The New Form of the Global Constitutional Crisis
Today, the coup d'état represents not only a rupture of the constitutional order, but increasingly a structural device for reorganizing power. It does not necessarily manifest itself as an overt suspension of legality, but rather as selective functionalization: law continues to exist as a language and as a form, but is progressively emptied of any substantive normativity.
Africa as the Vanguard of Constitutional Crisis
The African continent provides a privileged observatory for this metamorphosis. In recent years, the resurgence of state coups — particularly in the Francophone region — has demonstrated that constitutional breakdown is not an isolated incident, but rather a semi-permanent dynamic, fueled by state fragility, power capture and geopolitical interference. Recent coups in West Africa, despite their heterogeneity, reflect the persistence of structural conditions that make Africa’s political systems vulnerable to institutional fissures: weak democratic governance, frail economies, vast inequalities and sometimes the inability of political elites to mediate their internal conflicts without resorting to violence. Benin’s attempted coup in 2025 demonstrates how even countries that have a history of relative institutional stability can be hit by sudden crises in constitutional legitimacy.
Although coined in other circumstances, the term "permanent coup" effectively describes contexts in which the exception is normalized and the constitution only survives as an empty shell, while the reality of power follows its own trajectories.
The New Form of the State Coup: Between Law and Force
From this perspective, a coup no longer necessarily coincides with the military overthrow of a legitimate government. It can take civilian semblances, be combined with opportunistic constitutional revisions, or be intertwined with the privatization of coercion, through the use of private military and security firms that erode the state’s monopoly over the use of violence.
The phenomenon is now global in scope: no coup is ever completely endogenous in genesis or consolidation.
Venezuela and Iran: The Blurred Lines of Regime Change
The global dimension emerges forcefully in the regime change attempts that have targeted Venezuela and Iran, with varying degrees of success. In Venezuela, the political and institutional crisis of recent years has produced a series of episodes — including mutinies, attempted insurrections and external pressure — that have called into question the legitimacy of the incumbent government. More than a classic military coup, the Venezuelan case demonstrates a constant tension between formal legality and challenges to the effectuality of power. The language of "regime change," often invoked in international debate, signals how the boundary between internal coups and external intervention is becoming increasingly porous.
A similar ambivalence is evident in the Iranian case. The waves of protests that have occurred in recent years and months, while not technically coups, have raised questions about the stability of the regime and the possibility of its radical overhaul. Here too, the dialectic between sovereignty, effectiveness and legality appears central: the survival of a political system does not depend exclusively on constitutional forms, but on government power's ability to maintain social and territorial control.
Beyond Formal Legality: The Crisis of Constitutionalism
What these contexts — Africa, Latin America and the Middle East — have in common is the progressive dissociation between constitution and effective sovereignty. The coup d'état no longer presents itself as something "outside" the constitutional framework, but as a mode of governance that formally operates within the law, but bends fundamental categories such as emergency, security, constitutional reform or defense of sovereignty. In this scenario, the defense of constitutionalism cannot be limited to verifying procedural correctness, but must interrogate the material conditions for the effectiveness of the law.
The state coup, far from being an anomaly confined to peripheral contexts, thus reveals itself as one of the flashpoints in the structural crisis of contemporary constitutionalism. Understanding its new forms means recognizing that constitutional fracture no longer solely consists of a violent act of seizing power, but can be articulated in a gradual process of constitutional erosion, in which legality survives as a form, while political sovereignty is reconfigured along increasingly complex geopolitical and material lines.
