Mezhenska O. Coup as a political phenomenon

This research focuses on such a complex and contradictory phenomenon as a political coup. For the first time in one and the same work there are summarized and systematized results of scientific work in which researchers from antiquity to the present are concerned about the issues of assumption of power and power changes in the state. It was established that the scientific debate on the problem of illegal regime change does not stop in Social Philosophy, History, Conflict, political struggle and political violence. Their range of issues and estimating nature is quite lengthy and ambiguous in the approaches as well as in the conclusions. The contribution of scholars and omissions of each direction were identified. It was reinterpreted a number of estimates, stereotypical allegations, conclusions, conceptual approaches to the treatment of a coup. It is summarized that the evolution of political thought on the problem of coups has gone from ideas that came out of the divine nature of power as a component of global cosmic order, political ideas of antiquity, which departed from the mythical to the rational-logical knowledge and explanation of the processes of change and getting power became theory-shaped, obtained signs of integrity and consistency, religious explanation of the Middle Ages worldview, in which power is from God and therefore should be subject for only spiritual authority and political ideology "makiavellizm", the emergence of the socialist theory of the struggle for power, to understand that a coup could be considered a way to resolve political problems and the means of satisfying political interests.