This chapter takes the approach of quantitative analysis to test the book’s theory: It shows that there is a systematic connection between the domestic institutions and the US ability to attend to its double tasks of maintaining friendly relations while fostering good governance and more respect of human rights. The chapter shows that partner nations with domestic political institutions that allow for more open and competitive political processes of leadership turnover have closer foreign policy alignment with the United States, experience fewer coups, enjoy better governance, and have more respect for human rights than the ones that do not. That is the case both among democracies and autocracies: in parliamentary democracies more than in presidential democracies; in autocracies with multiparty legislatures than in autocracies with personalist leaders or single-party legislatures.

This chapter delves into US relations with the governments of Afghanistan and Iraq in the post-9/11 era. The chapter describes the idiosyncratic processes that led Afghanistan to have presidential institutions and Iraq to have parliamentary institutions. It then shows how the different constitutional arrangements in Afghanistan and Iraq changed the dynamics through which the United States interacted with incumbent leaders, and their potential successors, in the two countries. It analyzes the extent to which the United States was able to exercise leverage over the incumbent leaders in Afghanistan and Iraq, respectively, given their different constitutional frameworks.

This chapter places the book’s theory into a historical perspective: It describes several ways in which the United States has interacted with incumbent leaders, and their potential successors, in partner nations. From this, the chapter identifies and operationalizes the mechanisms of the book’s theory in respect to the domestic politics of partner countries, differentiating between democratic and authoritarian partners. The chapter also operationalizes four dimensions of the relations between the United States and its partners: (a) the alignment of the foreign policies of the United States and the partner nations’; (b) the likelihood of coups in the partner nations; (c) good governance through the provision of public goods; and (d) the respect of human rights. This chapter, therefore, sets the stage for the systematic empirical analysis of Chapters 4, 5, and 6.