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THIS ARTICLE OPERATIONALIZES AND TESTS THE HYPOTHESIS THAT A SIGNIFICANTLY HIGHER PROPORTIONAL FREQUENCY OF APPARENT CORPORATE MOTIVATIONS ARE ASSOCIATED WITH COUPS EXECUTED AGAINST CIVILIAN GOVERNMENTS AS OPPOSED TO COUPS EXECUTED AGAINST MILITARY GOVERNMENTS. DATA ENCOMPASS 229 MILITARY COUPS FROM THE YEARS 1946-1970.

The basic assumptions associated with two approaches to analyzing the relationship between the distribution of capabilities and war, namely Waltz's analysis of systemic stability and Modelski's long cycle of global leadership, are examined and contrasted. The systemic stability model concludes that bipolarity is less likely to be associated with destabilizing warfare than is multipolarity. The long cycle model agrees that multipolarity is the least stable arrangement but it depicts unipolarity as the most stable and least conflictual phase in the system's cyclical concentration/deconcentration process. These arguments are tested empirically by first operationalizing polarity and warfare between global powers for 490 years (1494-1983) and then determining how much warfare is associated with each type of polarity. Aggregating across the entire period, global warfare has been least likely in years of unipolarity and near unipolarity, slightly more prevalent in bipolar years, and much more probable in multipolar contexts. Disaggregating time, however, indicates that bipolarity, in certain periods, can be as destabilizing as multipolarity.

Reflecting the political climate and preoccupations of the time, structural examinations of international politics in the 1950s and early 1960s tended to focus on East-West interaction patterns and associated questions of global polarity and polarization. A major exception to this statement has been provided by an eclectic group of regional subsystem analyses which were, at least initially, intended to counteract the distortions perceived to be associated with an exclusively global, bipolar perspective.

Eight generalizations are extracted from two partially competing perspectives (Johan Galtung's "feudal interaction" and Jorge Dominguez's "international fragmentation") on center-periphery interaction patterns. Seven of these generalizations are tested by examining head of state, governmental and ministerial visits to and from the Arab world between 1946 and 1975. Neither perspective is fully supported or disconfirmed by the data. Dominguez's emphases on limited resources and local problems, however, which lead in turn to relatively high intra-subsystemic interaction between peripheral actors and changing center-periphery patterns, appear to provide a more accurate analytical base than does the static model, with its emphasis on high levels of asymmetry and concentration, advanced by Galtung. Further tests of the two perspectives will be necessary in order to assess fully the geographical scope and the type of interaction patterns covered by these diachronic findings.

In partial response to the renewed explanatory emphasis on the role of corporate grievances in bringing about military coups, this article operationalizes and tests the hypothesis that a significantly higher proportional frequency of apparent corporate motivations arc associated with coups executed against civilian governments as opposed to coups executed against military governments. Using a 1946–1970 data base encompassing 229 military coups, no statistically significant differences between the two types of government targets emerge at the world level. At the regional level, only Asian coups provide any real support for the hypothesis. The article concludes with a brief discussion of the possible reasons for the general lack of support for the hypothesis and its implications for the analysis of military coups.