Regime change is a popular policy tool for a few reasons. Advocates claim it achieves objectives more cheaply and quickly than sustained diplomatic pressure or engagement, that it will not spiral into broader military action, and that it is more likely to succeed than the alternative. However, the scholarly literature on regime change reveals that these claims are often flawed.
Covert regime change operations frequently fail to achieve their predetermined goals and, even when they do, are not able to stabilize states. They create a higher likelihood of civil war, internal repression, and the empowerment of factions as dangerous as the ones they replaced. They also harm relations with the United States and make other foreign policy tools less effective.
Some scholars argue that the conditions for regime change are determined at a macro-level by long-run historical processes and shape so-called structural factors that can lead to either democracy or authoritarianism, or some combination of the two. Other scholars take a micro-level approach to explain the circumstances that lead to regime change. They argue that individuals make beliefs about their societies and governments, and that these beliefs may change if the existing regime fails to deliver on some promise or if something else happens that causes people to lower their expectations about the government’s ability to manage society or the economy.
Both macro-level and micro-level explanations have serious weaknesses. They do not account for the fact that most mistakes and invasions do not result in regime change, and that even revolutions that start out democratic usually end up somewhere other than that-as happened in France in 1789 and in Egypt in 2011. They also do not address the fundamental nature of Westphalian sovereignty that makes it impractical for foreign powers to overturn foreign regimes, even when they believe those governments are committing atrocities.
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