The odds of a military coup in Venezuela are going up. That may not be a bad thing.

The news that Venezuela has started defaulting on its debts raises an important question: Can the current regime survive the likely economic fallout? Over the past few years, Venezuela has effectively become an authoritarian country. During his term in office, Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro has cracked down on dissidents by force and run roughshod over the country’s democratic institutions. Maduro has handpicked cronies to head a constituent assembly to rewrite the country’s constitution, disabled the opposition-controlled parliament, and made it prohibitively difficult to unseat him. In such circumstances, as I argue in my new book, “The Democratic Coup d’État”, the domestic military plays a key role in determining whether a country will move to real democracy. More…