Domestic Institutional Constraints, Veto Players, and Sanction Effectiveness

Abstract

What effect do the domestic institutional constraints in target states have on sanction outcomes? Other than the narrow focus on political regime type, little is known about how the institutional makeup of target states might affect leaders’ ability to adjust their policies to defy sanctions. We assert that the size of veto players in targets is a crucial yet overlooked institutional factor in explaining sanction effectiveness. We contend that political leaders subject to the approval of multiple veto players are more likely to concede as they are less likely to develop polices to counter the sanctions. We assess the empirical merits of our theoretical claims by combining data on sanctions from the Threat and Imposition of Economic Sanctions data set with the veto points data from the Political Constraints data set. Results from the data analysis for the 1946 to 2005 period indicate that the size of veto players is a significant predictor of sanction success even when we control for political regime type and other major political and economic covariates of sanction effectiveness.

Success of economic sanctions threats: coercion, information and commitment

“…The results of the additional robustness test with the V-Dem data is consistent with our main findings. We see that an increase on the three V-Dem variables is associated with threats of economic sanctions being more likely to succeed relative to imposed sanctions; findings are reported in Table A.3 and margins are plotted in Figure A.1 more likely to succeed at the threat stage (Fearon 1994) is also confirmed in Figure 4, as threats become increasingly more successful than imposed sanctions for a democracy score above 6, which is a common reference point in the literature for a state to be considered a democracy (Jeong and Peksen 2019).…”

“…This is consistent with other studies of economic sanctions and democracy (Wallace 2013). We use the score for the first or primary sender of economic sanctions (sanction leader), as indicated in the TIES data set, following Jeong and Peksen (2019). Given that our focus is the effect of domestic audience cost on a political leader, discounting or increasing the democracy score of a sender state based on the democracy of fellow sender-states of a sanction is likely to bias our analysis.…”

“…Second, effectiveness has been linked to the democracy level of the target and the sender of economic coercion (Bapat et al 2013;Cox and Drury 2006;Jeong and Peksen 2019;Lektzian and Souva 2003). Democratic targets are expected to be more resilient when faced with economic sanctions as a result of the rally-round-the-flag effect.…”

Into the shadows: sanctions, rentierism, and economic informalization in Venezuela

“…Sanctions are also found to be less efficient when used towards authoritarian regimes (Faulkner 2018), although depending on the number of "vetoplayers" (Jeong & Peksen 2017), and institutional characteristics (Peksen 2019b). Yet, worse, sanctions contribute to more autocratic forms of governance.…”

Do sanction types affect the duration of economic sanctions? The case of foreign aid

“…Target governments also have to make changes in their budgetary policies to selectively distribute economic rewards and inducements to elites and regime supporters. To suppress opposition movements stimulated by sanctions, governments need to design effective repressive policies and also allocate necessary funding to the repressive apparatus (Jeong and Peksen, 2017). It takes time to design relevant policies, obtain the agreement of domestic actors, and enforce these policies.…”