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Collateral Damage Autocracy?. Tobias Lechner
Читать онлайн.Название Collateral Damage Autocracy?
Год выпуска 0
isbn 9783631823873
Автор произведения Tobias Lechner
Жанр Экономика
Серия Development Economics and Policy
Издательство Ingram
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Economic sanctions are a popular tool of modern foreign policy. However, they may have a negative collateral damage to the political system of the target state. The leader shifts the costs of sanctions from his supporters to the population and uses the opportunity to centralize power. Furthermore, the external threats enable him to blame enemies abroad for his (economic) mismanagement. Though anecdotal and empirical evidence supports the basic argument, it is not clear under which circumstances sanctions have an autocratizing effect. Newer data on sanctions and regimes enable to test the most plausible hypotheses. Several variables try to explain the negative impact of economic sanctions on the level of democracy: the economic costs of sanctions, a democratic goal of sanctions (sanctions designed for improving democracy), a personalist regime, the level of regime legitimacy, the level of economic vulnerability, and the level of development. All sanctions by the UN, the EU and the U.S. that were imposed between 1990 and 2015 are used for the quantitative analysis. Surprisingly, none of the sanctions variables had a negative impact on the level of democracy. Both economic costs and democratic goal correlate with a higher level of democracy, as well as the level of development. The analysis contributes with several key findings to the debate: Sanctions with high economic costs do not cause autocratization. Aid sanctions and arms embargoes correlate with a higher level of democracy; the type of sanction is crucial for its side-effects. Sanctions are not a binary variable and should not be used as such in quantitative analyses. Sanctions have a de jure goal and a de facto goal; an evaluation of sanctions that is only based on the de jure goal is misleading. In summary, sanctions are not as bad – and perhaps not as useless – as many fear.
Keywords: Economic sanctions; Coercive diplomacy; Regime types; Autocracies; Democratization
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Research puzzle
Anecdotal evidence suggests that economic sanctions have a negative impact on the political sphere. Several prominent cases in the last decades show how leaders of a state that is targeted by sanctions use those to their advantage. One example is Yugoslavia in the early 1990s. The UNSC imposed comprehensive economic sanctions on Yugoslavia to end Milosevic’s involvement in the war in Bosnia-Herzegovina. However, the sanctions rents benefited mainly Milosevic and his clique. They boosted a black market that gave rise to a powerful criminal class with ties to the regime; and the disruption of trade benefited state-owned enterprises and the economic-political elite. Moreover, Milosevic could blame outsiders for his own economic mismanagement. The external threat created a pro-regime rally around the flag. These sanctions lead to a weakening of the opposition and democratic reform efforts.
Large-N evidence supports the claim that sanctions have an autocratizing effect. Scholars found that sanctions increase repression, cause protectionism, strengthen the leader, enhance economic transfers from the population to the leader’s coalition, decrease the level of political freedoms and democracy in general. Though there is anecdotal and large-N evidence, it is still puzzling why sanctions have such a negative collateral damage. Especially in the last decades, sanctions were increasingly aimed at enhancing the level of democracy and designed in the respective way. New data and variables that combine insight from different strands of literature encourage to ask the question: Why do some economic sanctions have a negative impact on the level of democracy in the target state but others not?
Sanctions are defined as a set of rules that restrict a state. Economic sanctions are a set of economic rules that restrict a state. They are imposed by a state, a regional organization or an international organization, on another state or entities or individuals related to that state. By coercing, constraining or signaling, sanctions are imposed to achieve a non-economic policy goal. Sanctions can include non-economic measures (such as visa ban, diplomatic sanctions). Sanctions can include economic measures (trade ban, investment ban), then they are called economic sanctions. Usually, sanctions include non-economic and economic measures.
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Literature review
Despite their long history, economic sanctions became target of an academic debate only in the last decades. Especially after the numbers of sanctions exploded in the 1990s, the debate got more aggressive. The overwhelming majority of scholars holds a very negative view about the success of sanctions. After the devastating impact of sanctions in Iraq was known, the focus of academics shifted from the question of success to the question of impact, and scholars published many analyses on the unintended side-effect of economic sanctions on mainly humanitarian issues like health, but also on human rights and democracy.
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