Teaching them to elect good men: Ideological determinants of coercive regime change

In this dissertation, I engage the following question: Why does the United States seek to forcibly oust the governments of other nations? By which logic does a Great Power acquire an interest in other nations' forms of domestic governance? I argue that accounting for coercive regime change requires the incorporation of ideas into theories of international politics. Using a structured, focused comparison of three cases of coercive regime change, this study shows the causal linkages between ideas and interests.; I adopt a "Constructive-Realist" approach to show the reciprocal relationship of collective ideas and the "brute facts" of the material world. I argue that the shared beliefs of a state's central decision makers have a powerful effect on the types of foreign policies the state adopts. In the case of coercive regime change, the most powerful causal factors are ideological, rather than material. Ultimately, coercive regime change is an ideological referendum on the target state.; The dissertation tests ideas-based analyses against a purely interest-based null hypothesis. Other rival explanations include schema theory and economic capture models such as those of Wisconsin-school diplomatic historians. The cases show that neither ideological nor material factors are sufficient for explaining the decision of the United States to forcibly oust another country's government. No support is found for economic causation. Schema theory, however, cannot be completely ruled out. Future research will be directed at determining the relationship of collective ideas to perceptions and schemas.