| Why do states realign their foreign policies? I argue that democratic transitions are an important cause of foreign policy realignment with the United States, and furthermore, that the nature of that realignment is conditioned by whether the United States supported the previous non-democratic regime. American support, or lack thereof, structures the domestic politics of democratic transitions. In the absence of previous U.S. support, democratic transitions commonly lead to positive foreign policy realignment toward the United States. Conversely, when the United States supports non-democratic regimes, democratic transitions rarely produce positive realignment. I use an original data set of country-year dyads with the United States from 1950 to 2000. Employing Markov Transition regression models, I find that the interaction of democratic transition and previous U.S. support is a powerful determinant of foreign policy realignment. A comparison of case studies within and between Egypt and Iran isolate and elucidate the causal mechanisms at work. This research has important implications for international relations theory and American foreign policy. |
