Duke University - Alexander Downes - Catastrophic Success: Foreign-Imposed Regime Change and Civil War - 2010

Foreign-imposed regime change (FIRC) has been argued to have a pacifying effect on interstate relations: when a victorious power changes the composition of its defeated rival’s government, a recurrence of armed conflict between them becomes very rare. Yet the domestic effects within states that experience FIRC may be less benign. This paper investigates the extent to which FIRC might be a form of “catastrophic success,” dampening international conflict but exacerbating internal conflict.