Author: Alexander B. Downes / Journal: International Security

Author:: Alexander B. Downes, Jonathan Monten, and William G. Nomikos
Publication Date:: 04-2014
Content Type:: Journal Article
Journal:: International Security
Institution:: Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, Harvard University
Abstract:: Alexander Downes and Jonathan Monten's article "Forced to Be Free? Why Foreign-Imposed Regime Change Rarely Leads to Democratization" offers important contributions to the study of foreign-imposed regime change (FIRC). The authors should be commended for their use of advanced empirical methods to tackle such an important substantive question. According to Downes and Monten, past research on the democratizing effect of foreign-imposed regime change has overemphasized the characteristics of the intervener and underemphasized the existing preconditions for democracy in the state targeted for intervention. Rather than the FIRC itself, it is these preconditions, Downes and Monten suggest, that explain whether a given state will or will not democratize. That is, their argument posits that targets of FIRC that democratize would have done so independently of the foreign intervention.
Topic:: Regime Change

Author:: Alexander B. Downes
Publication Date:: 04-2009
Content Type:: Journal Article
Journal:: International Security
Institution:: Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, Harvard University
Abstract:: The argument that democracies are more likely than nondemocracies to win the wars they fight— particularly the wars they start—has risen to the status of near-conventional wisdom in the last decade. First articulated by David Lake in his 1992 article “Powerful Pacifists,” this thesis has become firmly associated with the work of Dan Reiter and Allan Stam. In their seminal 2002 book, Democracies at War, which builds on several previously published articles, Reiter and Stam found that democracies win nearly all of the wars they start, and about two-thirds of the wars in which they are targeted by other states, leading to an overall success rate of 76 percent. This record of democratic success is significantly better than the performance of dictatorships and mixed regimes.
Topic:: War

Author:: Alexander B. Downes, Dan Reiter, and Allan Stam
Publication Date:: 10-2009
Content Type:: Journal Article
Journal:: International Security
Institution:: Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, Harvard University
Abstract:: Dan Reiter and Allan C. Stam; Alexander B. Downes. "Correspondence: Another Skirmish in the Battle over Democracies and War." International Security 34, no. 2 (Fall 2009): 194.
Topic:: War

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