Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Review Method: Peer Reviewed
Abstract: Several studies in the past several
decades have examined the general topic of U.S. troop deployments. Most
of these studies have either examined troop deployments as part of
American alliance behavior (i.e., permanent deployments), or as
attempts by the U.S. to affect the internal dynamics within weaker
states (i.e. interventions). The intervention literature has focused
predominately in trying to determine what effects interventions have
had on host nations, with a particular focus on democratization and/or
human rights. What this sub-literature has failed to do, however, is
account for the presence of significant troop deployments stationed
abroad for long periods of time. This poses a problem since much of the
recent democratization literature argues that culture and other
internal forces (which change generationally), not external political
pressures lasting for short periods, are the single greatest
determinate of democratic success. This study seeks to address this
problem by examining how the length and size of a U.S. troop deployment
may have indirect effects on the long-term prospects of democratic
change and stability.