Talk:Soft coup

Partial definition
The text seems to have been written by someone who aims to expose his own political views on the subject. The most neutral definition of soft coup is (from the Portuguese article): conspiracy or plot that has as its objective the taking of the state power in disagreement with the law, in order to operate an exchange of political leadership - and in some cases also of the current institutional order - without the use of violence, using partially or wholly legal means.Dbenndorf (talk) 00:50, 4 April 2017 (UTC)
 * Agreed. I have updated the article using it.

Neutrality
Is the last section really neutral? I think that the line, "[studies] show that this kind of political strategy is not a simple 'leftist latin americans paranoid dream" shows evident opinion. Similarly, the last sentence which states that "to disregard this is to ignore theoreticians who both created such theory and who have analyzed it publicly and seriously" fails to relay a NPOV. LordHello1 (talk) 14:20, 13 July 2017 (UTC)

Decapitalized "Silent coup"
In the first sentence, the word "Silent" was written with a capital "S", so I decapitalized it, especially since it wasn't referring to the Thailand Silent Coup (edit: piped link to page on the Silent Coup in Thailand, not the book by Len Colodny and Robert Gettlin). Please let me know if this edit was made in error, and sorry if it was.--Thylacine24 (talk) 19:35, 9 September 2019 (UTC)

Looking for input or help about how to expand this article
Not really read into this subject before but after a related discussion I am led to want to expand it, not just on the history and examples of such coups, but regarding notable attempts at such coups, perhaps with disputes about which relative power grabbing actions can be argued as possibly not a coup, i.e., if a proposal is made successfully to abolish a senate house, that would seem to fit the bill for this article, whereas, proponents of such an action may argue that such action is an evolution of the state. The items of interest to me can be found Thirty-second Amendment of the Constitution Bill 2013 and Constitution (Amendment No. 24) Act 1936 with abundant material to be found reporting the proposals. I am taking it for granted that many similar examples can be found in the history of other states, enough to support some information on Wikipedia, and I note there are lists List of coups d'état and coup attempts, List of coups d'état and coup attempts by country. I suggest there may be scope for a new article, Attempted coup or similar, with scope within that article to debate challenges to what the nature of a coup actually is because many attempted coups will go with the claim that it is not a coup for one reason or another. Any opinions? I don't think I should attempt to do this completely to my own taste. I will also place "Attempted coup" into WP:RA, thanks o/ ~ R.T.G 11:36, 4 October 2019 (UTC)
 * Not sure if I prefer Attempted coup or Failed coup, however I am inclined to agree that a dedicated article (and not just lists) is needed for the subject. Although we may struggle to find conclusive sources for what does and does not define a failed coup attempt and this would inevitably impact the factual accuracy of such an article and might even step into the realm of having questionable neutrality. Chieftain Tartarus (talk) 11:56, 4 October 2019 (UTC)
 * I reckoned the article should discuss the differences of opinion rather than define the term solidly if that were possible because there will definitely be a lot of history-by-Victor gray area. Honestly, I believe there may be a better title than either of these, something which says something like, "Possibly coups", or, "This was like a coup", but much more concise. ~ R.T.G 15:45, 4 October 2019 (UTC)
 * As for "Attempted coup", it seems the standard form is actually "Coup attempt(s)". (this would be plural however, possibly) ~ R.T.G 15:46, 4 October 2019 (UTC)

Better Sources
There's many problems with this article, and it is currently marred with bad sources and original research. The current state is unsourced definitions, claims from conspiracy theorists, the majority of the Content section being cited from an unknown book, a paywalled source, and then an extremely subjective and sparse list that reeks of WP:OR. Currently the Notable Cases section is just a few random examples where editors thought a certain case felt like a soft coup. However, we can't just remove this badly sourced information until we have something to replace it with, because otherwise the article would be blank. This needs a full rewrite is what I'm saying. Here are some of the issues I've found that can be a starting point for other editors:

- First source: This is our source for the main definition, a defunct "domain for sale" page.

- Second source: Also used for definitional purposes, but only mentions soft coups in the title, and provides no definitions of the concept.

- The third source is okay as a biography for Gene Sharp, but I'm not sure if it actually says what we're saying it does. This wiki page attributes the concept of soft coups to Sharp, but the Dissent Magazine article says that Sharp has been accused by conspiracy theorists of teaching the CIA and NATO how to instigate soft coups in foreign countries. Sharp has a book called The Anti-Coup that could make for a good source, but it doesn't mention the concept of "soft coups." Surely the guy who coined the phrase would include it in his book that defines coups...

- Kaiser source: This needs to be removed, and the section rewritten. All that is given is "Kaiser" and page numbers. This author has a lot of books, and they aren't in English, so good luck to anyone trying to figure out which book this is from.

- And lastly, the Economist source, which I can't check because it's paywalled. Someone else with a subscription should verify the claims made here.

I recommend searching Google Scholar for "soft coup" and we can go from there. I'll try to improve this as I have time over the holidays.

Duey (talk) 22:11, 17 December 2020 (UTC)