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The Democratic Domino Theory: an Empirical Investigation

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The Democratic Domino Theory: an Empirical Investigation The Democratic Domino Theory: An Empirical Investigation Peter T. Leeson George Mason University Andrea M. Dean West Virginia University According to the democratic domino theory, increases or decreases in democracy in one country spread and “infect” neighboring countries, increasing or decreasing their democracy in turn. Using spatial econometrics and panel data that cover over 130 countries between 1850 and 2000, this article empirically investigates the democratic domino theory. We find that democratic dominoes do in fact fall as the theory contends. However, these dominoes fall significantly “lighter” than the importance of this model suggests. Countries “catch” only about 11% of the increases or decreases in their average geographic neighbors’ increases or decreases in democracy. This finding has potentially important foreign policy implications. The “lightness” with which democratic dominoes fall suggests that even if foreign military intervention aimed at promoting democracy in undemocratic countries succeeds in democratizing these nations, intervention is likely to have only a small effect on democracy in their broader regions. n a 1954 press conference, then-U.S. President Germany, Britain, and elsewhere have reasoned according Dwight Eisenhower famously described what he to this model as well (Jervis 1991, 20–21). I called “the falling domino principle” behind Ameri- Although Eisenhower articulated his falling domino canforeignpolicy:“Youhavearowofdominoessetup, principle specifically in the context of communism, the you knock over the first one, and what will happen to the basic idea of a political “domino effect” is much broader last one is the certainty that it will go over very quickly. So than this. Over the course of the twentieth century the you could have a beginning of a disintegration that would falling domino model has been invoked in a variety of have the most profound influences.”1 different contexts as a theory of geopolitical determina- The dominoes Eisenhower described were coun- tion. Franklin D. Roosevelt, for example, adhered to a tries, and the contagious element they carried were the proto-domino theory concerned with fascist contagion political-economic features of communism. In partic- (Ninkovich 1994). Roosevelt famously feared the spread ular, Eisenhower’s falling domino principle referred to of fascism not only through Hitler’s military conquest, countries’ alignment with the Soviet Union versus the but also through fascism’s spread to neighboring coun- United States. This idea’s important Cold War legacy is tries Hitler did not invade. Stanley K. Hornbeck, Roo- well known. From Eisenhower’s predecessor, Harry Tru- sevelt’s Chief Advisor for Far Eastern Affairs in the State man, who intervened in South Korea in 1950, to Ronald Department, likened the global geopolitical landscape to Reagan’s intervention in Latin America in the 1980s, the a gigantic fabric. “Disturb this fabric at any point,” he domino theory undeniably stood “at the heart of Ameri- argued, “and you produce disturbances throughout its can foreign policy” (Slater 1987, 105). America is not the entirety” (quoted in Ninkovich 1994, 92). only country to have rooted important foreign policy de- Most recently, a democratic domino idea has been cisions in falling domino logic. Foreign policymakers in used to justify American intervention in Iraq and the Peter T. Leeson is BB&T Professor for the Study of Capitalism, Department of Economics, George Mason University, MSN 3G4, Fairfax, VA 22030 ([email protected]). Andrea M. Dean is a Kendrick Fellow in Economics, West Virginia University, P.O. Box 6025, Morgantown, WV 26506 ([email protected]). Weare especially grateful to the Editor, five anonymous referees, Chris Coyne, and Russell S. Sobel for invaluable comments and suggestions. The financial support of the Mercatus Center at George Mason University is also gratefully acknowledged. 1Presidential News Conference, April 7, 1954. American Journal of Political Science, Vol. 53, No. 3, July 2009, Pp. 533–551 C 2009, Midwest Political Science Association ISSN 0092-5853 533 534 PETER T. LEESON AND ANDREA M. DEAN Middle East, which the New Republic called “the most consider the domino idea using case studies to examine a important foreign policy decision in a generation” (Ack- variety of countries and regions. erman 2006). According to George W. Bush, “The estab- More recently, a growing literature aims to empir- lishment of a free Iraq at the heart of the Middle East ically evaluate the idea of “democratic diffusion.” The will be a watershed event in the global democratic revo- first author to systematically address this issue was Starr lution.”2 By improving democracy in Iraq, it is argued, (1991), who used Poisson and hazard analysis to consider American occupation will lead to falling dominoes that whether there may be regional or “neighborhood” effects democratize the Middle East. of political regime transitions between 1974 and 1987. Although the particular political-economic features Following Starr, Ray (1995), Jaggers and Gurr (1995), of concern vary across renditions of the domino theory, and others considered global trends in democratization the basic logic underlying domino-style reasoning is the with a particular focus on the forces propelling what same in each case. In this model, changes in one country’s Huntington (1991) described as “the third wave” of de- political institutions spread to neighboring countries, af- mocratization in his classic treatment that considered the fecting these countries’ political institutions similarly, growth of global democracy during the late twentieth cen- which spreads to their neighbors, and so on. According tury. O’Loughlin and colleagues’ insightful work marked to the democratic domino theory, for instance, increases an important new approach to empirically addressing in one nation’s democracy lead to increases in its neigh- democratic diffusion based on what the authors called a bors’ democracy, leading to increases in their neighbors’ “spatial-diffusion framework” (1998, 545). The authors democracy, and so on. The result is greater democracy used this framework to examine the temporal and spa- in the region and world. On the other hand, decreases in tial features of democratic diffusion in the post-WWII democracy in one country may also “infect” neighboring period by “map[ping] and graph[ing] changes in the nations, reducing their democracy, which spreads to their number and nature of political regimes” (545). Similarly, neighbors, deteriorating global democracy. Gleditsch and Ward (2000) consider the spatial dynam- This article investigates evidence for the democratic ics of democracy to investigate the question of whether domino theory. Despite this idea’s importance guiding democracies are more or less prone to war. More recently, global foreign affairs, relatively little research has inves- Starr and Lindborg (2003) have extended Starr’s (1991) tigated whether in fact changes in democracy spread original analysis. Their paper does not use spatial meth- between geographic neighbors as this theory hypothe- ods like the other recent scholarship in this area, but it sizes. Indeed, surprisingly few papers directly address does expand the time period under consideration to in- the domino theory as a general proposition at all. Sev- clude data up to 1996. Finally, Gleditsch and Ward (2006) eral Cold War–era papers offer their judgments about and Franzese and Hays (2008) have highlighted the im- whether domino effects will be important in one coun- portance of recognizing and explicitly modeling spatial try or another and what the broader consequences of dependence in empirical analyses concerned with inves- falling dominoes might be in particular nations (see, for tigating the spread of democracy. instance, Murphy 1966; Viksnins 1974). A handful of oth- Despite this important research, as Starr and Lind- ers argue that the stakes of falling dominoes during the borg point out, there are still “only a handful of studies Cold War were exaggerated (see, for instance, Slater 1987; directed to the ...possibility of [democratic] diffusion ef- Walt 2000). Several papers that consider how the domino fects” (2003, 491), leaving a number of critical questions theory metaphor has affected countries’ foreign policy at least partially unanswered. To our knowledge, no one, also exist (see, for instance, Shimko 1994). for example, has empirically investigated the democratic Understandably for the time it was written, much domino theory including the nearly full century between of this research focuses exclusively on Southeast Asia or 1850 and the end of WWII. Further, although a few of confines itself to other “specific dominoes” rather than the papers discussed above have considered general geo- on the question of falling dominoes more generally (see, graphic and temporal correlations in the rise (and fall) of for instance, Silverman 1975). An important exception to democracy throughout the world, no one to our knowl- this is the excellent collection of essays compiled by Jervis edge has actually estimated the rate at which democracy and Snyder (1991), which taken together more broadly spreads between countries, if in fact it does so as the democratic domino theory and some of the initial re- search discussed above suggest. In particular, still missing from the literature is an investigation of the equilibrium 2“President Bush Discusses Freedom in Iraq and the Middle East.” Remarks to the
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