Abel Escribà-Folch,

Assistant Professor, Universitat Pompeu Fabra

Joseph Wright,

Associate Professor, Pennsylvania State University

Can coercive foreign policy destabilize autocratic regimes? Can democracy be promoted from abroad? This book examines how foreign policy tools such as aid, economic sanctions, human rights shaming and prosecutions, and military intervention influence the survival of autocratic regimes. Foreign pressure destabilizes autocracies through three mechanisms: limiting the regime’s capacity to maintain support; undermining its repressive capacity; and altering the expected utility of stepping down for political elites. The book distinguishes between three types of autocracies: personalist rule, party-based regimes, and military dictatorships. These distinct institutional settings influence the dictators’ strategies for surviving in power as well as the propensity with which their leaders are punished after a regime transition. Consequently, the influence of foreign pressure varies across autocratic regime types. Further, the book shows that when foreign coercion destabilizes an autocracy, this does not always lead to democratic regime change because different regimes break down in distinct ways. While democratization is often equated with the demise of autocratic rule, it is just one possible outcome after an autocratic regime collapses. Many times, instead of democratization, externally induced regime collapse means that a new dictatorship replaces the old one. The theory is tested against an extensive analysis of all dictatorships since 1946. Historical cases are used to trace the causal process in instances where foreign policy tools helped oust dictatorships.