Throughout its history, the United States has employed covert forces to try to change foreign regimes that threaten its interests. For example, when Washington feared that Jacobo Arbenz would turn Guatemala into another anti-Soviet communist state, the CIA launched Operation PBSUCCESS to overthrow him; when it saw newly elected Salvador Allende as a threat, it conspired to topple him; and when it believed that Mohammad Mossadegh was pursuing an anti-American agenda in Iran, it helped organize the coup that brought him down. Such operations are popularly referred to as “regime change.”
There is now a broad scholarly consensus that regime-change missions seldom succeed as envisioned and often produce deleterious side effects. They are likely to spark civil wars, lower the quality of democracy, increase repression, and draw the intervening power into lengthy nation-building projects. They may even cause the target country to become more authoritarian and less pro-American.
Why do policymakers continue to favor regime change, despite their dismal record? Cognitive biases, the desire to improve relations with the target country, and a lack of understanding of the full costs involved can all play a role. The fact that removing odious regimes makes America more secure can also contribute to the rationale for such policies.
A deeper understanding of the dynamics that underlie these regime-change missions can help reduce their negative consequences. Our research shows that a leader can promote higher levels of anti-regime effort by designing his rewards to induce coordination among citizens. This is possible because citizens exhibit endogenous heterogeneity in their beliefs about the likelihood of regime change and because citizens care about others’ efforts, making them easier to coordinate.
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