Perfecting Tyranny: Foreign Intervention as Experimentation in State Control

摘要

Our analysis has several implications. First, governments acting within existing domestic constraints to carry out coercive foreign interventions can generate a loss of liberties and freedoms for citizens at home. Most discussions of constraints on government fail to appreciate that activities outside of the government's geographic territory allow members of that government to act in an unconstrained manner. Per the logic of the boomerang effect, the resulting innovations in state-produced social control can return home and permanently affect the composition of domestic state activities. In the context of international affairs, the main implication is that even when foreign interventions are justified on the grounds of protecting freedom and liberty at home, they may end up having the opposite effect of undermining the very things proponents claim they are protecting.