Emerging Trends in The Social and Behavioral Sciences

Intervention and Regime Change

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Intervention and Regime Change

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Intervention and Regime Change
JOHN M. OWEN, IV and ROGER G. HERBERT, Jr.

Abstract
Regime promotion constitutes a distinct category of foreign intervention that
includes any effort by an intervening state or coalition to create, preserve, or alter
political institutions or governments within a target state. Although a common tool
of statecraft, regime promotion has received relatively little scholarly attention.
We discuss foundational and cutting-edge research that addresses three questions:
What causes states or governments to try to change or preserve domestic institutions
of other sovereign states? What modes or tools of statecraft do they employ? What
are the consequences for the intervening power, the target state, or the international
system? We conclude with six recommendations for advancing regime promotion
research: (i) expand research beyond its United States and great-power focus to
consider how regional actors and small states employ regime promotion; (ii) conduct
comparative studies of forcible regime promotions with non-forcible and covert
means; (iii) isolate the fundamental motivations—domestic and/or systemic—that
propel states to attempt regime promotion despite significant costs and risks; (iv)
examine further the role of regime-type in regime promotion; (v) increase research
into the consequences of regime promotion by emphasizing long-term efficacy as
well as the comparative success of non-democratic interveners and democracy
promoters; and (vi) focus additional attention on the relation of regime promotion
to international hegemony or hierarchy.

INTRODUCTION
For many years social science attended to regime promotion far less than it
should have. A common tool of statecraft, with significant consequences,
good and ill, for the countries involved and world politics more generally,
regime promotion was long an academic orphan. Neither international
relations (IR) nor comparative politics embraced it, perhaps because neither
could claim it fully. IR in particular little noticed regime promotion because,
persuaded by Waltz (1979), many scholars thought that any theory that
includes domestic regimes and institutions is reductionist and hence not
a theory of international politics. A robust literature on international intervention simpliciter existed, to be sure, but it said little about interventions
Emerging Trends in the Social and Behavioral Sciences. Edited by Robert Scott and Stephen Kosslyn.
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deliberately instigated either to change or preserve the regime of a target
state.
One reason why regime promotion is so important relates, ironically, to the
reasons why it was for so long neglected: it violates the longstanding, broadly
held norm of state sovereignty upon which international law, and much IR
research, is built. Two assertions are fundamental to the conventional understanding of sovereignty: (i) states are juridical equals in the international
realm, and (ii) external actors are excluded from “authority structures within
a given territory” (Krasner, 1999, p. 4). Regime promotion violates both.
It is only since the end of the Cold War, when forcible interventions to promote human rights and democracy—particularly by the United States—have
become so controversial around the world, that political science has begun to
pay adequate attention to regime promotion. Definitions of intervention vary
widely according to the scope of individual research projects. For scholars
interested primarily in forcible regime promotion (e.g., Meernik, 1996; Saunders, 2011), intervention implies boots on the ground, or at least bombers and
missiles in the air. Other scholars consider forcible intervention as one terminus on a continuum that may involve soldiers violating borders, but may also
include non-violent means (e.g., Bull, 1984; Krasner, 1999, 2011; Lyons & Mastanduno, 1995). Similarly, the meaning of regime depends on the individual
researcher’s unit of analysis. A regime may be a specific ruler (e.g., Saddam
Hussein) or a set of institutions (e.g., Baathism or Arab Socialism). We define
regime promotion broadly as any effort by at least one state to establish, preserve,
or alter political institutions or leaders within a target state.
In what follows we discuss the literature—past, present, and future—as it
addresses three questions: What explains regime promotion—that is, what
causes states or governments to try to change or preserve domestic institutions of other sovereign states? What modes or tools of statecraft do they
employ? What are the consequences for the intervening power, the target state,
or the international system?
FOUNDATIONAL RESEARCH
A number of scholars have urged greater attention to intervention by noting
its frequency and its political and theoretical significance. Lyons and Mastanduno (1995, p. 256) submit that the accelerating pace of interdependence and
the end of the Cold War have necessitated and facilitated increased involvement of states in a “range of issues and activities that were traditionally
considered domestic and beyond the reach of international society.” Onuf
(1995) and Rosenau (1995) suggest that the “long period of conceptual stability” of our conventional interpretation of sovereignty may be coming to
an end.

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Other scholars go further and argue that external intervention has been
a common practice since the dawn of the modern states system. For Bull
(1984, pp. 182–186), “coercive interference” of states in the domestic affairs
of other sovereign states is an “endemic feature” of the international system. For Krasner (1999, pp. 58–68), although “Westphalian sovereignty” has
been a durable norm, its effect on state behavior has always been “weak and
uneven;” leaders—motivated by a desire to retain power and promote the
interests of their constituents—have routinely found it prudent to intervene
in the domestic affairs of other sovereign states or even to compromise their
own autonomy. Osiander (2001, p. 266) questions not only the efficacy of the
non-intervention norm, but also the Westphalian narrative (“myth”) itself,
pointing out that the actual treaty is “silent on the issue of sovereignty.” Our
contemporary understanding of sovereignty, he argues, has less to do with
a seventeenth-century treaty than with the eagerness of nineteenth-century
historians to “anchor the new nationalism in history … ” (2001, p. 282).
CAUSES
What motivates states to disregard the sovereignty norm and engage in
regime promotion? Bull (1984, p. 2) maintains that vital interests of states
often depend critically on “events in the jurisdiction of other states.” In
the same volume, Hoffmann (1984) notes the inherent tension between the
norms of non-intervention and “self-help,” both of which are constitutive of
our modern understanding of the international system of sovereign states
(see also Waltz, 1979). If a state can advance its interests through regime
promotion, it is justified in doing so. For Werner (1996), because victor
states impose regime change on a defeated enemy routinely, leaders must
incorporate that possibility in their decisions to go to war.
Causal explanations for regime promotion often posit an interaction
between ideas and material power. We can begin with Thucydides (1982,
pp. 193–197 [3.70–3.81]). In the fourth year of the Peloponnesian War,
Corinth, an oligarchy allied with oligarchic Sparta, attempted to break the
alliance between democratic Corcyra and democratic Athens by repatriating
Corcyrean prisoners who were oligarchs. When, as a result, civil war
erupted in Corcyra, both Athens and Sparta sent forces, knowing that
Corcyra’s domestic regime would determine its external alliances. Owen
(2002) proceeds from this intuition in his analysis of 198 cases of “forcible
domestic institutional promotion” from 1555 to 2000. Because adherents of
an ideology feel solidarity with states governed by that ideology, a powerful
state can bring or keep a target state within its sphere of influence—and thus
enhance its relative power—by promoting its ideology.

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A growing body of research focuses on promotion of a specific regime type:
liberal democracy. Smith (1994) contends that, without active American promotion, democracy in some parts of the world would not have triumphed
and, indeed, may not have survived. Surveying democracy-promoting policies of nearly all American presidents since McKinley, Smith repudiates the
realist caricature of “liberal internationalism” (or “Wilsonianism”) as utopian
sentimentality and argues that the United States has spread democracy as
a means to enhance America’s national security. Contributors to Cox, Ikenberry, and Inoguchi’s (2000) edited volume come from diverse theoretical
traditions, yet display remarkable consensus that American democracy promotion has been motivated, at least in part, by the logic that democratic
expansion would enhance American prosperity, security, and power.
MODES
As mentioned above, regime promotion need not involve military force.
Krasner (1999) distinguishes between intervention, in which “the strong do
what they can and the weak suffer what they must” (Thucydides, 1982,
p. 351 [5.89]), and invitation, in which states willingly accept—through
contracts and conventions—external influence over domestic authority
structures. Owen (2002) suggests that regime promotion includes not only
the threat and use of force, but also economic inducement (aid or sanctions),
subversion, and even rhetoric. Forsythe (1992) observes that the United
States has pursued regime promotion, sometimes violently, through an
undertheorized tool of statecraft: covert action.
A distinct body of literature considers how states use and extend
hegemonic or imperial power to reorder foreign regimes. Ikenberry and
Kupchan (1990) argue that hegemons secure compliance with their visions
of international order through socialization—catalyzed through material
inducement—of the hegemon’s norms among the elite in secondary states.
Marxism, dependency theory, and world systems theory take a similar
approach but reject the autonomy of territorial state actors. Galtung (1971,
p. 82) theorizes a “sophisticated type of dominance” in which the elite of
the dominant states (the “center in the Center”) establishes a bridgehead
within the elite of the dominated states (the “center in the Periphery”)
for the benefit of both and at the expense, primarily, of the “periphery of
the Periphery.” Robinson (1996) posits the emergence of a transnational
economy and a resulting transnational elite that assures the compliance of
the lower classes—upon whose labor global capitalism depends—through
promotion of “polyarchy,” an essentially procedural imitation of democracy.
Barkawi and Laffey (1999) criticize democratic peace theorists for privileging
the territorial state as the unit of analysis while neglecting the Western,

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transnational state that leverages force in the periphery to expand imperial
order.
CONSEQUENCES
Most research on the consequences of regime promotion focuses on democracy promotion, and few scholars are sanguine about its efficacy. John Stuart
Mill’s (1867, p. 174) presumption against intervention proceeds not from ethical calculation, but rather from the intuition that it simply does not work;
democracy imposed or conveyed by a third party will be short-lived for a
people who “does not value it sufficiently to fight for it.” In his edited volume on United States democracy promotion in Latin America, Lowenthal
(1991, p. 402) is reminiscent of Mill: “democracy is not an export commodity” but “must be achieved by each nation, largely on its own.” Huntington
(1984, p. 218) insists that because economic, social, and cultural preconditions are critical for successful democratic transition, “there is little that the
United States or any other foreign country can do” to export democracy (see
also Hermann & Kegley, 1998).
Yet, some scholars maintain that, under specific circumstances, democracy
promotion can achieve significant virtuous results. Meernik (1996) concludes
that while the majority of cases of US military intervention have not produced
democratic reform, target states are more likely to experience some democratic growth when democracy promotion was an ex ante goal of the intervention. Hermann and Kegley (1998) and Peceny (1999) support Meernik’s
conclusion that American military interventions can advance liberalization
in a target state, but, significantly, only in those cases in which political reform
in the target state was an objective of the intervention. US interventions for
other purposes produced increased autocracy in the target (Herman & Kegley, 1998, p. 98).
CUTTING-EDGE RESEARCH
CAUSES
As more scholars have turned their attention to regime promotion over the
past decade, new methods have been employed and new questions have
emerged. Noting the spatial and temporal clustering of transitions from
autocratic to democratic regimes (and vice versa), Cederman and Gleditsch
(2004) contend that external factors—the character and type of neighboring
regimes—are critical for explaining regime transitions. A non-democratic
state in a region of democracies is likely to experience democratic transition
while democracy is unlikely to in an undemocratic neighborhood. Gleditsch

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and Ward (2006) also consider the effects of “democratic diffusion” and conclude that, while forcible regime promotion has not been an important source
of democratic transition, neighboring states do accelerate such transitions
by enhancing the power of democratic reformers and institutions in target
states vis-à-vis their autocratic rivals. Leeson and Dean (2009) acknowledge
the validity of democratic diffusion, but challenge its relative significance.
Employing a quantitative design fashioned to capture spatial (geographic)
variation, the authors find the likelihood of democratic transition is only
marginally increased by the existence of democratic neighbors.
Owen (2010) expands his previous research by asking when spatio-temporal
clusters of regime promotion are more likely to occur, who orchestrates
them, and how they end. Forcible regime promotions tend to cluster during
periods of transnational ideological polarization, when elites are divided
along ideological lines, and transnational ideological networks emerge
intent on promoting their favored regime. States ally with these networks
to improve the regional balance of power and to strengthen their domestic
hold on power. The long struggle continues until the superior performance
of an exemplary state reveals a winning regime type.
Saunders (2011) approaches regime promotion through the individual
level of analysis. American presidents’ causal beliefs regarding the origins
of threats shape their assessments of the efficacy of intervention. “Internally
focused leaders” who believe that an adversary’s domestic order is the
ultimate source of threat are more likely to intervene to transform domestic
institutions. “Externally focused leaders” perceive threats as emerging from
an adversary’s foreign policy decisions alone and, therefore aim to resolve
international crises “without explicit intention to alter domestic institutions
within the target state” (2011, p. 22).
MODES
Krasner (2011) expands on Krasner (1999) by exploiting Barnett and Duvall’s
(2005) taxonomy of power. In addition to “compulsory power”—primarily
military force—states also employ “institutional power” (indirect control of
weaker states through international institutions that reflect the preferences of
the powerful), “structural power” (asserting power through mutually constituted identities), and “productive power” (shaping the interests and identities of another state’s domestic institutions through discursive practices that
legitimize certain forms of domestic arrangements and delegitimize others).
States use all of these types of power to mold other states’ domestic institutions and practices. In our conclusion we note the need for more research into
these various modes of intervention.

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CONSEQUENCES
The 2003 United States invasion of Iraq inspired innovative contributions to
the democracy promotion literature. Although Pickering and Peceny (2006,
p. 556) find that US- and particularly UN-led interventions are somewhat
more likely to result in liberal reforms, they conclude that “liberal intervention does not appear to be a prominent explanatory variable in post-1945
democratization.” Enterline and Greig (2005) find little support for the
proposition that externally imposed democracy can serve as a “beacon of
hope” to dissidents in the target state’s neighbors. But “brightly burning”
beacons—states that deeply institutionalize their externally imposed democratic norms—do tend to decrease the likelihood of war and to stimulate
prosperity in neighbors, while those “burning dimly” increase the likelihood
of regional conflict, undermine prosperity, and depress democratic contagion. Goldsmith (2008) asserts that on those exceptional occasions in which
regime promotion succeeds in imposing democracy, target states typically
achieve only partial democracies, which, according to a significant body of
research, are uniquely unstable and prone to various pathologies.
Edelstein (2008) considers when and under what circumstances military
occupations succeed or fail. He codes only seven of 26 occupations since 1815
as “successes.” Lengthy occupations incite nationalism in the target and sap
public support in the occupier. In each of the seven successful occupations,
the occupier was able to overcome resistance in the occupied state and apathy at home because occupier and occupied faced a common threat. When
perceived as a lesser evil, occupiers can sustain their occupation through
cooperative rather than coercive means.
For Machiavelli (1532/1998), because regime change is a practical
(non-ideological) option for a prince wishing to hold his conquests, regime
change always entails installing an oligarchic government that must be
entirely beholden to the prince. More recently, Bueno de Mesquita and
Downs (2006) use selectorate theory (Bueno de Mesquita, Morrow, Siverson, & Smith, 2004) to show that both autocratic and democratic interveners
lack incentives to install democratic regimes in target states. An autocracy in
the target state, relieved of the burden of providing public goods to a broad
selectorate, is likely to remain responsive to the intervener who installed
and maintain it in power. Boix (2011) argues that democratic interveners
face a dilemma. While a democratic hegemon may have an ideological and
moral commitment to democracy, its incentive structure is identical to that
of an authoritarian hegemon: authoritarian clients can more reliably execute
the will of the patron.
Although most scholars agree that regime promotion has not advanced
democratization, Lo, Hashimoto, and Reiter (2008) theorize a beneficial role

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for regime promotion in war termination. Data from 1914 to 2001 suggest
that peace lasts longer when at least one state is the target of regime change.
However, while the target may be less likely to engage in interstate war,
Peic and Reiter (2011) conclude that regime promotion makes the onset of
intrastate violence more likely. Not only do leaders and institutions imposed
by external actors face internal crises of legitimacy, but also, inasmuch as
regime promotions are likely to follow interstate wars that tend to “wreck
state power,” newly established regimes are less capable of providing
public goods (increasing the likelihood of insurgency) and of combating or
deterring insurgencies.
Finally, scholars continue to explore the implications of regime promotion
for state sovereignty and hence IR theory. Donnelly (2006) observes that the
concept of sovereign equality that is central to the Westphalian order (as discussed above) belies the fact that formal inequalities—the special rights of
great powers, the restricted rights of “outlaw” states, the wide-ranging practices of “semi-sovereignty” that characterize relationships between strong
and weak states—are rife in the international system. As a result, “hierarchy
in anarchy is not only possible but is … historically common.” Lake (2009)
argues that there are degrees of hierarchy among states in which weaker
states may cede varying levels of authority (the “right to rule”) to dominant
states in a kind of social contract in which the dominant state provides order
in exchange for the weaker state’s conferral of legitimacy.
Glanville (2010) casts doubt on the conventional wisdom that founding
international-legal texts conceive of sovereignty as absolute freedom from
external interference. Even theorists such as Bodin, Vattel, and Hobbes—who
champion extraordinary power for the sovereign—define clear limits to
sovereign power; the ruler who cannot protect his subjects from harm or
violates divine or natural law forfeits sovereign authority and privilege.
KEY ISSUES FOR FUTURE RESEARCH
We see six important areas for the advancement of regime promotion
scholarship. First, regime promotion research seems to validate Hoffmann’s
(1977) observation that IR is an “American social science.” Regime promotion literature focuses too heavily on American actions and democracy
promotion, primarily an American concern. Regime promotion has a much
richer and more diverse history as a tool of statecraft. States were intervening to sustain or topple governments of other states long before America’s
founding. Intervening powers have promoted not only democracy, but
also oligarchy, absolute monarchy, constitutional monarchy, autocracy,
Catholicism, Islamism, various flavors of Protestantism, republicanism,

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secularism, fascism, and communism. The rich historical record presents an
under-exploited opportunity for comparative research.
Certainly one justification for the current United States- or great-powercentric research agenda is that regime promotion seems to be the exclusive province of global powers playing “The Great Game” of geopolitics.
Yet, a cursory survey of modern history makes clear that great-power
status is no prerequisite for regime promotion. Contenders for regional
hegemony have frequently relied on regime promotion to shape spheres
of influence and dominance. In the Middle East, for example, both Saudi
Arabia and Iran have promoted friendly (or compliant) regimes in the Gulf
and Mediterranean Levant. As we write this essay, the future of Syria’s
Alawite-Baathist regime remains contested. Iran and Russia, recognizing
that maintenance of their regional influence is at stake, have openly and
determinedly supported the Assad regime, primarily through diplomatic
and material means, over emphatic international protests. Likewise, Saudi
Arabia and Turkey, which stand to benefit from the loss of Iranian influence
should Assad fall, have taken an active role (of unclear extent) in favor of
regime change.
Even small states that can make no credible claim to regional hegemony
have engaged in regime promotion to deal with troubling neighbors. In
1978 Vietnamese intervention in Cambodia put an end to the Khmer Rouge
regime. The following year, Tanzania forced Uganda’s Idi Amin from power.
In short, the scope of regime promotion research should extend below the
great-power threshold.
Our second recommendation concerns consequences of regime promotion.
As shown above, scholars have carried out many studies of the efficacy of
forcible regime promotion. In most cases, the implicit baseline for comparison
has been non-intervention. An alternative approach would compare the
efficacy of forcible regime promotion with that of various types of non-forcible
promotion. Krasner’s (2011) employment of the Barnett and Duvall (2005)
taxonomy is useful here. Most of the studies of regime promotion discussed above consider only what these scholars would call compulsory
power—primarily military force. Under what conditions do interveners
employ other modes of power—institutional, structural, or productive—to
preserve or change a target state’s regime? Why would a state attempting
regime change choose sanctions over soldiers? Why would it marshal world
opinion rather than its military forces? How effective are various modes in
various circumstances?
The role of covert action in regime promotion raises especially intriguing
questions for future research. While covert action may involve violence,
it generally occupies a middle ground between forcible and non-forcible
regime promotion. Beyond Forsythe’s (1992) important treatment of covert

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action, much remains to be said about why states employ hidden over open
means and the conditions under which covert means are likely to secure the
desired outcome.
A formidable obstacle to research on covert action is an inherent selection bias. Because covert operations are necessarily highly classified and
generally compartmentalized, historians and social scientists are likely to
have access only to covert operations gone bad, while successful operations often—how often is not clear—remain in the shadows, hidden from
academic scrutiny. While this obstacle may be insuperable for researchers
interested in large-N quantitative analysis, detailed case studies of both
failures and those successes that have somehow become public knowledge
could expand our understanding of why, how, and when states will pursue
regime promotion.
Third, there is still a great deal we do not know about the incentives for
and against regime promotion. Preserving a friendly but flagging regime
can entail considerable costs. Toppling a hostile regime demands not only
an intervener’s treasure, but most likely its blood as well. The commitment
of state resources required to set up a sustainable new regime—one both
favorable to the interests of the intervener and enjoying sufficient domestic
legitimacy to maintain power—are virtually incalculable (Edelstein, 2008).
Explaining why some states engage in regime promotion despite these
seemingly prohibitive costs should start with a fundamental question: are
intervention decisions driven primarily by domestic variables or systemic
(i.e., international) factors? If the former, we should expect to see domestic
or transnational interest groups—pro-democracy, human rights, economic
interests, and so on—who not only demand action from the governments
of would-be interveners, but who also are powerful enough to threaten
credibly the political survival of leaders who fail to act. If it is instead
the international system that is creating incentives for states to engage
in regime promotion, researchers must be able to show that a would-be
intervening state perceives, with rational justification, that it can advance its
international position by transforming an autocracy into a liberal democracy,
a secular state into a theocracy, and so on.
Probing interveners’ motivations raises our fourth question: Why do
interveners sometimes promote a regime other than their own? United
States promotions of authoritarianism—Iran 1953, Guatemala 1954, Chile
1973—and refusals to promote democracy in various countries are notorious.
As discussed above, Bueno de Mesquita and Downs (2006) and Boix (2011)
offer an explanation: no states have sufficient incentives to install democratic
regimes. But then why would a democratic intervener (like the United
States) ever attempt to promote democracy in a conquered state (West
Germany and Japan after the Second World War or Afghanistan and Iraq

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more recently)? The real puzzle is: why has the type of regime promoted by
the United States varied across time and space (Owen & Poznansky, 2014)?
Other countries have exhibited similar variation; during the Chinese civil
war Stalin’s Soviet Union sometimes extended aid to Chiang Kai-Shek’s
Nationalists rather than Mao Zedong’s Communists.
Our fifth question is: to what extent have international outcomes matched
intervener intentions? The literature is rich on the prospects of democratization through regime promotion, but democratization does not address
the universe of intended outcomes. Have interveners that sought to impose
fascist or theocratic regimes, for example, had more success than democracy promoters? Additionally, extant research concentrates on short-term
outcomes. We recommend further research into the long-term prospects
of externally imposed regimes. Do they continue to serve the interests of
the intervener? Under what conditions do they overcome the challenges of
domestic legitimacy and institutional disarray that Peic and Reiter (2011)
describe? When do they collapse under the weight of insurgencies or
external threats?
Sixth, and finally, is the question of regime promotion’s relation to international hegemony or hierarchy. Notwithstanding that smaller powers sometimes engage in the practice, most interveners are great powers, and, as we
show above, much research suggests that great powers intervene in order
to preserve or extend their international influence and power. Furthermore,
great powers sometimes counter-intervene in target states—that is, when one
state attempts regime promotion, a rival state tries a counter-regime promotion in the same target—suggesting that relative power may be at stake when
a target state’s domestic regime is in doubt (Owen, 2010). Recent work on
international hierarchy (e.g., Krasner, 1999; Lake, 2009) has pointed toward
regime promotion as one practice that sustains and constitutes inequality
among states. The frequency of regime promotion may be telling us still more
about the limits not only of state sovereignty but of the utility of conceiving
of the international system as anarchical.
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Lo, N., Hashimoto, B., & Reiter, D. (2008). Ensuring peace: Foreign-imposed regime
change and postwar peace duration, 1914–2001. International Organization, 62(4),
717–736. doi:10.1017/S0020818308080259
Lowenthal, A. F. (Ed.) (1991). Exporting democracy: The United States and Latin America
(pp. 1991). Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press.
Lyons, G., & Mastanduno, M. (Eds.) (1995). Beyond Westphalia: State sovereignty and
international intervention. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press.
Machiavelli, N. (1998). The Prince (2nd ed.) H. C. Mansfield (Trans.) Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press. (Original work published 1532).
Meernik, J. (1996). United States intervention and the promotion of democracy. Journal of Peace Research, 33(4), 391–402.
Mill, J. S. (1867). Dissertations and discussions: Political, philosophical, and historical. London, England: Longmans, Green, Reader & Dyer.
Onuf, N. (1995). Intervention for the common good. In G. Lyons & M. Mastanduno
(Eds.), Beyond Westphalia: State sovereignty and international intervention (pp. 43–58).
Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press.
Osiander, A. (2001). Sovereignty, international relations, and the Westphalian myth.
International Organizations, 55(2), 251–287. doi:10.1162/00208180151140577
Owen, J. M. (2002). The foreign impositions of domestic institutions. International
Organization, 56(2), 375–409.
Owen, J. M. (2010). The clash of ideas in world politics: Transnational networks, states, and
regime change, 1510–2010. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
Owen, J. M., & Poznansky, M. (2014). When does America drop dictators? European
Journal of International Relations. doi:1354066113508990
Peceny, M. (1999). Forcing them to be free. Political Research Quarterly, 52(3), 549–582.
Peic, G., & Reiter, D. (2011). Foreign-imposed regime change, state power and
civil war onset, 1920–2004. British Journal of Political Science, 41(3), 453–475.
doi:10.1017/S0007123410000426
Pickering, J., & Peceny, M. (2006). Forging democracy at gunpoint. International Studies Quarterly, 50(3), 539–559.
Robinson, W. I. (1996). Promoting polyarchy: globalization, US intervention, and hegemony. Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press.
Rosenau, J. (1995). Sovereignty in a turbulent world. In G. Lyons & M. Mastanduno (Eds.), Beyond Westphalia: State sovereignty and international intervention (pp.
191–227). Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press.
Saunders, E. N. (2011). Leaders at war: How presidents shape military interventions.
Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.
Smith, T. (1994). America’s mission: The United States and the worldwide struggle for
democracy in the twentieth century. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
Thucydides (1982). History of the Peloponnesian war. (R. Crawley (Trans.)). New York,
NY: The Modern Library.
Waltz, K. N. (1979). Theory of international politics. New York, NY: McGraw-Hill.
Werner, S. (1996). Absolute and limited war: The possibility of foreign-imposed
regime change. International Interactions, 22(1), 67–88.

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FURTHER READING
Bueno de Mesquita, B., & Downs, G. W. (2006). Intervention and democracy. International Organization, 60(3), 627–649. doi:10.1017/S0020818306060206
Bull, H. (Ed.) (1984). Intervention in world politics. Oxford, England: Oxford University
Press.
Edelstein, D. M. (2008). Occupational hazards: Success and failure in military occupation.
Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.
Enterline, A. J., & Greig, J. M. (2005). Beacons of hope? The impact of imposed democracy on regional peace, democracy, and prosperity. The Journal of Politics, 67(4),
1075–1098. doi:10.1111/j.1468-2508.2005.00351.x
Krasner, S. D. (1999). Sovereignty: Organized hypocrisy. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
Krasner, S. D. (2011). Changing state structures: Outside in. Proceedings of the National
Academy of Sciences, 108(4), 21302–21307. doi:10.1073/pnas.1100244108
Lake, D. A. (2009). Hierarchy in international relations. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University
Press.
Lyons, G., & Mastanduno, M. (Eds.) (1995). Beyond Westphalia: State sovereignty and
international intervention. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press.
Owen, J. M. (2010). The clash of ideas in world politics: Transnational networks, states, and
regime change, 1510–2010. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
Peic, G., & Reiter, D. (2011). Foreign-imposed regime change, state power and civil
war onset, 1920–2004. British Journal of Political Science, 41(3), 453–475. doi:10.1017/
S0007123410000426

JOHN M. OWEN IV SHORT BIOGRAPHY
John M. Owen IV (https://sites.google.com/site/jnoowen/) is Ambassador Henry J. and Mrs. Marion R. Taylor Professor of Politics, and a Faculty
Fellow at the Institute for Advanced Studies in Culture, at the University
of Virginia. His newest book is Confronting Political Islam: Six Lessons from
the West’s Past (Princeton, 2014). He is author of The Clash of Ideas in World
Politics: Transnational Networks, States, and Regime Change, 1510–2010 (Princeton, 2010), and of Liberal Peace, Liberal War: American Politics and International
Security (Cornell, 1997), and co-editor of Religion, the Enlightenment, and the
New Global Order (Columbia, 2011). He has published in the European Journal
of International Relations, Foreign Affairs, International Organization, Internationale Politik und Gesellschaft, International Security, International Studies
Quarterly, National Interest, The New York Times, Perspectives on Politics, and
a number of edited volumes. Owen holds an AB from Duke University, an
MPA from Princeton University, and a PhD from Harvard University. He has
held fellowships at Harvard, Stanford, Princeton, and Oxford universities.
His research has been supported by grants from the Mellon, MacArthur,
Donchian, Earhart, and Smith Richardson foundations. From 2011 to 2014
he was Editor-in-Chief of Security Studies.

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ROGER G. HERBERT, Jr. SHORT BIOGRAPHY
Roger G. Herbert, Jr. is a PhD candidate in International Relations and Political Theory at the University of Virginia’s Woodrow Wilson Department of
Politics. His dissertation, Cry Havoc: Rhetorical Action and State Power, examines the rhetorical strategies democratic leaders deploy to marshal domestic
support for war. Herbert led a seminar on the ethical dimensions of statecraft
at the University of Virginia and routinely lectures on related topics at the
United States Naval Academy and the United States Coast Guard Academy.
Prior to his graduate studies, Herbert served for 26 years as a Naval Special
Warfare (SEAL) officer. His diverse postings included multiple SEAL teams,
headquarters of U.S. Naval Forces in Europe, and the Joint Staff. He commanded Naval Special Warfare’s forward unit in the Middle East from 2005
to 2006 and its training command from 2006 to 2008. He retired in 2010 at the
rank of Captain. Herbert holds a BS from Davidson College, an MA from the
Naval Postgraduate School, and an MS from the National War College.
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Intervention and Regime Change
JOHN M. OWEN, IV and ROGER G. HERBERT, Jr.

Abstract
Regime promotion constitutes a distinct category of foreign intervention that
includes any effort by an intervening state or coalition to create, preserve, or alter
political institutions or governments within a target state. Although a common tool
of statecraft, regime promotion has received relatively little scholarly attention.
We discuss foundational and cutting-edge research that addresses three questions:
What causes states or governments to try to change or preserve domestic institutions
of other sovereign states? What modes or tools of statecraft do they employ? What
are the consequences for the intervening power, the target state, or the international
system? We conclude with six recommendations for advancing regime promotion
research: (i) expand research beyond its United States and great-power focus to
consider how regional actors and small states employ regime promotion; (ii) conduct
comparative studies of forcible regime promotions with non-forcible and covert
means; (iii) isolate the fundamental motivations—domestic and/or systemic—that
propel states to attempt regime promotion despite significant costs and risks; (iv)
examine further the role of regime-type in regime promotion; (v) increase research
into the consequences of regime promotion by emphasizing long-term efficacy as
well as the comparative success of non-democratic interveners and democracy
promoters; and (vi) focus additional attention on the relation of regime promotion
to international hegemony or hierarchy.

INTRODUCTION
For many years social science attended to regime promotion far less than it
should have. A common tool of statecraft, with significant consequences,
good and ill, for the countries involved and world politics more generally,
regime promotion was long an academic orphan. Neither international
relations (IR) nor comparative politics embraced it, perhaps because neither
could claim it fully. IR in particular little noticed regime promotion because,
persuaded by Waltz (1979), many scholars thought that any theory that
includes domestic regimes and institutions is reductionist and hence not
a theory of international politics. A robust literature on international intervention simpliciter existed, to be sure, but it said little about interventions
Emerging Trends in the Social and Behavioral Sciences. Edited by Robert Scott and Stephen Kosslyn.
© 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. ISBN 978-1-118-90077-2.

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deliberately instigated either to change or preserve the regime of a target
state.
One reason why regime promotion is so important relates, ironically, to the
reasons why it was for so long neglected: it violates the longstanding, broadly
held norm of state sovereignty upon which international law, and much IR
research, is built. Two assertions are fundamental to the conventional understanding of sovereignty: (i) states are juridical equals in the international
realm, and (ii) external actors are excluded from “authority structures within
a given territory” (Krasner, 1999, p. 4). Regime promotion violates both.
It is only since the end of the Cold War, when forcible interventions to promote human rights and democracy—particularly by the United States—have
become so controversial around the world, that political science has begun to
pay adequate attention to regime promotion. Definitions of intervention vary
widely according to the scope of individual research projects. For scholars
interested primarily in forcible regime promotion (e.g., Meernik, 1996; Saunders, 2011), intervention implies boots on the ground, or at least bombers and
missiles in the air. Other scholars consider forcible intervention as one terminus on a continuum that may involve soldiers violating borders, but may also
include non-violent means (e.g., Bull, 1984; Krasner, 1999, 2011; Lyons & Mastanduno, 1995). Similarly, the meaning of regime depends on the individual
researcher’s unit of analysis. A regime may be a specific ruler (e.g., Saddam
Hussein) or a set of institutions (e.g., Baathism or Arab Socialism). We define
regime promotion broadly as any effort by at least one state to establish, preserve,
or alter political institutions or leaders within a target state.
In what follows we discuss the literature—past, present, and future—as it
addresses three questions: What explains regime promotion—that is, what
causes states or governments to try to change or preserve domestic institutions of other sovereign states? What modes or tools of statecraft do they
employ? What are the consequences for the intervening power, the target state,
or the international system?
FOUNDATIONAL RESEARCH
A number of scholars have urged greater attention to intervention by noting
its frequency and its political and theoretical significance. Lyons and Mastanduno (1995, p. 256) submit that the accelerating pace of interdependence and
the end of the Cold War have necessitated and facilitated increased involvement of states in a “range of issues and activities that were traditionally
considered domestic and beyond the reach of international society.” Onuf
(1995) and Rosenau (1995) suggest that the “long period of conceptual stability” of our conventional interpretation of sovereignty may be coming to
an end.

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Other scholars go further and argue that external intervention has been
a common practice since the dawn of the modern states system. For Bull
(1984, pp. 182–186), “coercive interference” of states in the domestic affairs
of other sovereign states is an “endemic feature” of the international system. For Krasner (1999, pp. 58–68), although “Westphalian sovereignty” has
been a durable norm, its effect on state behavior has always been “weak and
uneven;” leaders—motivated by a desire to retain power and promote the
interests of their constituents—have routinely found it prudent to intervene
in the domestic affairs of other sovereign states or even to compromise their
own autonomy. Osiander (2001, p. 266) questions not only the efficacy of the
non-intervention norm, but also the Westphalian narrative (“myth”) itself,
pointing out that the actual treaty is “silent on the issue of sovereignty.” Our
contemporary understanding of sovereignty, he argues, has less to do with
a seventeenth-century treaty than with the eagerness of nineteenth-century
historians to “anchor the new nationalism in history … ” (2001, p. 282).
CAUSES
What motivates states to disregard the sovereignty norm and engage in
regime promotion? Bull (1984, p. 2) maintains that vital interests of states
often depend critically on “events in the jurisdiction of other states.” In
the same volume, Hoffmann (1984) notes the inherent tension between the
norms of non-intervention and “self-help,” both of which are constitutive of
our modern understanding of the international system of sovereign states
(see also Waltz, 1979). If a state can advance its interests through regime
promotion, it is justified in doing so. For Werner (1996), because victor
states impose regime change on a defeated enemy routinely, leaders must
incorporate that possibility in their decisions to go to war.
Causal explanations for regime promotion often posit an interaction
between ideas and material power. We can begin with Thucydides (1982,
pp. 193–197 [3.70–3.81]). In the fourth year of the Peloponnesian War,
Corinth, an oligarchy allied with oligarchic Sparta, attempted to break the
alliance between democratic Corcyra and democratic Athens by repatriating
Corcyrean prisoners who were oligarchs. When, as a result, civil war
erupted in Corcyra, both Athens and Sparta sent forces, knowing that
Corcyra’s domestic regime would determine its external alliances. Owen
(2002) proceeds from this intuition in his analysis of 198 cases of “forcible
domestic institutional promotion” from 1555 to 2000. Because adherents of
an ideology feel solidarity with states governed by that ideology, a powerful
state can bring or keep a target state within its sphere of influence—and thus
enhance its relative power—by promoting its ideology.

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EMERGING TRENDS IN THE SOCIAL AND BEHAVIORAL SCIENCES

A growing body of research focuses on promotion of a specific regime type:
liberal democracy. Smith (1994) contends that, without active American promotion, democracy in some parts of the world would not have triumphed
and, indeed, may not have survived. Surveying democracy-promoting policies of nearly all American presidents since McKinley, Smith repudiates the
realist caricature of “liberal internationalism” (or “Wilsonianism”) as utopian
sentimentality and argues that the United States has spread democracy as
a means to enhance America’s national security. Contributors to Cox, Ikenberry, and Inoguchi’s (2000) edited volume come from diverse theoretical
traditions, yet display remarkable consensus that American democracy promotion has been motivated, at least in part, by the logic that democratic
expansion would enhance American prosperity, security, and power.
MODES
As mentioned above, regime promotion need not involve military force.
Krasner (1999) distinguishes between intervention, in which “the strong do
what they can and the weak suffer what they must” (Thucydides, 1982,
p. 351 [5.89]), and invitation, in which states willingly accept—through
contracts and conventions—external influence over domestic authority
structures. Owen (2002) suggests that regime promotion includes not only
the threat and use of force, but also economic inducement (aid or sanctions),
subversion, and even rhetoric. Forsythe (1992) observes that the United
States has pursued regime promotion, sometimes violently, through an
undertheorized tool of statecraft: covert action.
A distinct body of literature considers how states use and extend
hegemonic or imperial power to reorder foreign regimes. Ikenberry and
Kupchan (1990) argue that hegemons secure compliance with their visions
of international order through socialization—catalyzed through material
inducement—of the hegemon’s norms among the elite in secondary states.
Marxism, dependency theory, and world systems theory take a similar
approach but reject the autonomy of territorial state actors. Galtung (1971,
p. 82) theorizes a “sophisticated type of dominance” in which the elite of
the dominant states (the “center in the Center”) establishes a bridgehead
within the elite of the dominated states (the “center in the Periphery”)
for the benefit of both and at the expense, primarily, of the “periphery of
the Periphery.” Robinson (1996) posits the emergence of a transnational
economy and a resulting transnational elite that assures the compliance of
the lower classes—upon whose labor global capitalism depends—through
promotion of “polyarchy,” an essentially procedural imitation of democracy.
Barkawi and Laffey (1999) criticize democratic peace theorists for privileging
the territorial state as the unit of analysis while neglecting the Western,

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transnational state that leverages force in the periphery to expand imperial
order.
CONSEQUENCES
Most research on the consequences of regime promotion focuses on democracy promotion, and few scholars are sanguine about its efficacy. John Stuart
Mill’s (1867, p. 174) presumption against intervention proceeds not from ethical calculation, but rather from the intuition that it simply does not work;
democracy imposed or conveyed by a third party will be short-lived for a
people who “does not value it sufficiently to fight for it.” In his edited volume on United States democracy promotion in Latin America, Lowenthal
(1991, p. 402) is reminiscent of Mill: “democracy is not an export commodity” but “must be achieved by each nation, largely on its own.” Huntington
(1984, p. 218) insists that because economic, social, and cultural preconditions are critical for successful democratic transition, “there is little that the
United States or any other foreign country can do” to export democracy (see
also Hermann & Kegley, 1998).
Yet, some scholars maintain that, under specific circumstances, democracy
promotion can achieve significant virtuous results. Meernik (1996) concludes
that while the majority of cases of US military intervention have not produced
democratic reform, target states are more likely to experience some democratic growth when democracy promotion was an ex ante goal of the intervention. Hermann and Kegley (1998) and Peceny (1999) support Meernik’s
conclusion that American military interventions can advance liberalization
in a target state, but, significantly, only in those cases in which political reform
in the target state was an objective of the intervention. US interventions for
other purposes produced increased autocracy in the target (Herman & Kegley, 1998, p. 98).
CUTTING-EDGE RESEARCH
CAUSES
As more scholars have turned their attention to regime promotion over the
past decade, new methods have been employed and new questions have
emerged. Noting the spatial and temporal clustering of transitions from
autocratic to democratic regimes (and vice versa), Cederman and Gleditsch
(2004) contend that external factors—the character and type of neighboring
regimes—are critical for explaining regime transitions. A non-democratic
state in a region of democracies is likely to experience democratic transition
while democracy is unlikely to in an undemocratic neighborhood. Gleditsch

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EMERGING TRENDS IN THE SOCIAL AND BEHAVIORAL SCIENCES

and Ward (2006) also consider the effects of “democratic diffusion” and conclude that, while forcible regime promotion has not been an important source
of democratic transition, neighboring states do accelerate such transitions
by enhancing the power of democratic reformers and institutions in target
states vis-à-vis their autocratic rivals. Leeson and Dean (2009) acknowledge
the validity of democratic diffusion, but challenge its relative significance.
Employing a quantitative design fashioned to capture spatial (geographic)
variation, the authors find the likelihood of democratic transition is only
marginally increased by the existence of democratic neighbors.
Owen (2010) expands his previous research by asking when spatio-temporal
clusters of regime promotion are more likely to occur, who orchestrates
them, and how they end. Forcible regime promotions tend to cluster during
periods of transnational ideological polarization, when elites are divided
along ideological lines, and transnational ideological networks emerge
intent on promoting their favored regime. States ally with these networks
to improve the regional balance of power and to strengthen their domestic
hold on power. The long struggle continues until the superior performance
of an exemplary state reveals a winning regime type.
Saunders (2011) approaches regime promotion through the individual
level of analysis. American presidents’ causal beliefs regarding the origins
of threats shape their assessments of the efficacy of intervention. “Internally
focused leaders” who believe that an adversary’s domestic order is the
ultimate source of threat are more likely to intervene to transform domestic
institutions. “Externally focused leaders” perceive threats as emerging from
an adversary’s foreign policy decisions alone and, therefore aim to resolve
international crises “without explicit intention to alter domestic institutions
within the target state” (2011, p. 22).
MODES
Krasner (2011) expands on Krasner (1999) by exploiting Barnett and Duvall’s
(2005) taxonomy of power. In addition to “compulsory power”—primarily
military force—states also employ “institutional power” (indirect control of
weaker states through international institutions that reflect the preferences of
the powerful), “structural power” (asserting power through mutually constituted identities), and “productive power” (shaping the interests and identities of another state’s domestic institutions through discursive practices that
legitimize certain forms of domestic arrangements and delegitimize others).
States use all of these types of power to mold other states’ domestic institutions and practices. In our conclusion we note the need for more research into
these various modes of intervention.

Intervention and Regime Change

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CONSEQUENCES
The 2003 United States invasion of Iraq inspired innovative contributions to
the democracy promotion literature. Although Pickering and Peceny (2006,
p. 556) find that US- and particularly UN-led interventions are somewhat
more likely to result in liberal reforms, they conclude that “liberal intervention does not appear to be a prominent explanatory variable in post-1945
democratization.” Enterline and Greig (2005) find little support for the
proposition that externally imposed democracy can serve as a “beacon of
hope” to dissidents in the target state’s neighbors. But “brightly burning”
beacons—states that deeply institutionalize their externally imposed democratic norms—do tend to decrease the likelihood of war and to stimulate
prosperity in neighbors, while those “burning dimly” increase the likelihood
of regional conflict, undermine prosperity, and depress democratic contagion. Goldsmith (2008) asserts that on those exceptional occasions in which
regime promotion succeeds in imposing democracy, target states typically
achieve only partial democracies, which, according to a significant body of
research, are uniquely unstable and prone to various pathologies.
Edelstein (2008) considers when and under what circumstances military
occupations succeed or fail. He codes only seven of 26 occupations since 1815
as “successes.” Lengthy occupations incite nationalism in the target and sap
public support in the occupier. In each of the seven successful occupations,
the occupier was able to overcome resistance in the occupied state and apathy at home because occupier and occupied faced a common threat. When
perceived as a lesser evil, occupiers can sustain their occupation through
cooperative rather than coercive means.
For Machiavelli (1532/1998), because regime change is a practical
(non-ideological) option for a prince wishing to hold his conquests, regime
change always entails installing an oligarchic government that must be
entirely beholden to the prince. More recently, Bueno de Mesquita and
Downs (2006) use selectorate theory (Bueno de Mesquita, Morrow, Siverson, & Smith, 2004) to show that both autocratic and democratic interveners
lack incentives to install democratic regimes in target states. An autocracy in
the target state, relieved of the burden of providing public goods to a broad
selectorate, is likely to remain responsive to the intervener who installed
and maintain it in power. Boix (2011) argues that democratic interveners
face a dilemma. While a democratic hegemon may have an ideological and
moral commitment to democracy, its incentive structure is identical to that
of an authoritarian hegemon: authoritarian clients can more reliably execute
the will of the patron.
Although most scholars agree that regime promotion has not advanced
democratization, Lo, Hashimoto, and Reiter (2008) theorize a beneficial role

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EMERGING TRENDS IN THE SOCIAL AND BEHAVIORAL SCIENCES

for regime promotion in war termination. Data from 1914 to 2001 suggest
that peace lasts longer when at least one state is the target of regime change.
However, while the target may be less likely to engage in interstate war,
Peic and Reiter (2011) conclude that regime promotion makes the onset of
intrastate violence more likely. Not only do leaders and institutions imposed
by external actors face internal crises of legitimacy, but also, inasmuch as
regime promotions are likely to follow interstate wars that tend to “wreck
state power,” newly established regimes are less capable of providing
public goods (increasing the likelihood of insurgency) and of combating or
deterring insurgencies.
Finally, scholars continue to explore the implications of regime promotion
for state sovereignty and hence IR theory. Donnelly (2006) observes that the
concept of sovereign equality that is central to the Westphalian order (as discussed above) belies the fact that formal inequalities—the special rights of
great powers, the restricted rights of “outlaw” states, the wide-ranging practices of “semi-sovereignty” that characterize relationships between strong
and weak states—are rife in the international system. As a result, “hierarchy
in anarchy is not only possible but is … historically common.” Lake (2009)
argues that there are degrees of hierarchy among states in which weaker
states may cede varying levels of authority (the “right to rule”) to dominant
states in a kind of social contract in which the dominant state provides order
in exchange for the weaker state’s conferral of legitimacy.
Glanville (2010) casts doubt on the conventional wisdom that founding
international-legal texts conceive of sovereignty as absolute freedom from
external interference. Even theorists such as Bodin, Vattel, and Hobbes—who
champion extraordinary power for the sovereign—define clear limits to
sovereign power; the ruler who cannot protect his subjects from harm or
violates divine or natural law forfeits sovereign authority and privilege.
KEY ISSUES FOR FUTURE RESEARCH
We see six important areas for the advancement of regime promotion
scholarship. First, regime promotion research seems to validate Hoffmann’s
(1977) observation that IR is an “American social science.” Regime promotion literature focuses too heavily on American actions and democracy
promotion, primarily an American concern. Regime promotion has a much
richer and more diverse history as a tool of statecraft. States were intervening to sustain or topple governments of other states long before America’s
founding. Intervening powers have promoted not only democracy, but
also oligarchy, absolute monarchy, constitutional monarchy, autocracy,
Catholicism, Islamism, various flavors of Protestantism, republicanism,

Intervention and Regime Change

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secularism, fascism, and communism. The rich historical record presents an
under-exploited opportunity for comparative research.
Certainly one justification for the current United States- or great-powercentric research agenda is that regime promotion seems to be the exclusive province of global powers playing “The Great Game” of geopolitics.
Yet, a cursory survey of modern history makes clear that great-power
status is no prerequisite for regime promotion. Contenders for regional
hegemony have frequently relied on regime promotion to shape spheres
of influence and dominance. In the Middle East, for example, both Saudi
Arabia and Iran have promoted friendly (or compliant) regimes in the Gulf
and Mediterranean Levant. As we write this essay, the future of Syria’s
Alawite-Baathist regime remains contested. Iran and Russia, recognizing
that maintenance of their regional influence is at stake, have openly and
determinedly supported the Assad regime, primarily through diplomatic
and material means, over emphatic international protests. Likewise, Saudi
Arabia and Turkey, which stand to benefit from the loss of Iranian influence
should Assad fall, have taken an active role (of unclear extent) in favor of
regime change.
Even small states that can make no credible claim to regional hegemony
have engaged in regime promotion to deal with troubling neighbors. In
1978 Vietnamese intervention in Cambodia put an end to the Khmer Rouge
regime. The following year, Tanzania forced Uganda’s Idi Amin from power.
In short, the scope of regime promotion research should extend below the
great-power threshold.
Our second recommendation concerns consequences of regime promotion.
As shown above, scholars have carried out many studies of the efficacy of
forcible regime promotion. In most cases, the implicit baseline for comparison
has been non-intervention. An alternative approach would compare the
efficacy of forcible regime promotion with that of various types of non-forcible
promotion. Krasner’s (2011) employment of the Barnett and Duvall (2005)
taxonomy is useful here. Most of the studies of regime promotion discussed above consider only what these scholars would call compulsory
power—primarily military force. Under what conditions do interveners
employ other modes of power—institutional, structural, or productive—to
preserve or change a target state’s regime? Why would a state attempting
regime change choose sanctions over soldiers? Why would it marshal world
opinion rather than its military forces? How effective are various modes in
various circumstances?
The role of covert action in regime promotion raises especially intriguing
questions for future research. While covert action may involve violence,
it generally occupies a middle ground between forcible and non-forcible
regime promotion. Beyond Forsythe’s (1992) important treatment of covert

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action, much remains to be said about why states employ hidden over open
means and the conditions under which covert means are likely to secure the
desired outcome.
A formidable obstacle to research on covert action is an inherent selection bias. Because covert operations are necessarily highly classified and
generally compartmentalized, historians and social scientists are likely to
have access only to covert operations gone bad, while successful operations often—how often is not clear—remain in the shadows, hidden from
academic scrutiny. While this obstacle may be insuperable for researchers
interested in large-N quantitative analysis, detailed case studies of both
failures and those successes that have somehow become public knowledge
could expand our understanding of why, how, and when states will pursue
regime promotion.
Third, there is still a great deal we do not know about the incentives for
and against regime promotion. Preserving a friendly but flagging regime
can entail considerable costs. Toppling a hostile regime demands not only
an intervener’s treasure, but most likely its blood as well. The commitment
of state resources required to set up a sustainable new regime—one both
favorable to the interests of the intervener and enjoying sufficient domestic
legitimacy to maintain power—are virtually incalculable (Edelstein, 2008).
Explaining why some states engage in regime promotion despite these
seemingly prohibitive costs should start with a fundamental question: are
intervention decisions driven primarily by domestic variables or systemic
(i.e., international) factors? If the former, we should expect to see domestic
or transnational interest groups—pro-democracy, human rights, economic
interests, and so on—who not only demand action from the governments
of would-be interveners, but who also are powerful enough to threaten
credibly the political survival of leaders who fail to act. If it is instead
the international system that is creating incentives for states to engage
in regime promotion, researchers must be able to show that a would-be
intervening state perceives, with rational justification, that it can advance its
international position by transforming an autocracy into a liberal democracy,
a secular state into a theocracy, and so on.
Probing interveners’ motivations raises our fourth question: Why do
interveners sometimes promote a regime other than their own? United
States promotions of authoritarianism—Iran 1953, Guatemala 1954, Chile
1973—and refusals to promote democracy in various countries are notorious.
As discussed above, Bueno de Mesquita and Downs (2006) and Boix (2011)
offer an explanation: no states have sufficient incentives to install democratic
regimes. But then why would a democratic intervener (like the United
States) ever attempt to promote democracy in a conquered state (West
Germany and Japan after the Second World War or Afghanistan and Iraq

Intervention and Regime Change

11

more recently)? The real puzzle is: why has the type of regime promoted by
the United States varied across time and space (Owen & Poznansky, 2014)?
Other countries have exhibited similar variation; during the Chinese civil
war Stalin’s Soviet Union sometimes extended aid to Chiang Kai-Shek’s
Nationalists rather than Mao Zedong’s Communists.
Our fifth question is: to what extent have international outcomes matched
intervener intentions? The literature is rich on the prospects of democratization through regime promotion, but democratization does not address
the universe of intended outcomes. Have interveners that sought to impose
fascist or theocratic regimes, for example, had more success than democracy promoters? Additionally, extant research concentrates on short-term
outcomes. We recommend further research into the long-term prospects
of externally imposed regimes. Do they continue to serve the interests of
the intervener? Under what conditions do they overcome the challenges of
domestic legitimacy and institutional disarray that Peic and Reiter (2011)
describe? When do they collapse under the weight of insurgencies or
external threats?
Sixth, and finally, is the question of regime promotion’s relation to international hegemony or hierarchy. Notwithstanding that smaller powers sometimes engage in the practice, most interveners are great powers, and, as we
show above, much research suggests that great powers intervene in order
to preserve or extend their international influence and power. Furthermore,
great powers sometimes counter-intervene in target states—that is, when one
state attempts regime promotion, a rival state tries a counter-regime promotion in the same target—suggesting that relative power may be at stake when
a target state’s domestic regime is in doubt (Owen, 2010). Recent work on
international hierarchy (e.g., Krasner, 1999; Lake, 2009) has pointed toward
regime promotion as one practice that sustains and constitutes inequality
among states. The frequency of regime promotion may be telling us still more
about the limits not only of state sovereignty but of the utility of conceiving
of the international system as anarchical.
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FURTHER READING
Bueno de Mesquita, B., & Downs, G. W. (2006). Intervention and democracy. International Organization, 60(3), 627–649. doi:10.1017/S0020818306060206
Bull, H. (Ed.) (1984). Intervention in world politics. Oxford, England: Oxford University
Press.
Edelstein, D. M. (2008). Occupational hazards: Success and failure in military occupation.
Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.
Enterline, A. J., & Greig, J. M. (2005). Beacons of hope? The impact of imposed democracy on regional peace, democracy, and prosperity. The Journal of Politics, 67(4),
1075–1098. doi:10.1111/j.1468-2508.2005.00351.x
Krasner, S. D. (1999). Sovereignty: Organized hypocrisy. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
Krasner, S. D. (2011). Changing state structures: Outside in. Proceedings of the National
Academy of Sciences, 108(4), 21302–21307. doi:10.1073/pnas.1100244108
Lake, D. A. (2009). Hierarchy in international relations. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University
Press.
Lyons, G., & Mastanduno, M. (Eds.) (1995). Beyond Westphalia: State sovereignty and
international intervention. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press.
Owen, J. M. (2010). The clash of ideas in world politics: Transnational networks, states, and
regime change, 1510–2010. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
Peic, G., & Reiter, D. (2011). Foreign-imposed regime change, state power and civil
war onset, 1920–2004. British Journal of Political Science, 41(3), 453–475. doi:10.1017/
S0007123410000426

JOHN M. OWEN IV SHORT BIOGRAPHY
John M. Owen IV (https://sites.google.com/site/jnoowen/) is Ambassador Henry J. and Mrs. Marion R. Taylor Professor of Politics, and a Faculty
Fellow at the Institute for Advanced Studies in Culture, at the University
of Virginia. His newest book is Confronting Political Islam: Six Lessons from
the West’s Past (Princeton, 2014). He is author of The Clash of Ideas in World
Politics: Transnational Networks, States, and Regime Change, 1510–2010 (Princeton, 2010), and of Liberal Peace, Liberal War: American Politics and International
Security (Cornell, 1997), and co-editor of Religion, the Enlightenment, and the
New Global Order (Columbia, 2011). He has published in the European Journal
of International Relations, Foreign Affairs, International Organization, Internationale Politik und Gesellschaft, International Security, International Studies
Quarterly, National Interest, The New York Times, Perspectives on Politics, and
a number of edited volumes. Owen holds an AB from Duke University, an
MPA from Princeton University, and a PhD from Harvard University. He has
held fellowships at Harvard, Stanford, Princeton, and Oxford universities.
His research has been supported by grants from the Mellon, MacArthur,
Donchian, Earhart, and Smith Richardson foundations. From 2011 to 2014
he was Editor-in-Chief of Security Studies.

Intervention and Regime Change

15

ROGER G. HERBERT, Jr. SHORT BIOGRAPHY
Roger G. Herbert, Jr. is a PhD candidate in International Relations and Political Theory at the University of Virginia’s Woodrow Wilson Department of
Politics. His dissertation, Cry Havoc: Rhetorical Action and State Power, examines the rhetorical strategies democratic leaders deploy to marshal domestic
support for war. Herbert led a seminar on the ethical dimensions of statecraft
at the University of Virginia and routinely lectures on related topics at the
United States Naval Academy and the United States Coast Guard Academy.
Prior to his graduate studies, Herbert served for 26 years as a Naval Special
Warfare (SEAL) officer. His diverse postings included multiple SEAL teams,
headquarters of U.S. Naval Forces in Europe, and the Joint Staff. He commanded Naval Special Warfare’s forward unit in the Middle East from 2005
to 2006 and its training command from 2006 to 2008. He retired in 2010 at the
rank of Captain. Herbert holds a BS from Davidson College, an MA from the
Naval Postgraduate School, and an MS from the National War College.
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