When Do Great Powers Promote Their Own Regime Type Abroad?

• In Event: Strategies of Subversion in International Politics

Abstract

Foreign regime promotion – efforts by one state to alter or preserve the domestic regime of another – is important for the states involved and for their allies and rivals. A successful promotion can increase the promoting state’s foreign influence, alter the distribution of international power, and exacerbate security dilemmas. Under what conditions will a state promote its own regime type in other states? When will a state instead support a different regime abroad, even one opposed to its own type? When will it do neither? A crucial condition is transnational ideological momentum, or the broadening and deepening of support for a given regime type across societies in a given region. If a state’s own ideology has such momentum, it will have incentives to promote its own regime; if the ideology of the state’s rival enjoys momentum, the state will have incentives to block that ideology by promoting a third regime type (i.e., not its own); if no ideology enjoys momentum, the state has incentives to eschew regime promotion. U.S. policy toward domestic regimes in Latin America 1933-46 are consistent with this theory. As transnational ideological conditions varied over this period, U.S. policy toward domestic regimes varied accordingly. Today in Southeast Asia no ideology appears to have momentum and China’s ruling party is undertaking no systematic regional efforts either to export China’s regime or to roll back liberal democracy. Should either liberal democracy or China’s market-Leninism gain momentum in the region, however, China could engage in foreign regime promotion, which in turn would likely aggravate relations with the United States.

Author

• John M. Owen, University of Virginia