Suchergebnisse

Why do the strong lose? Intuitively, stronger violent actors should win in wars against weaker actors. The literature on insurgencies suggests that democracies will do worse than other countries. However, there is little quantitative literature on why states succeed or fail in their efforts against insurgencies, and the key works find that democracy does not matter. We argue that the combined effect of political inclusion and political competition present in inclusive democracies is a key missing component impacting the success or failure of counterinsurgency (COIN). When procedural elements of democracy are combined with political inclusion, countries are less likely to be successful at suppressing insurgencies because normatively they are less willing to be as repressive and ruthless as necessary. We find that inclusion and procedural democracy separately have no impact on COIN success; however, when combined, the impact is significant, large, and negative. Inclusive democracies lose COIN operations more often than their counterparts.

Scholars argue that states undertake foreign military interventions for economic reasons, yet few have investigated whether intervention produces economic benefits. This article answers this question in the context of US foreign-imposed regime changes (FIRCs) in Latin America. Because FIRCs install leaders who are sympathetic to the intervener's interests, economic arguments maintain that these interventions should increase bilateral trade between the targets and imposing countries. Yet security-based arguments assert that FIRCs should have little economic effect, as regime changes target threats rather than generate economic benefits. A third perspective argues that FIRCs reduce trade by generating political instability, which causes foreign firms to cut back on their involvement and domestic firms to experience difficulty getting goods to market. To test these competing arguments, this study employs a novel dataset on bilateral trade (1873–2007) compiled through archival research in Washington, DC. Using a gravity model and synthetic controls, it finds that FIRC produces an average decrease of 45 per cent in the dollar value of bilateral trade. Further analysis of archival sector-level data and case studies cast doubt on alternate explanations.