States of Mind: The Role of Governance Schemas in Foreign-Imposed Regime Change

International Relations 29:2 (June 2015), pp. 139-176 Abstract: How do foreign actors involved in ‘regime change’ decide which kinds of domestic governance structures to promote in place of the regimes they have deposed? Most of the literature on foreign-imposed regime change assumes that interveners make such decisions based on rational calculations of expected utility. This article, by contrast, contends that interveners are predisposed to promote political arrangements that correspond to their own governance ‘schemas’, or taken-for-granted assumptions about the nature of political authority.

https://static.wixstatic.com/ugd/dd9c01_6ee418ee8e99473098733e1eae4883aa.pdf