Economic sanctions and official ethnic discrimination in target countries, 1950–2003

Conventional studies on the consequences of sanctions tend to focus on the target society as a whole without specifying how foreign economic pressures might affect the well-being of vulnerable groups within target countries – the same groups who often disproportionately bear the burden of sanctions. This study explores the extent to which sanctions increase the likelihood of discriminatory government practices against one of the globally most vulnerable groups, ethnic groups. It is argued that sanctions contribute to the rise of official ethnic-based economic and political discrimination through contracting the economy and creating incentives for the target government to employ ethnic-based discriminatory policies. Using data on over 900 ethnic groups from 1950 to 2003, the results lend support for the theoretical claim that sanctions prompt the government to pursue ethnic-based discriminatory economic and political practices in multiethnic countries. The findings also indicate that multilateral sanctions are likely to be more harmful to the well-being of ethnic groups than sanctions levied by individual countries. Further, the negative effect of comprehensive sanctions appears to be greater than that of sanctions with moderate and limited impact on the target economy. The regime type of the target state, on the other hand, appears to have a significant role only in conditioning the hypothesized effect of sanctions on economic discrimination. Overall, this study’s focus on a vulnerable segment of the target society – ethnic groups – offers a greater understanding of the consequences of sanctions. It also provides additional insight as to how, in multiethnic countries, political elites might domestically respond to external pressures to retain power.     

When Do Imposed Economic Sanctions Work? A Critical Review of the Sanctions Effectiveness Literature

ABSTRACT

There is growing policy consensus in Washington and other Western capitals that economic sanctions are powerful tools to cope with major foreign policy crises. Are sanctions, particularly targeted sanctions, really the potent instruments optimists suggest? Under what circumstances do punitive economic measures induce policy change in sanctioned countries? To probe these queries, in this article I outline the conditions that have been identified as more likely to lead to successful sanctions outcomes in the literature. I also discuss four major shortcomings of existing scholarship. First, the sender-biased interpretation of sanctions effectiveness renders the treatment of the ‘ineffective’ cases with negative outcomes the same as those cases that induce no discernable change in target behavior. Second, the prevalent use of static data from existing sanctions databases reduces the ability of researchers to study various time-specific factors affecting the probability of sanctions success. Third, the dominant state-centric bargaining model in the literature offers limited insight into contemporary coercive measures directed at non-state actors. Fourth, the study of sanctions in isolation of other instruments that frequently accompany them, such as incentives and diplomatic pressure, leads to a partial understanding of the specific role sanctions play in shaping the outcome of key foreign policy initiatives.     

Autocracies and Economic Sanctions: The Divergent Impact of Authoritarian Regime Type on Sanctions Success

There is some consensus in the literature that economic sanctions targeting authoritarian regimes are less effective than those against democratic regimes. This line of research, however, assumes that autocratic regimes are monolithic and that they have similar capacities to resist foreign pressure. This study argues that the success rate of sanctions against dictatorships is contingent on institutional differences across different types of autocracies. I develop a theoretical model indicating that single-party and military regimes are less likely to concede to foreign pressure compared to democracies. This is because they effectively use various repressive tactics and positive inducements to endure the costs of the coercion. Sanctions against personalist regimes, on the other hand, are likely to be as effective as sanctions directed at democracies. Personalist regimes might be inclined to acquiesce to foreign pressure due to their lack of strong institutional capacity to weather the costs of the sanctions. Results from the selection-corrected models show that sanctions against military or single-party regimes are less likely to induce concessions relative to democratic target regimes. The findings also indicate that there is no significant difference in the success rate of sanctions against personalist regimes and democratic governments.