Do sanctions spell disaster? Economic sanctions, political institutions, and technological safety

Abstract

Sanctions restrict or terminate economic relations between two or more countries, directly and negatively influencing sanctioned countries’ companies. We argue that sanctions are similar to recessions—both reduce economic activity in affected countries. Less economic activity results in a lower accident risk as companies use their productive facilities less. Reduced revenues also force companies to adjust by cutting costs, which includes spending on safety. Hence, accident damage should increase under sanctions. Governments can intervene by enforcing safety regulations, and their incentives to do so are stronger in democracies, where citizens can more easily remove politicians from office. Therefore, accident damage increases only in nondemocratic countries, while democracies succeed in maintaining technological safety and hence sanctions do not affect accident damage.

How Patient Safety Culture Influences Adverse Event Reporting and Use of the Incident Reporting Tool: A Systematic Review

“…LOAs in Australia are conducted with low levels of negative incidents, despite the increased risk. This is because safety controls are in place in most cases to prevent accidents [66,67] and the accident rate for people participating in LOAs is 2 per 1000 participants with minor severity [67]. This example suggests that formal incident reporting prevents future events [68][69][70].…”

Research Questions with PICO: A Universal Mnemonic

“…with the IV and the DV occupying the I and C of PICO might sound more natural than, "Can the assumption that international economic sanctions are like recessions (I) help us in finding out theoretically (O) whether democracies or nondemocracies are better at minimizing industrial accident damages (P)? ", where the C is implicitly the null hypothesis [43]. Or the question, "Is international aid (P) delivered by international organisations and nongovernmental organisations (I) more effective in enhancing processes of democratisation (O) than aid delivered by corporations (C)?"…”