Chapter 5 focuses on military coups. It begins by examining the root causes and the practice of such irregular takeovers, which featured so prominently in postcolonial politics. Data show significant cross-regional differences. West Africa displays a particularly high frequency of coups (a feature shared with Central Africa), an above-average number of leaders per country, and a correspondingly lower length of stay in office. Southern Africa, by contrast, has the highest incidence of multiparty elections and the lowest occurrence of military interventions and other violent takeovers. For some time, the continent appeared to stand out, among comparable world regions, in terms of the permanence of coups as relatively recurrent political events. Yet coups evolved from being a most common way of capturing office to a much less frequent phenomenon also in sub-Saharan Africa. Over the past two decades they were increasingly accompanied by immediate pledges, on the part of the soldiers seizing power, that political authority would be rapidly handed back to civilian rulers via the introduction, or reintroduction, of competitive elections. Some observers went as far as to suggest that coups may be "good" for democracy. But the democratic as well as the developmental performance of most golpistas remains disappointing

Imprisoned under house arrest for fifteen years over a twenty-one-year period, from 1989 to 2010, the Burmese pro-democracy leader and human rights activist Aung San Suu Kyi became one of the world’s most prominent political prisoners and the face of the Myanmar opposition movement. In 1991, she was awarded the Nobel Peace “for her non-violent struggle for democracy and human rights.”1 Over the course of her imprisonment, Aung San Suu Kyi was the subject of six WGAD opinions. The author was hired by her family to serve as her international counsel from mid-2006 until her release on November 13, 2010. He worked with Aung San Suu Kyi’s local counsel, U Nyan Win and U Kyi Win, along with countless others globally, to utilize the latter three opinions, in combination with political and public relations advocacy efforts, to advance efforts to secure her freedom and that of other political prisoners from the military junta. Under house arrest, Aung San Suu Kyi was denied access to virtually everyone from the outside world other than her doctor, domestic lawyer, occasional diplomat friendly to the military junta, and Liaison Minister for the then-junta U Aung Kyi.