Data bias: Most scholars see economic sanctions as inefficient and even counterproductive, with an (unintended) negative impact on humanitarian issues and democracy. Most of the mentioned studies have a scope of around 1960 to the early 2000s when the standard dataset by Hufbauer et al. was re-introduced.56 Examples: Peksen claims that sanctions lead to increasing repression, using cases between 1982 and 2000.57 Peksen and Drury, using cases from 1972 to 2000, write that sanctions reduce the level of political rights and civil liberties.58 However, sanctions changed a lot since the late 1990s, especially after the experience of the devastating humanitarian impact of sanctions in Iraq. Since then, economic sanctions are mostly combined with measures targeting the elite. Is the collateral damage of economic sanctions still present if we control for the new design of sanctions, and if we consider this issue when selecting the time frame? This study includes cases both before and after 2000.
Economic crises mechanism: Scholars of economic sanctions argue that economic sanctions are causal variables of democratic backsliding: They strengthen the incumbent elite. Comprehensive economic sanctions can have dynamics comparable to those of economic crises. However, many scholars of economic crises think that crises are a causal variable of democratization. They create windows of opportunities in autocratic regimes and catalyze regime change.59 This contradiction is puzzling and was indicated multiple times as a research desideratum: “scholars should focus on how and under which conditions an economic crisis can be turned into a political crisis that will ultimately endanger a democratic regime.”60 Differing views on the same subject ask for a combination of insights of both study areas. Whereas previous non-anecdotal research on the political side-effects of economic sanctions does not provide a credible ←35 | 36→explanation of the underlying mechanism, economic crisis literature suggests valuable explanations on how a leader can turn an economic crisis into a political opportunity. The theoretical mechanism proposed in this book assumes three players (the leader, his winning coalition, the population), and three goods (repression, economic transfers, political power), with political stability understood as an equilibrium of these goods.
Regime categorization: Previous research suggests that the political constitution of the target state is crucial for the outcome of economic sanctions. So far, studies in this debate didn’t distinguish various types of regimes. Scholars recommended to “pay greater attention to the burgeoning work on politics in authoritarian countries,”61 and to disaggregate different autocratic regime types in future analyses.62 Among the many possibilities, this book bases its regime categorization on Geddes63 (personalist, military, single-party, monarchy) and Wright64 (personalist versus institutionalist), including liberal democracies to categorize the whole universe of regimes.
Sanctions categorization: The main problem of previous sanctions research is the image of sanctions as a binary variable (dummy), which is more than problematic – it is simply wrong. Sanctions consist of a variety of legal texts; in some cases, they are nothing more than a symbol. Most debate contributions distinguish, at maximum, only between “comprehensive” and “targeted” sanctions, which is no satisfying distinction. This book tries to distinguish sanctions according to their economic impact and their goal (and, in a second step, by their design). The reference articles for the present research question do not include this critical factor which is strongly suggested by the sanctions debate, neo-classical trade theory, and economic crises theory.
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1.4 Defining and conceptualizing sanctions
“The term ‘economic sanctions’ is used in so many different ways that there is much to be said for avoiding it altogether. Unfortunately, the term is so deeply embedded in the literature of economic statecraft that ignoring it is impossible.”65
There is no consensus in the literature regarding a standard definition of economic sanctions. Instead, several synonyms seem to describe a similar phenomenon: economic coercion, economic statecraft, economic warfare, embargo, boycott, positive and negative sanctions, comprehensive sanctions, targeted sanctions… The naming is often confusing. Several scholars use these terms interchangeably; others offer a more precise and differentiating approach.
Following Russell’s fourfold division of forms of power (wealth, armaments, civil authority, influence on opinion)66 and Lasswell’s fourfold division of policy instruments (words, deals, goods, weapons),67 Baldwin develops the following taxonomy of techniques of statecraft: diplomacy (negotiation), military statecraft (use of force), economic statecraft, propaganda (manipulation of information). These four are the tools of statecraft in the international arena (cf. Fig. 1). Policymakers usually use a combination of them.68 (For Hufbauer et al., however, are sanctions ←37 | 38→just a “part and parcel of international diplomacy”.69) Baldwin says to study statecraft is “to consider the instruments used by policy makers in their attempts to exercise power, i.e., to get other to do what they would not otherwise do.”70
Fig. 1: Techniques of statecraft, based on Russell/Lasswell/Baldwin
Among the different forms of statecraft, Baldwin defines economic statecraft as “the use of economic means to pursue foreign policy goals,”71 without clarifying the foreign policy goal. Pape argues for a narrow definition and distinguishes economic sanctions from trade wars which refer to economic means (increasing tariffs in a sector, stop oil production) for an economic goal (decrease tariffs in another sector, increasing oil price).72 Most scholars exclude the pursuit of economic goals from a definition of economic sanctions.
Many academics build their definition of economic sanctions on the seminal book by Hufbauer et al.: “We define economic sanctions to mean the deliberate, government-inspired withdrawal, or threat of withdrawal, of customary trade or financial relations.”73 Peksen defines economic sanctions as “deliberate, government-led restrictions of export, import and the flow of finance.”74 Some scholars see boycotts and embargos as synonyms or subtypes of economic sanctions. According to Daoudi et al., a boycott implies no use of (legal or military) force, whereas an embargo is a prohibition of trade by government order; thus it is connected with the force of law.75 A standard