While strolling through New York City some years ago, Madison Schramm came across a large billboard featuring the larger-than-life image of former Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.
“He was featured against the backdrop of a mushroom cloud, with a message warning that the U.S. had to stop Iran,” says Schramm, now an assistant professor with the Department of Political Science in the Faculty of Arts & Science. “The way he was identified as a symbol of this autocratic regime was something I found fascinating.
“It got me wondering: how much authoritarian power is a byproduct of the symbols that we in liberal democracies tend to attach to them?”
Schramm’s new book, Why Democracies Fight Dictators, investigates this question. She demonstrates that liberal democracies are more likely to attack authoritarian regimes when they are viewed as “personalist” — that is to say, where a single individual has undisputed executive power and prominence.
A personalist regime lies in contrast with a military junta, where the military is in power, she says. “Or with a party system, such as China — although Xi Jinping is consolidating power there, which may tip the state toward a more personalist structure.”
In conceiving her book, Schramm noted that much research had already been conducted on what’s called Democratic Peace Theory, or the idea that liberal democracies tend not to go to war with each other.
Far less was known about why liberal democracies tended to target certain types of authoritarian states, particularly when said autocratic regimes are not more likely to attack them. It’s a curious phenomenon, especially since democracies are assumed to be in the business of protecting civil liberties, liberties that are necessarily restricted — often fatally — by war.
Beginning with a statistical analysis to prove her point, Schramm goes on to look at this phenomenon through the lens of two particular cases.
One is the 1956 Suez crisis, in which American and British leaders fixated particularly on the personal traits of Egyptian leader Gamal Nasser; the other is the Gulf War of 1991, which gave rise to more than a decade-long American preoccupation with deposing Saddam Hussein, culminating in the Iraq war that began in 2003.
Democratic leaders, much like other elites, she says, tend to be affected by common cognitive biases: “particularly in these cases the tendency to attach blame to individuals instead of groups, and to weigh information associated with individuals more heavily than abstract information.”
Schramm says that among leaders in liberal democracies, these biases are augmented by a certain social identity that took shape in the wake of the Second World War.
Since that time, “there has been a narrative that has strengthened and taken hold; one that identifies dictators as the ‘other’ that reaffirms the democratic self,” says Schramm.
“Hitler has become synonymous with dictator. So the cognitive groundwork is already laid, whether or not Hitler is explicitly invoked. Especially considering how we think of World War II as the “good war” — we believe we can in some way recreate this role for the United States and other liberal democracies, one of standing up against authoritarianism, of protecting populations.”
Schramm stresses that liberal democracies can certainly have good intentions, and that initiating conflict with autocratic regimes should not be avoided in all cases.
Still, “this rush — driven by these cognitive processes — often produces catastrophic outcomes that ultimately aren’t in service of the liberal democracy, international security, or the populations these conflicts seek to protect, especially when other avenues could potentially have been pursued.”
Why Democracies Fight Dictators looks extensively at how psychology — particularly emotion — factors into leaders’ decision-making in times of conflict. Schramm says that when democracies view personalist regimes as existential threats, it tends to gives rise to feelings of anger.
In International Relations conflict research, the concept of fear is often invoked; however, Schramm argues that liberal democracies are significantly motivated by anger when dealing with personalist regimes. “Fear and anger produce really different behavioural responses,” she says. “With fear we tend to become more risk averse, whereas with anger we become more risk acceptant. And this is generally associated with aggression.”
Schramm says that U of T is a highly regarded centre for the study of decision-making in foreign policy, citing the work of scholars such as Janice Stein and Brian Rathbun at the Munk School of Global Affairs & Public Policy. More research in this area, she contends, could lead to more effective and level-headed decision making on the part of leaders.
“Trying to avoid groupthink, having a diversity of voices, including those who could potentially push back on different decisions — all this would make a great difference,” she says.
She adds that while it may be tempting to try to divorce emotion from decision-making processes, this is not only impossible, but also discounts the role of positive emotions such as empathy key to resolving crises.
“It’s important to understand the role of emotion in these conversations,” she says. “as important decisions, particularly in the realm of national security, are always punctuated by affect.”