A coup d'état ( AHD: tä), and coup, is the sudden, unconstitutional deposition of a legitimate government, by a small group of the State Establishment — usually the military — to replace the deposed government with another, either civil or military. A coup d'état succeeds when the usurpers establish their legitimacy if the attacked government fail to thwart them, by allowing their (strategic, tactical, political) consolidation and then receiving the deposed government's surrender; or the acquiescence of the populace and the non-participant military forces.
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A coup d'état ( AHD: tä), and coup, is the sudden, unconstitutional deposition of a legitimate government, by a small group of the State Establishment — usually the military — to replace the deposed government with another, either civil or military. A coup d'état succeeds when the usurpers establish their legitimacy if the attacked government fail to thwart them, by allowing their (strategic, tactical, political) consolidation and then receiving the deposed government's surrender; or the acquiescence of the populace and the non-participant military forces.
Typically, a coup d'état uses the extant government's power to assume political control of the country. In Coup d'État: A Practical Handbook, military historian Edward Luttwak says: “A coup consists of the infiltration of a small, but critical, segment of the state apparatus, which is then used to displace the government from its control of the remainder”, thus, armed force (either military or paramilitary) is not a defining feature of a coup d'État.
Usage of the phrase
Linguistically, coup d'état denotes a “stroke of state” (French: coup 1 d 2 État 3). Analogously, the looser, quotidian usage means “gaining advantage on a rival”, (intelligence coup, boardroom coup). Politically, a coup d'état is (usually) violent political engineering, yet, is different from a revolution that effects radical change to the government (who rules), not to the form of the government (the political system). Tactically', a coup d'état involves control, by an active, minority of military usurpers, who block the remaining (non-participant) military's possible defence of the attacked government, by either capturing or expelling the politico-military leaders, and seizing physical control of the country's key government offices, communications media, and infrastructure.
Etymology
Although the coup d'état features in politics since antiquity, the phrase is of relatively recent coinage; Julius Caesar's civil war, 5 Jan 49 BC the Oxford Dictionary identifies it is a French expression meaning a “stroke of State”. In 1646, James Howell used the phrase in the book Louis XIII; Fact: date=December 2008 the first English usage dates from 1811, referring to Napoleon Bonaparte's deposing the Revolutionary Directory in 1799. Fact: date=April 2007 Prof. Thomas Childers, of the University of Pennsylvania, indicates that the English language's lacking a word denoting the sudden, violent change of government derives from England's stable political traditions and institutions. Although French and German history are coloured with such politico-military actions, English history is not; to wit, the Glorious Revolution was the last coup d'état in England, effected to establish parliamentary democracy, whereby William of Orange deposed King James II, the last Roman Catholic English monarch, in 1688.
