No coups occurred in 2018. Will next year also be politically stable?

Before 2018 the only other coup-free year in the past century was 2007

The past year may have felt politically tumultuous, between Saudi Arabia’s brazen killing of journalist Jamal Khashoggi in Turkey, the resurgence of authoritarianism in Eastern Europe and Donald Trump’s unorthodox approach to U.S. foreign policy.

But in some ways 2018 was unusually stable. It is on track to be only the second year in a century without a coup d’état. The last head of state overthrown was Zimbabwe’s Robert Mugabe in November 2017.

There have been 463 coup attempts worldwide since 1950, 233 of