deposing its top leaders. I also explain the consequences of these approaches and why the costs of regime change are sometimes greater than what policymakers expect.
CHAPTER 2
How States Impose Regime Change
States can pursue regime change in a variety of ways, each with its own set of costs and risks. Some strategies, aimed at remaking the target state’s institutions, require considerable investment up front but may give the foreign power greater control over the long term. Other strategies, aimed at replacing the leadership, can be cheaper to effect in the short term but can leave former regime members with the power to influence policy in the target state. As a result, the foreign power might spend more to ensure the new regime’s cooperation over the long term.
Understanding the various ways in which foreign powers impose regime change is important, because the strategy chosen can affect whether—and in what way—regime change succeeds. Yet almost no research addresses how states pursue regime change. Some studies focus on certain types of regime-change operations, such as covert missions or wartime campaigns.1 These may explain why policymakers adopt particular methods, but they cannot explain the full range of methods. Others adopt a narrow definition of regime change, limiting it only to cases in which the target’s political institutions, rather than just its leaders, change.2 This approach mistakenly presumes that only institutional transformation produces policy change. Many attempts at policy change, however, rest on changing only the leader. In fact, the leader’s ouster can lead to institutional change if the newly installed leader dismantles the state’s political institutions. The United States, for example, helped to transform political institutions in Guatemala (1954) and Chile (1973) by facilitating coups that brought to power new heads of state willing to undo each country’s democratic institutions. Rather than limit the definition of regime change, a more useful approach is to explain the conditions under which states either oust leaders or transform political institutions to obtain their policy objectives.
In this chapter, I explain how strong states choose between what I refer to as full regime change—the transformation of the target state’s political institutions—and partial regime change—the removal of the target state’s leader and/or top policymakers. I use the terms partial regime change and full regime change rather than more commonly used terms, such as leader FIRC and institutional FIRC, to avoid conflating how regime change is carried out with the end results. Partial regime change may lead to institutional change, either immediately or over time, or it could preserve the state’s institutional structure altogether.
I argue that the choice between full and partial regime change depends on the relative strength of the external and internal opposition in the target state. When the external opposition is strong, foreign powers prefer to partner with it to effect full regime change, which tends to produce more reliable allies. When such opposition is lacking, however, the foreign power may pursue partial regime change, either by conspiring with the internal opposition to oust the leader in a coup or by directly pressuring the leader to relinquish power. I also explain why foreign powers generally prefer orchestrating coups to forcing leaders to resign and under what conditions they will seek a leader’s resignation as an option of last resort.
The only instance in which a foreign power might attempt full regime change, despite the absence of a strong external opposition group, is when the target state is expected to gain or regain military power rapidly. Under these circumstances, the internal opposition is more likely to prove an unreliable ally over time. Because the leader’s internal rivals often share some of the leader’s policy preferences, they may revert to the former leader’s policies once equipped with the military means to resist the foreign power. Rather than incur the long-term costs of ensuring compliance from such leaders, the foreign power may prefer to bear the greater short-term costs of installing the weak, but more reliable, external opposition.
Although policymakers sometimes achieve their objectives through regime change at relatively low cost, they also at times find themselves caught in quagmires with little hope of reward. In this chapter, I also address how policymakers estimate costs, why their estimates are sometimes off, and how their goals can influence their odds of success. I also explain why failed missions sometimes convince policymakers to choose a different approach to regime change rather than abandon the task altogether.
Partnering with the Opposition
For states to see regime change as worth their while, they must have some assurance that the opposition in the target state will help them achieve their foreign policy objectives. This is likely to be the case whenever the opposition—internal or external—has preferences that are at least marginally closer than the leader’s preferences to those of the foreign power. Although the foreign power may still have to incentivize the opposition’s compliance, the costs of doing so will be less than the costs associated with coercing the leader. Of the two types of opposition, the external opposition’s preferences are typically closer to those of the foreign power. For this reason, the stronger the external opposition is militarily, the more likely the foreign power will be to use it to carry out full regime change. In the sections that follow, I detail why the external opposition tends to share the foreign power’s preferences and explain why leaders cannot simply change their policies to convince the foreign power to abandon regime change.
Full Regime Change
When a foreign power pursues full regime change, its priority is to transform the target state’s domestic political institutions. By structuring those institutions such that only certain actors can attain political power, the foreign power can ensure that only actors who share its preferences determine policy. At the same time, the foreign power can also ensure that those opposed to its preferences are denied political power, which means that only by overthrowing the political system could they reverse the foreign power’s policies. Full regime change thus increases the likelihood of longer-lasting policy change.
The stronger the external opposition, the more likely it is that the foreign power will collaborate with it to bring about full regime change. External opposition groups are more likely than internal opposition groups to accommodate the foreign power’s policy preferences. Unlike the internal opposition, the external opposition appeals to a different set of supporters from that on which the current leader relies for power. Because the interests of these supporters rarely overlap with those of the leader’s supporters, it is unlikely the foreign power’s demands would harm the interests of this group. Indeed, in some instances, the external opposition’s interests may overlap entirely with those of the foreign power. The external opposition may share an ideology, ethnicity, or religion with the foreign power or adhere to similar political values. Yet, even when neither side shares an identity, the external opposition may view the foreign power as a natural ally due to its shared antipathy for the targeted leader. Because the external opposition is disadvantaged by the existing political system, it may also be able to convince its followers to compromise their policy preferences to attain the foreign power’s help in overthrowing the system. Thus, the same policy changes that the current leader’s supporters would reject might be embraced by the external opposition and its supporters in order to attain power.
The external opposition not only relies on different supporters from the current leader, it also often prefers very different political institutions. External opponents of an authoritarian leader, for example, often prefer more representative institutions that will ensure their power. Opponents vying with a democratic regime, in contrast, often favor more autocratic forms of government to protect their personal interests. In either case, the external opposition’s desire to transform institutions enables it to accommodate the foreign power’s demands in ways neither the current leader nor internal opposition can. Whereas authoritarian leaders might jeopardize their power by relenting
