A Public Choice Analysis of the Political Economy of International Sanctions

Kaempfer, William H.; Lowenberg, Anton D.

doi:10.1057/9780230596979_8

Cited by 42 publications

(31 citation statements)

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“…She finds sanctions actually help targeted leaders retain office. This is consistent with arguments by Kaempfer & Lowenberg (2000) that, although sanctions harm the economy generally, they can provide substantial rents for leaders to finance repression. Wood ( 2008) argues that dictators preempt any destabilizing effect of sanctions by increasing repression.…”

Section: Economic Sanctions: Threats Reality Success and Failuresupporting

confidence: 89%

Domestic Explanations of International Relations

Mesquita

Smith

2012

Annu. Rev. Polit. Sci.

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Theories that link domestic politics, domestic institutional structures, and leader incentives to foreign affairs have flowered in the past 25 years or so. By unpacking institutional variation across states and by drawing attention to agency issues between leaders, key backers, and citizens, models and empirical studies of linkage help explain even such fundamental phenomena between states as war and peace. In addition, theories of linkage politics explain phenomena not envisioned under earlier unitary-actor state models. We address how the linkage literature explains war and peace decisions, the democratic peace, nation building, foreign aid, and economic sanctions by tying international politics and foreign policy to domestic political considerations.

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Section: Economic Sanctions: Threats Reality Success and Failuresupporting

confidence: 89%

Domestic Explanations of International Relations

Mesquita

Smith

2012

Annu. Rev. Polit. Sci.

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“…I also take the works of Kaempfer & Lowenberg (1992), Miyagawa (1992), Drezner (1999), Hufbauer & Oegg (2003), and O'Sullivan (2003) into consideration to confirm that I do not miss other sanctions observations. While there are more than 183 cases, in order to control the characteristics of the sender, I select the cases where the sender is a member of the UN Security Council or the G7.…”

Section: Notesmentioning

confidence: 97%

“…Sanctions data show that senders are predominantly democratic, whereas targets are much more diverse in terms of their regime type. While there is consensus among scholars regarding the positive effects of sender democracy on the effectiveness of sanctions (Hart, 2000; Judkins, 2003), the effects of regime type in the target country show mixed results (Brooks, 2002; McGillivray & Stam, 2004; Lektzian & Souva, 2003, 2007; Kaempfer & Lowenberg, 1992). In my study, I focus on the domestic institutions of the target.…”

Section: Empirical Analysismentioning

confidence: 99%

Structural estimation of economic sanctions

Whang

2010

Journal of Peace Research

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When are economic sanctions expected to succeed? Previous studies predict that sanctions will be more effective when the issue at stake is important, when the sender and target are allied, when the target’s domestic institutions are more democratic, and when the target’s economy is dependent on the sender’s. This article subjects these explanations to an empirical test using a new fully structural estimation that employs a game theoretic model as a statistical model. The initiation and outcomes of sanctions are incorporated with the strategic behaviors of sender and target states into a unified model. The model improves upon extant models by allowing the initial choice of the sender states to be multiple, not binary. This non-binary option enables the sender states to opt for the optimal intensity level of sanctions. Findings suggest that issue salience is positively associated with the decision to impose sanctions, but not necessarily with their effectiveness. Further, allied targets tend to comply even when they can win a sanctions contest, while non-allied targets tend to resist even when they know that on average the sender is likely to continue sanctioning in the face of resistance. Since sanctions imposed from 1903 to 2002 take place disproportionately between non-allied dyads, and thus belong to the category of sanctions most likely to fail, we can begin to understand why sanctions have such a low success rate.

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“…They might take advantage of the international disapproval by rallying citizens against the government (Escribà-Folch and Wright 2015, 125–126; Grauvogel, Licht, and von Soest 2017; Kaempfer, Lowenberg, and Mertens 2004; Park 2019; Peksen and Drury 2009). More specifically, sanctions against the incumbent regimes might decrease the opposition’s perceived costs of mobilization and increase the opposition’s perceived probability of successful resistance (Carneiro and Apolinário 2016, 571–575; Kaempfer and Lowenberg 1992, 137–156).…”

Section: Decomposing the Impact Of Sanctions On State Repressionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Revisiting the Causal Links between Economic Sanctions and Human Rights Violations

Liou

Murdie

Peksen

2020

Political Research Quarterly

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There is some consensus in the literature that economic sanctions might prompt more human rights abuses in target countries. Yet, the causal mechanisms underlining the sanctions–repression nexus remain little understood. Using causal mediation analysis, we examine the processes through which sanctions might deteriorate human rights conditions. We specifically propose two indirect mechanisms driving human rights violations: increased domestic dissent and reduced government capacity. Sanctions are likely to trigger domestic dissent, and this instability would further induce the government to employ repression. Reduced government capacity caused by sanctions will harm the government’s ability to screen and oversee its security agents, which would subsequently lead to increased human rights abuses. Results from a time-series, cross-national data analysis indicate that sanctions-induced dissent, particularly violent dissent, plays a significant mediating role in the sanctions–repression link. Likewise, we find strong evidence that diminished fiscal capacity triggered by sanctions is likely to result in more repression. There is also some modest evidence that corruption as a proxy for poor governance mediates the sanctions–repression relationship.

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A Public Choice Analysis of the Political Economy of International Sanctions

Cited by 42 publications

References 0 publications

Domestic Explanations of International Relations

Domestic Explanations of International Relations

Structural estimation of economic sanctions

Revisiting the Causal Links between Economic Sanctions and Human Rights Violations

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