Basically title, because I saw an article from BBC that a few people tried to seize power in Germany. Do they get the power just by occupying the building? Do other states recognise this? What happens to the constitution and the law? Is is a lawless state while they create a new constitution?
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[CGP Grey did a great video several years ago based off of Bruno de Mesquita’s *The Dictator’s Handbook*.](https://youtu.be/rStL7niR7gs) The ELI5 version of the book, which Grey gives in his 18 minute video, boils down to the fact that a “Ruler”, whether that ruler is a President, King, Emir, or CEO, cannot unilaterally impose their will upon their domain. They need help from key players to make things work. You can call these people the “Keys to Power”, and for a state they often include the military, police, captains of industry, and tax collectors. In a modern democratic republic, these might also be key electoral demographics and elected officials (think the Black vote or powerful and influential members of Congress in the US). If you upset these keys to power, you run the risk of them deciding that they might be better with someone else at the head of the organization. When enough of these Keys decide to change sides, we call that a “coup d’état”, which is French for “cut” or “strike of state”, meaning someone has decided to make some form of hit or attack at the very structure of the state. This need not necessarily involve force, as bloodless coups are a thing. Certain coups can even be legal, as the removal of the head of state by something like the impeachment process in the US can be thought of as a coup by Congress against the President.
The biggest problem with your question is that there’s no single way any coup works. The political context is different across both states and time. The President of Peru just attempted a coup against his own government, trying to dissolve the Peruvian Congress, and the Congress responded with a counter-coup, removing him from power, placing him under arrest, and installing the Vice President as the new President. In Ukraine we see Vladimir Putin attempting to annex part off the country while simultaneously affecting régime change to create a more Moscow-friendly government, rather than the current government that is increasingly friendly to and within the sphere of influence of the West. President Donald Trump attempted a coup against Congress when he tried to subvert the 2020 presidential election and set a bloodthirsty mob against Congress. The list of coups in the world, both attempted and successful, are as long as history itself, and it all boils down to a naked display of power. So what makes a coup work is not someone as simple as occupying a building or giving yourself a title; it’s getting others to believe and recognize that you do in fact have that power. It’s a system of patronage and promised reward and deft maneuvering to get the important people, whether they’re generals or voters or other heads of state, to support you, then consolidating power and keeping your system of promises from being spread too thin that you can no longer balance everything with yourself at the center. The German system of government exists because the German people agree that it exists, and no amount of sit ins or angry shouting from the Bundestag was going to change that.
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