Rate My Professor Mark Peceny

Mark Peceny is a Professor of Political Science at the University of New Mexico, where he joined as an assistant professor in 1992. He earned a B.A. in Political Science from the University of Michigan in 1984 and a Ph.D. from Stanford University in 1993. Peceny was promoted to full professor and appointed chair of the Political Science department in 2005. He served as interim dean of the College of Arts and Sciences in 2011 and then as dean from 2011 to 2016. His research and teaching interests center on international relations, American foreign policy, and inter-American relations, particularly the liberal peace and U.S. military interventions. Peceny examines democracy, dictatorship, and the international system, exploring how liberal culture and republican institutions shape democratic behavior in world politics and how international actors influence democratization processes within states.

Peceny's book, Democracy at the Point of Bayonets (Pennsylvania State University Press, 1999), analyzes the promotion of democracy during U.S. military interventions over the past century. It argues that U.S. liberalism shapes pro-liberalization policies differently depending on whether initiatives originate from the president or Congress, helping reconcile liberalism's contradictions as a dominant power. The study provides statistical evidence that such interventions can successfully foster liberal democratic institutions in target countries. His publications appear in American Political Science Review, International Organization, International Studies Quarterly, Political Research Quarterly, Journal of Peace Research, and Latin American Research Review. These works cover UN efforts to promote liberal democracy in Central America after civil wars, the role of U.S. anti-drug policies in prolonging Colombia's civil war, a Latin American regime for collective defense of democracy, comparisons of democracy promotion by the U.S., France, Britain, and the UN, U.S. efforts in Afghanistan and Iraq leading to liberalization but not full democracy consolidation, and the conflict behavior of authoritarian regimes, where single-party dictatorships prove more peaceful than personalist ones. Peceny has received university-wide and college-wide teaching awards at the University of New Mexico.