Reaping What You Sow

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 nondemocratic regime. American support, or lack thereof, for the ancien régime structures the domestic politics of democratic transitions. In the absence of previous U.S. support, democratization commonly leads to positive foreign-policy realignment toward the United States. Conversely, when the United States supports nondemocratic 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. Using 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. This research has important implications for international relations theory and American foreign policy.