Though current literature seems fixated on the study of coups, a few efforts (linked below) have considered broader mutinies. A project I am involved in, Mutiny in Africa, adopts Elihu Rose’s conceptualization of mutiny. Adopted by subsequent researchers, most notably in Maggie Dwyer’s scholarship, Rose descibes mutiny as an “act of collective insubordination, in which troops revolt against lawfully constituted authority for primary goals other than political power.”
Our data collection began via a collaborative project between Ursula Daxecker, Rebecca Schiel, and myself. That project, eventually published at Foreign Policy Analysis (open access), sought to explore Dwyer’s observation that peacekeepers frequently turn into mutineers after returning home. Investigating the years 1990-2011, we found that to the degree there is a peacekeeper-mutiny link, it appears to be a product of non-United Nations missions. These data are available as MIA 1 below and should be of interest to anyone interested in replicating our work. Please be aware the that data have substantially improved.
The data were later revisited by Schiel, Christopher Faulkner, and I. This was effectively an entirely new approach to data collection that involved using lessons learned from the FPA project to revisit the original countries and years investigated, and expanding coverage to 1950-2018. This new dataset was published in Conflict Management and Peace Science (pre-print ungated version). The CMPS version of the data are available as MIA 2 below.
I have continued to develop the data, including greatly expanding the sources used. This will lead to two important updates. First, MIA 3 updates the dataset through 2022 and identifies a far larger set of cases that were previously omitted. The target for this update is March 2023. Second, updates following the MIA 3 release will see the addition of more variables that account for additional event charactistics.
MIA 1 (1990-2011)
Cite: Schiel, Rebecca, Jonathan Powell, and Ursula Daxecker. 2020. Peacekeeping Deployments in African Sending States. Foreign Policy Analysis 16(3):251-271.
MIA 2 (CMPS, 1950-2018): Excel
Cite: Schiel, Rebecca, Jonathan Powell, Christopher Faulkner. 2021. Mutiny in Africa, 1950-2018. Conflict Management and Peace Science 38(4): 431-499.
MIA 3: Coming soon
This version updates and expands the original project, adding over 100 new cases of mutiny.