Anmerkungen:
Nach Informationen von SSRN wurde die ursprüngliche Fassung des Dokuments 2010 erstellt
Beschreibung:
A number of studies have claimed variously that democracies are effective in mobilizing to defend perceived national interests or to seek redress against perceived injustices committed by non-democracies. This paper examines the question of whether the need of regimes to respond to the preferences of democratic publics makes democracies more likely than other states to engage in hostilities. I analyze the case of the United States and its response to the Barbary pirates of North Africa. I argue that, unlike in non-democratic European regimes where private individuals and corporations had no choice but to assume the costs of piracy, in the United States, domestic interest groups were able to shift their costs the state, pressuring the regime into a military response. The result was that the nascent United States, despite its incredibly weak position relative to European powers, did not maintain the policy of side-payments selected by every other comparable state, and pursued instead policies of military confrontation and regime change. I conclude by asking whether the experience of the international community from two centuries past provides any insight into contemporary state responses to terrorism, and to the current issue of responses to Islamist quasi-state actors who employ piracy off the Horn of Africa and elsewhere in the Indian Ocean