This Article Full Text (PDF) References Alert me when this article is cited Alert me if a correction is posted Services Email this article to a friend Similar articles in this journal Alert me to new issues of the journal Add to Saved Citations Download to citation manager Request Permissions Request Reprints Add to My Marked Citations Citing Articles Citing Articles via Google Scholar Citing Articles via Scopus Google Scholar Articles by Walker, S. Articles by Pearson, F. S. Search for Related Content Social Bookmarking                         What's this?

Should We Really "Force Them to be Free?" An Empirical Examination of Peceny's Liberalizing Intervention Thesis

University of Canterbury Christchurch, New Zealand, scott.walker{at}canterbury.ac.nz

Frederic S. Pearson

University of Canterbury Christchurch, New Zealand

In his article, entitled "Forcing Them to be Free," Peceny (1999) presents and empirically tests an argument that while most U.S. military interventions are not successful in bringing about democracy, those cases of intervention in which the U.S. also pushes for "free and fair elections" are likely to produce long-term democratic outcomes in target countries. Our research challenges Peceny's work in two ways. First, we replicate his analysis, finding that military interventions with democratizing intent are not necessarily as successful as his work suggests. Second, we investigate whether these interventions are likely to lead to a broader concept of democracy and good governance using a series of alternative measures of democratic performance and alternate statistical analyses. Again, we generally find that interventions that attempt to "force" free and fair elections do not have a particularly beneficial effect on long-term democratic outcomes. Our results suggest that more work needs to be done before a "forcing them to be free" hypothesis can be considered to be an advancement in the literature on democratization.

Key Words: military intervention • U.S. foreign policy • democratization • elections • human rights.

Conflict Management and Peace Science, Vol. 24, No. 1, 37-53 (2007)
DOI: 10.1080/07388940601102829


CiteULike    Complore    Connotea    Del.icio.us    Digg    Reddit    Technorati    Twitter    What's this?