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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In this case, the answer is that it probably wouldn’t have worked no matter how well they occupied the building.
For a coup to work, you have to remove the people currently leading the government, and somehow coerce or convince the people who are in charge of the apparatus of the state (the generals, the higher bureaucrats, the chiefs of industry, etc) to follow the new government to follow your lead, then gain power of the communication apparatus to make sure that your messages are the only ones getting out, and then the population at large has to be okay enough with the new state of affairs to not revolt.
This is pretty easy in a non-democratic state- why does a peasant care who the current dictator is, and what could he do about it if he did care? It’s much harder in a democratic country where the rewards for following the coup leaders are fairly small.
If you’re the head of the police in Berlin, for example, do you say “Oh, what a good deal if I throw in with this lot!” or “Hey, I’m comfy as I am- round up the boys, crack open the good weapons lockers, and let’s go bust some seditious skulls”?
If you’re really interested, an author named Edward Luttwak wrote a book on the subject of how one works- “Coup d’Etat: A Practical Handbook”
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