The barrel of a gun: Political power in Africa and the coup d'état

This book is about army intervention in politics, but more about politics than armies. This in in the hope that, from an examination of the crises in politics, coup and counter-coup, there will grow, tentatively at least, a general theory of power for newly independent states which explains why they are so vulnerable to army interventions in politics. It is not, accordingly, a book about the mechanics of armies and coups d'etat, their logistics and command structures, but about the way army interventions in politics reveal the nature of political power and its areas of failure in Africa. The army coup d'etat is plainly a short-circuit of power conflicts in a situation where arms do the deciding.. What is the kind of conflict? And what does the decision entail?