive apparatus. Whether it is the Consulate in France, the Soviet bureaucracy or the post-colonial military regimes, the pattern remains the same: the revolution frees political energy, but it is the best organized apparatus that seizes it and transforms it into a lasting instrument of domination.
A dynamic aggravated by the structural fragility of African States
While the phenomenon observed in Africa corresponds to that of the hijacked revolutions, it is nevertheless distinguished by the intensity of structural constraints. In many countries, the state remains fragile, economic dependence is strong, institutions are young, and the political scene is crossed by ethnic, territorial or religious divisions that elites use.
These frailties amplify the army's ability to present itself as a natural arbiter, but they also make any genuine democratic transition more difficult. In the absence of strong institutions capable of limiting the exercise of power, coups d'état take place in an environment where the concentration of authority seems to be the only possible response to the crisis.
The situation is all the more complex because international pressures, whether geostrategic, security or economic, weigh heavily on political choices. Military regimes exploit these constraints to maintain the narrative of a threatened nation, justifying the prolonged maintenance of the state of emergency. This tension between declared sovereignty and real dependence helps to lock the political space and strengthen authoritarian centralization.
A historical cycle that repeats itself but is not inevitable
The general observation is forcefully imposed: coups d'état applauded as revolutionary ruptures in Africa replay a universal phenomenon already at work in multiple historical revolutions. This phenomenon follows a profound logic where the liberating energy of the masses is recovered by better organized groups, better armed and better able to monopolize the levers of power. The initial illusions of emancipation are then dissipated in the consolidation of a new authoritarianism which, under a discourse of national salvation, renews previous structures of domination.
However, this cycle is neither mechanical nor inexorable. It shows above all that the decisive question is not that of the break-up in itself, but that of the capacity to build robust institutions, effective counter-powers and real spaces of participation. This is the real contemporary political challenge: turning the revolutionary aspiration into a sustainable democratic architecture. As long as this institutional transition has not been achieved, Africa, like the great powers before it, will continue to see this tragic paradox repeated, where the revolt of the peoples is transformed into a new form of enslavement.
