Manufacturing (In)Stability? Foreign-Influenced Leader Changes and Coup Attempts

States seek stability and security when influencing leadership changes in other states, yet the historical record suggests wide variation in the achievement of these outcomes. We explain this variation with a focus on the regime type of influencing states. We theorize that the more democratic the foreign influencing state(s), the greater the subsequent risk of coups in target states. Our reasoning is twofold. First, democratic influencing states tend to embed leaders in anocratic political environments, regimes that are more dysfunctional and prone to violence and instability than democratic or autocratic alternatives. Second, democratic influencing states lack sufficient first-hand experience and expertise in coup-proofing, and are reticent to surrender democratic norms entirely, deficiencies that leave client leaders vulnerable to domestic political threats and removal. To test our expectation, we rely on the Archigos dataset of political leaders to identify and code the regime types of foreign states engaged in the installation of political leaders in other states. In turn, we pair this information with data on coup attempts for the period 1951–2004. Our analysis indicates that foreign-influenced leadership installations by democratic states increase the probability of coup attempts in target states.