Foreign-Imposed Regime Change and the Quality of Interstate Relations

• In Event: Strategies of Subversion in International Politics

Abstract

How does foreign-imposed regime change (FIRC) influence relations between the intervening state and its target? Can a state use FIRC to turn a foe into a friend? Proponents of regime change argue that states can improve interstate relations by overthrowing hostile governments and installing friendly leaders, who will then promote their interests at home and abroad. Opponents of regime change claim that changing the behavior of another state is more difficult than simply changing that state’s leadership because states have enduring geopolitical interests and leaders who appear to act at the behest of a foreign power often illicit a nationalist backlash that compels them to distance themselves from their foreign patron. The two major quantitative studies of FIRC and interstate relations focus on militarized conflicts and come to conflicting conclusions regarding the pacifying effects of FIRCs (Lo, Hashimoto and Reiter 2008; Downes and O’Rourke 2016). To help resolve that debate, this paper evaluates the effects of overt FIRCs worldwide between 1816 and 2008, and covert FIRCs by the United States during the Cold War, on two measures of interstate relations short of military conflict: Foreign Policy Portfolio Similarity (FPPS) and UN Voting behavior. We argue, and demonstrate empirically, that most FIRCs either do not increase—and, in some cases, significantly decrease—these measures of interstate relations, which suggests that the conciliatory benefits of FIRC on intervener-target relations have been overstated. To illustrate the theory’s causal mechanism, the paper includes a case study of the United States’ 2001 regime change in Afghanistan and Washington’s subsequent relationship with Afghan President Hamid Karzai.

Authors

• Lindsey O'Rourke, Boston College

• Alexander B. Downes, George Washington University