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The 10 Countries With the Most Coup Attempts Since 1950 |
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A year ago this week, soldiers took power in Madagascar. Since then, Guinea-Bissau has fallen to its army, and Benin and Niger have fought off attempts. Political scientists Jonathan Powell and Clayton Thyne have logged 497 coup attempts since 1950. Bolivia has had the most. Venezuela has had 13. Not one of them worked. |
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Source: Powell & Thyne, Global Instances of Coups, version of 29 Aug 2026. Successful plus failed attempts, 1950–present. Ties share a rank. |
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| What's Surprising |
Venezuela has had 13 coup attempts since 1950. All 13 failed. No country has failed more often without a single success. The Philippines is next, with five.
An army officer named Hugo Chávez led one of them, in February 1992. He went to prison, walked out in 1994 and won the presidency in 1998. In April 2002 the coup came for him. It removed him for a few days, then collapsed. That was Venezuela’s last attempt.
Sudan’s war began as a coup attempt. The dataset logs 15 April 2023, the day the Rapid Support Forces turned on the army, as Sudan’s 17th. It failed. The war it started is in its fourth year. Bolivia’s latest came in June 2024, when General Juan José Zúñiga sent armored vehicles into the doors of the presidential palace in La Paz. He was in custody within hours.
| What's Not Surprising |
Latin America ran the coup era. Five of the top ten are in the Americas, and the region accounts for 147 of the 497 attempts. Bolivia had nine between 1978 and 1981 alone. Argentina had 20 between 1951 and 1988.
Then the region stopped. The Americas have had 12 attempts since 1990, and two succeeded: Haiti in 1991 and Honduras in 2009. The United States, Canada and Mexico have none on record. Neither do China, Japan, India or any of Western Europe’s big four.
The coup did not die. It moved. Attempts fell from 123 in the 1960s to 22 in the 2010s. The 2020s already have 21, and 18 of them were in Africa. Burkina Faso has tried ten times and succeeded nine. In Asia, Thailand leads, with eight successful coups out of 12 attempts.
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497 Coup attempts worldwide since 1950, in 97 states. 248 succeeded. 249 failed. Over 76 years, a coup has been a coin toss. |
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0 of 13 Venezuela’s record. Thirteen attempts since 1952, the last against Hugo Chávez in 2002. Not one held power for a week. |
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9 of 10 Burkina Faso’s record. Nine of its ten coup attempts succeeded, two of them in 2022 alone. No country with ten or more attempts comes close. |
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18 of 21 Coup attempts this decade that took place in Africa. Seven were in Mali, Burkina Faso and Niger, three countries now run by soldiers. |
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37 years Since Argentina’s last coup attempt, in December 1988. The country with the second-most attempts on Earth has not had one since. |
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Powell and Thyne coded Niger’s 29 August attempt as provisional, and they say bigger revisions to the dataset are coming in the weeks ahead. Niger’s junta took power by coup in 2023. This summer it survived one of its own, with help from Russia’s Africa Corps. Madagascar’s colonel promised elections within two years of taking power. That clock runs out in October 2027. Bolivia went 40 years between attempts, from 1984 to 2024. Long gaps end. We’ll be watching. |
