Democratic Regimes
Democratic regimes are often seen as
tolerant: they solve their domestic disputes by peaceful means, they keep civil
liberties and political rights, such as freedom of speech or the equal right to
participate in fair and open elections. Autocratic regimes, on the other hand,
are far less tolerant, more suppressive, and generally more violent in their
domestic politics. And if the international reflects the national, it only
makes sense that we will see more violence coming from authoritarian, than
democratic, countries. The ‘democratic peace theory’ turns this intuition into
an academic pursuit, its most renown (dyadic) version: democracies do not fight
each other. But even if true, and quite a few dispute it, why is it so?
Explanations have roughly diverged into two branches: structural-electoral
causes and normative, liberal, ones.
Democratic Peace Theory
The structural rationale
suggests, for example, that electoral considerations of the leaders make them
more cautious about waging war because the domestic cost might be high: voters
may well vote against them in the next elections. Therefore, when both leaders
come from democratic political systems, the probability of war is lower. The
normative rationale suggests, on the other hand, that democratic leaders are
socialized into a peaceful resolution of domestic conflicts, and externalize
this liberal behavior to international politics. Therefore, when they face another
democratic leader, they trust each other to favor peace over violence.
Scholars have extensively
tested both arguments. The large majority of the literature about the
democratic peace theory has focused on militarized interstate disputes, say
between France and Germany. Yet, the above claims have far more applications.
For example, they can be applied to covert actions by democracies. One
application, which Uriel Abulof and I tested, is that governments consider
regime type when weighing intervention in civil wars.
Supporting Democratic Regimes against Rebellion
The liberal hostility
towards autocracies should drive democracies to avoid supporting embattled
autocracies, perhaps even to support rebellions against them. Cases in point
are the U.S. decisions to withdraw its support from the oppressive Iranian Shah
and Nicaragua’s Somoza as well as the USA aiding rebels against the regime of
Assad. On the other hand, democracies have occasionally also helped bring
autocrats to power and keep them there. Cases in point are the France’s
assistance to the Algerian regime, Israel’s backing of the Hashemite Kingdom of
Jordan (against Palestinian Liberation Organization rebels), U.S. support for
various embattled dictators in developing countries (e.g. Indonesia’s Suharto
throughout the anti-communist purge).
From a liberal normative
perspective democratic government would be held as legitimate, being fairly
elected by its constituency, while a violent organization which fight it would
be seen as defying the liberal norms, its violent conduct deem illegitimate. Conversely,
a non-democratic regime would not enjoy this liberal legitimacy—in the eye of
democracies—and its rival might be seen as more legitimate despite its violent
acts. Indeed, autocratic leaders are seen as being in a permanent state of
aggression against their own people. Thus, the more an embattled regime is seen
by the potential intervening democracy as adhering to appropriate norms, the
more likely is intervention on its behalf, against the rebellious organization.
Compared to the normative
account, the structural account seems less pertinent. If democratic leaders
avoid sending troops to fight for a foreign government, they can minimize
potential audience cost. Moreover, since supporting an embattled foreign regime
is often veiled the democratic leader need not navigate the formal/official
systems of checks and balances, or face as fierce an organized opposition or
open public debate. Nonetheless, if the foreign intervention receives wide
media coverage, it may become a subject of public debate, an electoral factor
particularly relevant for decision-makers in democracies. Also, the more
democratic the regime, the greater the likelihood that the opposition will be
able to mobilize protest and exact a higher political price from the government
for supporting a non-democratic government. Moreover, when a military
intervention abroad is overt, it increases the number of institutions that must
approve the decision.
We may thus hypothesize that democratic
leaders considering support for non-democratic governments in their intrastate
wars would take into account the negative institutional and public opinion
implications, and be less inclined to lend a hand to such embattled
non-democratic regimes.
What Data Shows Us
In the statistical analysis we conducted,
we found that autocracies rarely support democratic governments in intrastate
wars. The results also support the prediction that democracies support
embattled autocratic regimes much less than autocracies do (see figure).
Put differently, the more democratic two states are, the higher the probability
one would support the embattled other.
In conclusion, these
findings allow us to better understand democratic foreign policy and expand
democratic peace theory empirical validity to more indirect and sometimes
subtler forms of conduct. Democracies behave differently towards governments
that face intrastate war, partly based on their regime type, and they are
inclined to support more democratic governments.
This post is a summary of our publication:
"Democracy for the rescue—of dictators? The role of regime type in civil
war interventions", Contemporary Security Policy, 37, 341–368.
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