Peter Leeson, the BB&T Professor for the Study of Capitalism at George Mason University and author of the forthcoming book “The Invisible Hook: The Hidden Economics of Pirates,” blogged here earlier this week about U.F.O.’s and Bigfoot. This is his second of three posts.
Since the dawn of the cold war, a “democratic domino theory” has helped motivate important U.S. foreign policy decisions. Dwight D. Eisenhower summarized this theory, which he called “the falling domino principle,” in 1954:
You have a row of dominoes set up, you knock over the first one, and what will happen to the last one is the certainty that it will go over very quickly. So you could have a beginning of a disintegration that would have the most profound influences.
Eisenhower was talking about communist dominoes. Since him, however, other U.S. policymakers have invoked the same basic logic — only with democratic instead of communist dominoes — and thus virtuous effects where a “first domino” falls.
Most recently, some policymakers have pointed to the possibility of a democratic domino effect in the Middle East as a reason for America’s continued presence in Iraq. According to George W. Bush, for instance, “The establishment of a free Iraq at the heart of the Middle East will be a watershed event in the global democratic revolution.”
In a recent paper, co-author Andrea Dean and I investigate whether democratic dominoes like the ones American foreign policy posits actually exist and, if they do, how “hard” they fall.
Does democracy really spread between countries? If so, how much? We find that democratic dominoes do in fact exist, but they fall significantly “lighter” than foreign policy applications of this principle pretend.
Countries only “catch” about 11 percent of their geographic neighbors’ average changes in democracy; the modesty of this spread rate is consistent over time. Our analysis extends back to 1850, but 150-plus years ago, like today, changes in countries’ democracies were only mildly contagious.
Our study isn’t focused on the impact of U.S. intervention on democracy abroad. But if our estimates are in the ballpark, they have potentially sobering implications for attempts to democratize the world through intervention. Even if U.S. intervention succeeds in improving democracy in a key country it occupies, the democracy-enhancing “spillovers” of the intervention are likely to be minimal.
Democratic dominoes don’t have the “oomph” to democratize entire regions. Most of an intervention’s benefits for democracy, where there are any at all, are likely to remain local.
Bill Easterly and two of his colleagues have a provocative working paper that looks specifically at foreign intervention’s influence on democracy abroad. What they find is even more damning for domino-inspired interventions.
According to their work, which examines interventions in the cold war period, U.S. interventions decreased democracy by 33 percent in countries where America intervened (so did Soviet interventions). Christopher Coyne’s important book examines the reasons for this failure and provides evidence that foreign intervention’s democracy-reducing outcome isn’t limited to the cold war context.
If U.S. interventions fail to enhance democracy in the countries where they take place, pro-democracy spillovers obviously cannot spread throughout the greater regions these countries are part of. If the evidence from past attempts is any indicator, the prospect of using falling dominoes to democratize the globe looks pretty dim.
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I thought that many of the Cold War interventions were less about promoting democracy and more about stopping Communism. One problem with Democratic states is that they might adopt policies hostile towards American interests like socialism and Islamic radicalism, a point clearly forgotten by the current administration with its actions in Iraq.
The domino theory was first invented by the United States during the Cold War, when they said that if one country fell into Communism, the rest of the surrounding countries will soon continue.
Even though countries catch 11% of their geographic neighbors, the countries can decide if they want to convert to Democracy or not. If the country has been using Communism for over a period of time, and the country is doing good as a world superpower, then it will have no incentive to change towards becoming a Democracy.
The only true incentive that will actually make the country change its type of government if doing good, is if a more powerful country, like the United States, decides to go to war with the country. The country will probably be better off if they change their type of government than if they fight a war against the United States.
I don’t think surrounding countries will make one country change its type of government from Communism to a Democracy.
Institutional choice is a complex question, especially when it comes to the determining whether a sta ewill become not only a democracy, but also a sustainable democracy.
I think a state could become a democracy due to a foreign intervention if it had been a democracy in its recent past. Otherwise, it will be hard to make it a democracy. You would have to break down the existing power relationships and would have to change how key political and economic interact. People don’t just give up power easily, and they certaintly don’t want to change the rules that kept them in power. You can implant the institutions, but that doesn’t mean people still won’t continue to follow the rules that existed befors. Also, Putnam’s “Making Democracy Work” demonstrates that citizens’ involvement in the democratic process also matters. If citizens are not used to being part of a system where they coordinate to inform the government of what they want and also punish the government for failing, then democracy cannot work.
As for the domino affect, I think it’s spurious. I think many of the same socio-economic and historical factors lead to democracy. Since states that are near each other tend to have similar socio-economic factors and histories, this is why we see more dicatorships near each other and more democracies near each other.
I can think of several reasons for not becoming overtly involved in the politics of other countries, aside from the modest effect it may have:
1. I don’t want anyone involved in our internal politics.
2. It costs the lives of our young military peeps.
3. It costs money.
4. It serves little purpose aside from making us feel good, if that.
5. For each friend we make we probably make an equal number of enemies.
6. We frequently back the wrong person.Is it reasonable to back an abusive dictator thinking that a dictator is better than a communist.
However, if we’re faced with competing interests in a specific area, and one of our competitors are providing behind the scenes aid, I’m OK with us doing likewise.
I read your paper and learned a bit from it. I don’t know about Tiebout, diffusion, economic zones, emulation as transmitters of democracy but I sure do know about movies, television, radio, styles, music as democratic ambassadors.
I thought the map-section of the paper was very interesting.
Perhaps another paper to consider writing is the democratic penetration variances of a capitalistic vs. socialistic model.
I read the abstract of Bill Easterly and this stimulated an unanswerable question: how would things have turned out had we not intervened? It would be a good academic exercise to have a liberal think tank debate this with a conservative one.
Sorry to break the stride of intelligent thought out comments but I always wondered why America thought there was a significant domino effect for democracy when, as far as my memory of history class goes, we never saw the Communist domino theory our government espoused for so long.
First of all, I would be very cautious before I defined *any* nation as “democratic.” Nations such as China, Russia, Iran, Iraq, and Nigeria may all hold elections, but I question what influence, if any, that a bordering democratic nation would have.
Secondly, I suspect that the results relate more to each nation’s relative sphere of influence than anything else.
Powerful nations will always influence the weaker nations within their spheres of influence, but the only “Domino Effect” that America’s emergence as the only world superpower created towards other powerful nations, was one of lip service. If you don’t believe me, just ask “Former President” Putin” if *he* thinks a domino effect exists.
this post is naive- why on earth would we want democracies abroad?- what we want is puppet regimes- it’s all about the control of resources and ‘opening of markets’ to foreign exploitation- the real role model was Nasser in Egypt- once the ‘threat’ of democratizing Egypt and nationalizing the oil supply came into fruition, he was crushed by US intervention
I don’t understand the preoccupation with democracy. I think the real concern is liberty. Do our actions infuence other to become more liberal and prosperous is the real question. Democracy is just a system that helps prevent liberties from eroding.