Sanctioning Liberal Democracies

Abstract

This article examines when economic sanctions should be imposed on liberal democracies that violate democratic norms. The argument is made from the social-liberal standpoint, which recognises the moral status of political communities. While social liberals rarely refer to the use of economic sanctions as a pressure tool, by examining why they restrict military intervention and economic aid to cases of massive human rights violations or acute humanitarian need, the article is able to show why they are likely to impose strong restrictions on the use of economic sanctions as well. After reconstructing the social-liberal case against economic sanctions, the article develops the argument that liberal democracies have reasons to support sanctions on other liberal democracies, even when they perpetrate injustices on a smaller scale. Liberal democracies share especially strong ideological, cultural and institutional bonds, and these peer group relations open them to mutual influence.When one liberal democracy commits serious injustices while still proclaiming allegiance to the democratic ethos, it can adversely affect the vitality of the democratic culture in those other liberal democracies with which it maintains close relations. Other liberal democracies therefore have the right and the obligation to condemn this behaviour, in order to preserve their allegiance to their values. The article defends the use of economic sanctions in light of some recent critiques, and concludes by providing an overall assessment of the factors which liberal democracies ought to take into account when they consider imposing economic sanctions on other liberal democracies.P O L I T I C A L S T U D I E S : 2 0 0 9 VO L 5 7 ,[5][6][7]

Cosmopolitan justice and the league of democracies

“…But, from the cosmopolitan perspective, by acting so democracies not only cause undue harm and suffering, they also behave inconsistently and hypocritically -endorsing one set of values at home and at the same time undermining this very same set of values in their foreign policy (Bonanate 1995). At a normative level, then, one could argue that -because they profess allegiance to the core democratic norms -democracies have a special responsibility to promote them both at the national and international levels (Pasternak 2009). …”

The ethics of diplomatic criticism: The Responsibility to Protect, Just War Theory and Presumptive Last Resort

“…Indeed, if economic sanctions are to be justified in part symbolically, that is, by their expression of disapproval of the sanctioned party, and so to contribute generally to existing international prohibitions on aggression and other practices, as some defenders of economic sanctions argue (e.g. Damrosch, 1994 ; Pasternak, 2009 ), they need to be accompanied by an account of the reasons as to why the regime is to be sanctioned.…”

Defining the demos

“…This question is beyond the scope of the present article, though I am inclined to say that outsiders can only hold the collective as a whole responsible and that the distribution of any burdens within that collective is simply another matter of its own internal distribution of costs. For various more detailed treatments of collective responsibility, however, see Joel Feinberg (1968), Margaret Gilbert (2000), Chandran Kukathas (2003), David Miller (2007), and Avia Pasternak (2009).…”