Abstract
- Regime change in a target country is one of the more common outcomes of a military intervention. Many states have assumed that they may be able to actually influence the direction of the regime change to conform to preferred outcomes, particularly in the direction of democratic shifts. The record on militarily-based democracy promotion is not good. Rather than condemn the behavior overall, it may serve us better to specify the conditions under which aggressive democracy promotion is more likely to succeed. This paper suggests that when states employ an outsider strategy, support insurgent groups over the established government, an intervention is more likely to result in positive changes to the target state’s polity (liberalization and/or democratization). Thus, weakening the established political elite, along with other measures to create the procedural infrastructure for democratic practices, may result in more positive outcomes when states endeavor to promote democracy in target states.