The third argument was that economic sanctions were not only ineffective and had a terrifying humanitarian impact, but they were even counterproductive ←48 | 49→and strengthened the regimes they should hurt. In Haiti, the military junta used the flourishing black market for accumulating wealth, in Iraq, Saddam stabilized his hard regime.125
Already in 1992, the UN High Commissioner for Refugees, Sadako Agata, stated that sanctions should operate “without making the disadvantaged even more disadvantaged.”126 In January 1995, UN Secretary-General Boutros-Ghali said that the imposition of sanctions raises “the ethical question of whether suffering inflicted on vulnerable groups in the target country is a legitimate means of exerting pressure on political leaders whose behavior is unlikely to be affected by the plight of their subjects.”127 He didn’t reject the use of sanctions in general but called for reforms in their design. In 2000, Secretary-General Kofi Annan called sanctions a “blunt instrument which hurt large numbers of people who are not their primary targets.”128
The intensive discussions in media, scholarship and on (inter)state-level led in the 1990s to a re-evaluation of traditional economic sanctions, and eventually to a process in which many states agreed on a re-design. Instead of simply cutting off a country from the international or bilateral market and hurting the country as a whole, “smart” sanctions should target the elite with travel restrictions, asset freezes and other measures: “their logic is to maximize the impact on the responsible individuals […], while minimizing humanitarian consequences for the innocent population.”129 The Swiss-sponsored Interlaken meetings (1998–1999) resulted in a handbook on the implementation of targeted financial measures; the German-sponsored Bonn-Berlin meetings (1999–2000) focused on travel bans and arms embargoes; and the Swedish-sponsored Stockholm meetings (2001) improved the sanctions machinery at the UNSC.130 The evaluation and re-design of sanctions is considered as a “rare success story of fruitful collaboration between scholars, policymakers, and diplomats.”131 However, even targeted ←49 | 50→sanctions with the UN as sender have unintended consequences in 91 percent of the cases.132
A second trend in the last decades which got not much academic attention is the regionalization of economic sanctions. Besides the UNSC, many regional organizations discovered economic sanctions as a handy tool against members and non-members: the EU, the British Commonwealth, and especially organizations in the Southern hemisphere such as the Organization of American States, the African Union (AU), OPEC, or the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS).133 Unilateral or regional sanctions precede 78 percent of UNSC sanctions.134 The failed integration of states into a world economy (Doha process), and the further integration of states into regional economic blocs give latter more political power. Whereas the UNSC applies more targeted sanctions and less comprehensive sanctions, regional organization tend to use rather comprehensive economic sanctions.135
The main articles dealing with the impact of economic sanctions on the political system were published within the last decade. Some articles deal with the (game) theoretical mechanism, others analyze large-N evidence. Before looking at the theoretical approach underlying most academic contributions and at the mechanism in detail, the next pages introduce the reference articles with a similar research question.
In a series of articles, Peksen & Drury argue that comprehensive economic sanctions have a negative impact on democracy. Sanctions “are more harmful than helpful in the promotion of democratic freedoms and human rights.” Economic sanctions, so their argument, reduce the level of political freedoms in the target state. They “enhance the regime’s coercive capacity and create incentives for the regime’s leadership to commit political repression.”136 Sanctions restrict the flow of goods to the targeted country; the remaining goods within the state are controlled by the leadership. Regime-supporting groups will be more dependent on the regime than before the imposition of sanctions. Analyzing cases between 1970 and 2000, they find a decrease in democracy of 30 percent and a decrease ←50 | 51→of human rights of 70 percent after ten years of sanctions. In an article published one year later and using data from 1972 to 2000, Peksen et al. argue that comprehensive and longer sanctions have a more significant negative impact on the level of democracy (political rights and civil liberties) than limited sanctions. The regime “can use the economic disruption […] as a strategic tool to manipulate access to and redistribute resources made scarce by sanctions to enhance its authority and subsequently to weaken opposition groups.”137 Analyzing cases between 1960 to 2005, Peksen finds that sanctions with high economic costs push the regime to “pursue predatory policies” and to “selective expropriation and politically motivated redistribution of private property.” This policy of predation compensates the regime and its coalition “for the decline in tax base, export earnings, and foreign assistance caused by the sanctions.”138
Soest & Wahman come to a less depressing conclusion: Using cases between 1990 and 2010, they observe a significant correlation between democratic sanctions and an increased level of democracy in targeted authoritarian countries.139 They criticize that most studies do not take the explicit goal of sanctions into account. The authors agree with Peksen that autocratic leaders “tend to survive with a mixed strategy of repression and co-optation.” However, “repression is generally a less efficient tool for regime survival in the long term than co-optation” which does not cause dissent.140 From this perspective, economic instability can indeed lead to regime accommodation or regime collapse, especially when a regime relies on a small winning coalition.141 The costs of democratic sanctions are particularly high for an autocratic regime because “means such as vote rigging, interfering with the media and repressing the opposition are regularly necessary to stay in office.”142 The results of their quantitative analysis support recent democratization research which emphasizes the importance of economic decline for short-term democratization. The authors suggest disaggregating different autocratic regime types in future analyses.143 The authors use mainly variables related to the democratization literature, but not related to the design of sanctions.
Analyzing cases between 1976 and 2001, Wood finds that comprehensive economic sanctions by the UN and U.S. increase the level of repression. This is the best ←51 | 52→way for the leader to stabilize the regime, protect supporters, decrease the threat posed by oppositional elite members, and decrease popular unrest.144 Grauvogel et al. find that sanctions can strengthen an authoritarian regime if it “manages to incorporate their existence into its legitimation strategy.”145 This occurs when the target regime has strong claims of legitimacy and only limited (social or economic) linkages to the sender which makes it easier to discredit sanctions. Strong claims to legitimacy enhance the cohesion of the ruling elite and allow regimes to delegitimize any criticism.
The mentioned articles present large-N evidence and give an impression of the main arguments in the debate. Before explaining the economic and psychological mechanisms in detail, it is necessary to briefly point to the theoretical fundament on which most articles are built. Wintrobe, Kaempfer & Lowenberg, and Kirshner apply a public choice approach to economic sanctions. They do not ask whether economic sanctions bring a policy change in the target country but look for the impact of economic sanctions on different interest groups in the target country. Not states, but individuals and groups are the units of analysis.
Wintrobe develops first models that explain how sanctions push autocrats to redistribute goods from the mass citizenry to supporters.146 His book