for a case to qualify as an instance of FIRC, there must be evidence that the attempt to overthrow the leader or regime was driven at least as much by foreign actors as by domestic ones. To make this distinction, I use evidence that the foreign power sent its own personnel to the target state, provided military aid that the opposition needed in order to act, or assumed a controlling stake in the operation.36 For example, the United States’ effort to assist the White movement in Russia following the communist revolution involved thousands of American troops and thus is included as a regime-change attempt.37
The third and final condition requires that the initiator intends to restore sovereignty to the target state. In contrast to annexation or colonization, in which the target state or territory remains under the direct control of the intervening state, regime change involves the installation of a new or restored sovereign government. I identify cases of regime change by looking for evidence that the foreign power was not planning to exercise permanent control over the target state. The foreign power may rule its target temporarily, but it must at least plan to restore sovereignty. Nazi Germany, for example, ruled the Netherlands, Belgium, and Denmark (after 1943) through military governors but did not plan to annex or dissolve these states, as it did Czechoslovakia, Austria, and Poland.38 The former qualify as regime-change events, the latter do not. In some instances, a third state may help an ally annex another. The United States, for example, attempted to overthrow the North Korean government to bring it under the jurisdiction of the South. In these cases, I code the third state as engaged in regime change because it seeks to replace one government with another. I do not, however, code the state annexing the other as engaged in regime change because it does not intend to restore the target’s sovereignty. In cases with multiple initiators, I include only those primarily responsible for the regime-change attempt.
FIRC is also distinct from state creation. Newly liberated states or states created by secession do not qualify as instances of regime change because there is no sovereign regime to depose. I also exclude attempts to eliminate nonstate actors, such as the so-called Islamic State, because these are not sovereign states ruled by internationally recognized governments. In sum, whether it succeeds or fails, regime change constitutes an attempt by a state to replace the leadership of a sovereign state to which it intends to restore sovereignty. Though the foreign power’s aim may be to produce policy change, its purpose is to install leaders more willing to embrace that change.
Method and Case Selection
I use several methods to establish the logic of my argument and test its empirical validity. The argument itself is based on a game theoretic model. To keep the argument accessible to readers unfamiliar with game theory, I lay out the informal version of the argument in Chapter 1 and present the model in Appendix 2. I also derive hypotheses from my argument, which I test with both quantitative and qualitative evidence alongside alternative arguments. For the statistical analysis, I test my main hypothesis—that domestic opposition in a target state increases the likelihood of FIRC—on a data set that includes 133 cases of attempted FIRC (see Appendix 1). These tests help establish the generalizability of my argument, showing its ability to explain a large number of cases, even when controlling for alternative explanations.
Statistical tests, however, are less effective in testing an argument’s causal logic. For this, I rely on a series of case studies. If my argument is correct, I should find evidence that when leaders faced significant domestic opposition, they resisted complying with foreign demands that could put their political power at risk. I should also find that, as long as the opposition was not more opposed to the foreign power than the leader, the foreign power attempted to use the opposition to overthrow the leader. When the leader did not face significant domestic opposition, I should find that the foreign power agreed to some form of settlement. This settlement may have taken a variety of forms, ranging from one that involved concessions from the targeted leader to one that resembled the status quo or even entailed concessions from the foreign power. Findings that would challenge my theory include evidence that leaders facing strong domestic opposition acquiesced to politically costly demands without an equally strong incentive from the foreign power to do so. Evidence that the foreign power rejected regime change and pursued negotiations in such instances would also challenge my theory. Additionally, the theory would also be falsified if a foreign power attempted to overthrow a targeted leader without the existence of a strong, friendly domestic opposition.
I use a most-similar case design in which I analyze similar events that share a number of features but differ in their outcome—one ending in a settlement, the other in regime change.39 First, I compare the response of President Dwight Eisenhower’s administration to liberal governments in Guatemala and Bolivia in 1954. I next look at the Soviet Union’s response to nationalist governments in Poland and Hungary in 1956. Finally, I examine the US decisions to impose regime change on Iraq in 2003 but negotiate with Libya, only to pursue regime change in Libya eight years later.
By choosing cases that share numerous traits, I can test my argument’s causal logic while controlling for alternative hypotheses. For example, in each case study, the targeted leaders’ regime types and ideologies are similar, which suggests that neither factor can explain the decision to pursue FIRC in these cases.40 The target state’s geostrategic location (i.e., within or outside the imposing state’s sphere of influence) is also similar in each case, which suggests that stronger powers might be just as likely to negotiate as to overthrow leaders within (or outside) these regions. Finally, the same individual(s) made policy in the stronger state during roughly the same time period. Because it is unlikely that policymakers’ personalities, views, biases, or domestic pressures varied much during the time frames involved, it is also unlikely that these influenced the divergent outcomes.
Variation across the cases also allows me to introduce additional controls. I have paired states with different regime types to control for arguments suggesting that certain combinations are more likely to lead to FIRC. In the studies of American involvement in Bolivia and Guatemala, a democracy squared off against two democratically elected leaders. In the cases of the Soviet responses to Poland and Hungary, the more powerful state was a nondemocracy, whereas its targets were popularly supported communist leaders. In the study of US responses to Libya and Iraq, the stronger nation was democratic and its targets were not. The cases also vary in terms of the structure of the international system. The first two cases occurred during the Cold War, a period of bipolarity, whereas the last took place in the post–Cold War era, a period of unipolarity in which the United States faced no peer competitors. The cases vary as to the timing of the decision to pursue regime change too. In the first and last cases, the decision to pursue FIRC in one instance preceded the decision to negotiate in the other. In the second case, the decision to pursue negotiations preceded the decision to pursue FIRC. Finally, to maximize the range of cases, I have chosen ones that varied in the amount of force used and the type of regime change pursued. The first case involves a covert operation aimed at partial regime change. The second involves a military invasion aimed at partial regime change, and the third set includes two cases aimed at full regime change, one involving a military invasion and the other a foreign-backed insurgency. Table 1 shows the three case studies and the control variables.
Another element dictating case selection is the availability of primary source materials. Access to meeting minutes, memos, and various other governmental documents allows for better insight into the policies as they were conceived at the time. The CIA and State Department have released a wide variety of materials related to the deliberations of the most central players in Guatemala and Bolivia.41 The minutes of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU CC) Presidium are available for the discussions about Poland and Hungary.42 They shed light on how Soviet decision makers weighed their policy options during the two uprisings. Finally,
