Economic Sanctions and Political Repression: Assessing the Impact of Coercive Diplomacy on Political Freedoms

Peksen, Dursun; Drury, A. Cooper

doi:10.1007/s12142-009-0126-2

Cited by 82 publications

(41 citation statements)

References 51 publications

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“…Our political variable covers both the Sanction-Democracy relation evident already in the work of Galtung (1967) Figure 3. Time path of utility as the economy moves from free trade to autarky due to a sanction Sanction-Repression link recently explored by Peksen & Drury (2009.…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Potential early phase success and ultimate failure of economic sanctions

Dizaji

Bergeijk

2013

Journal of Peace Research

117

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In order to explain why successes of economic sanctions predominantly occur in the first two years of a sanction episode, we analyse the dynamic economic and political impact of an economic sanction. Our theoretical analysis of the dynamics of adjustment gives us two important results: firstly, the strongest impact in terms of utility forgone occurs in the initial phase of the sanction episode and, secondly, the long-term gain of compliance decreases during a sanction episode and is lower in the long run than acknowledged by the usual comparative static analysis. On both accounts we expect that sanctions have a higher probability of success in the early phase and a lower probability of success in the long run. Next we build a comprehensive set of vector autoregressive (VAR) models that we apply to the case of a boycott of Iranian oil. An important innovation is that we include both economic and political factors in a VAR model of economic sanctions. Our VAR models find significant impacts of economic sanctions both on key economic variables (government consumption, imports, investment, income) and on two indicators of the political system (the Polity variable that describes shifts in the autocracy-democracy dimension and the Vanhanen Index of Democratization that describes political competition and participation). The impact of an oil boycott on the Iranian economy is considerable: oil and gas rents are important drivers of the Iranian key macroeconomic variables and ultimately of its political system. A reduction of oil and gas rents creates economic costs that act as incentives to move towards a more democratic setting. However, this effect is only significant in the first two years and turns negative after six to seven years, as adjustment of economic structures mitigates the economic and political impact of the sanctions.

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Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Potential early phase success and ultimate failure of economic sanctions

Dizaji

Bergeijk

2013

Journal of Peace Research

117

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“…I was not able to confirm the two hypotheses that investigate the impact of economic sanctions on the level of rights protection in the 12 countries that were targeted by sanctions. These results are not surprising, as a finding in the other direction would be at stakes with solid research by Reed Wood (2008), Peksen (2009), and by Peksen and Drury (2009) that has already established the negative impact that economic sanctions have on human rights. The present project sought to investigate whether these findings were true for a subset of sanctions episodes-those imposed because of the poor record of rights protection in the target country.…”

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 86%

“…Work by Peksen (2009) and by Peksen and Drury (2009) confirm the adverse-though unintended-consequences of economic sanctions for human rights. This research relies on a different measure of human rights protection, the Cingranelli and Richards dataset, but focus on the same group of rights: those associated with physical integrity.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 85%

Economic sanctions and human rights: an analysis of competing enforcement strategies in Latin America

Carneiro

2014

Rev. bras. polít. int.

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This article addresses the consequences of economic sanctions for the protection of human rights in Latin America. The literature on sanctions and compliance informs three hypotheses, which investigate the relationship between sanctions and the level of rights protection in two groups of countries: those that were targeted by sanctions and those that were not. Using data from the Political Terror Scale (PTS) and from Freedom House, I find empirical evidence that sanctions do improve the level of protection in countries that were not targeted. This finding can be explained by the deterrent effect attributed to sanctions by the compliance literature, broadly interpreted. The presence of economic sanctions in a given year increases the probability of observing better human rights practices by almost 50%. These results hold for the 12 Latin American countries that were not subject to economic sanctions for the period 1976-2004.

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“…26 Lastly, the U.S. sanctions policy has been employed without a significant secondary forcing mechanism that is practically required to facilitate To submit would signal that the regime can be swayed by external political influences; that the opposition has legitimacy; and that active political dissent will be tolerated. 28 These perceptions would weaken President Assad to the extent that he would lose the internal support that has kept him in power. sanctions policy against Syria.…”

Section: Discussion / Analysismentioning

confidence: 99%

Unlearned History: The Ineffectual Application of U.S. Broad Economic Sanctions Against Syria

Branson¹

2015

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Public reporting burden for this collection of information is estimated to average 1 hour per response, including the time for reviewing instructions, searching existing data sources, gathering and maintaining the data needed, and completing and reviewing this collection of information. Send comments regarding this burden estimate or any other aspect of this collection of information, including suggestions for reducing this burden to Department of Defense, Washington Headquarters Services, Directorate for Information Operations and Reports (0704-0188), 1215 Jefferson Davis Highway, Suite 1204, Arlington, VA 22202-4302. Respondents should be aware that notwithstanding any other provision of law, no person shall be subject to any penalty for failing to comply with a collection of information if it does not display a currently valid OMB control number. PLEASE DO NOT RETURN YOUR FORM TO THE ABOVE ADDRESS. REPORT DATE (DD-MM-YYYY) 30-10-20152. REPORT TYPE ABSTRACTThe United States' (U.S.) reaction to the violent repression of protest in 2011by the Syrian government was the application of broad economic sanctions. In contrast to previously existing sanctions targeted at individual people and entities, these measures affected the Syrian economy writ large and impacted all elements of Syrian society. This paper outlines three key factors that have historically inhibited the achievement of a sending state's objectives through economic coercion, particularly when the target state was of an authoritarian nature. It then applies these factors to the current U.S. broad economic sanctions policy against Syria and analyzes the effectiveness that these additional measures have had on achieving the U.S.'s stated objectives. Finally, the paper draws conclusions and proposes recommended actions that should be considered across the near, mid, and far-term time horizons that may dampen the violence and ameliorate the humanitarian crisis within Syria. SUBJECT TERMS

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Economic Sanctions and Political Repression: Assessing the Impact of Coercive Diplomacy on Political Freedoms

Cited by 82 publications

References 51 publications

Potential early phase success and ultimate failure of economic sanctions

Potential early phase success and ultimate failure of economic sanctions

Economic sanctions and human rights: an analysis of competing enforcement strategies in Latin America

Unlearned History: The Ineffectual Application of U.S. Broad Economic Sanctions Against Syria

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