Читать книгу Collateral Damage Autocracy? - Tobias Lechner - Страница 11

Executive summary

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.

Recent articles analyze in large-N studies the impact of sanctions on the level of democracy: Using data between 1972 and 2000, Peksen et al. find that the effects of economic sanctions significantly reduce the level of democracy in the target state.¹ They argue that sanctions restrict the flow of goods to the targeted country, the remaining goods within the state are controlled by the regime which gets more powerful than before. Using newer data, Soest et al. conclude that sanctions with a democratic goal correlate with an increased level of democracy in the targeted state, thus suggesting that democratic sanctions are successful.²

Hypotheses

The dependent variable is the level of democracy. Definition: A liberal-democratic state is a state with an overall high level of political rights, civil liberties, and state capacity. Political rights include political participation and political pluralism; civil liberties include individual rights, checks and balances and restrictions of the executive; state capacity refers to governance and performance of the state. An autocratic state is a state with an overall low level of political rights, civil liberties, and state capacity. The low level of state capacity can be explained with the low level of public goods invested by the leader. He invests resources into his supporters to buy their loyalty, not into the state.

There is no universally accepted variable that can explain either democratization or autocratization. Consequently, a large number of explanatory variables can be found in democratization literature. Due to methodological reasons the number of variables is limited. Anecdotal and empirical evidence and current research suggest the use of explanatory variables from three different spheres: the ←18 | 19→impact and design of sanctions, the political system of the targeted state, and economic characteristics of the target state.

Hypothesis 1: The higher the economic costs of the sanctions to the target state are, the more likely is a negative impact on the level of democracy in the target state. Economic costs of sanctions are the main argument in many articles. High economic costs make success and unintended side-effects more likely. In many cases, they hurt the opposition more than the government. Furthermore, the regime’s monopoly on law gives members of the leader’s coalition a huge advantage in conducting illegal (or somewhat legal) activities. Additionally, economic sanctions lead to protectionism and, in the long-term, to the rise of powerful interest groups that lobby for market protection. Definition: Economic costs of sanctions is the amount of wealth of the target state that gets lost due to sanctions.

Hypothesis 2: The less sanctions focus on democracy, the more likely is a negative impact on the level of democracy. Sanctions with a democratic goal correlate with an increased level of democracy, find Soest & Wahman.³ They are designed in an effective way not to have a negative effect on the level of democracy. Definition: The democratic goal of sanctions is the explicitly stated aim of sanctions senders to increase the level of democracy by using these sanctions.

Hypothesis 3: The more personalized rule in the target country is, the more likely is a negative impact on the level of democracy. Sanctions literature suggests that the target’s regime type is one of the most important factors of sanctions success. Based on Geddes,⁴ Wright focuses on institutional differences among regimes and distinguishes personalist regimes from institutionalist regimes (military, dominant party, corporatist/monarchist).⁵ Personalist leaders can more easily redistribute goods in times of economic crises such as sanctions. Furthermore, institutionalized regimes offer peaceful leadership change through succession rules, whereas a personalist regime will shift the economic costs away from his key supporters to other groups and the population. The book adds liberal democracies to institutionalist regimes to categorize the whole universe of regimes. Definition: A personalist regime is a regime in which power is institutionalized on a low level. Effective rule and leadership succession depend on one person or his personal network.

Hypothesis 4: The higher the level of legitimacy of the ruler in the target country is, the more likely is a negative impact on the level of democracy. A psychological ←19 | 20→effect might strengthen the leader: A high level of legitimacy reduces the costs of loyalty for the leader. A recent large-N study finds that “sanctions strengthen authoritarian rule if the regime manages to incorporate their existence into its legitimation strategy.”⁶ Definition: Regime legitimacy is the acceptance of political authority.

Hypothesis 5: The higher the level of economic vulnerability of the target economy is, the more likely is a negative impact on the level of democracy. A country with a low level of economic interdependence is used to a non-trade situation and does not need to change its economic rules much. A country that is exposed to the world economy on a high level, needs to adapt to the sanctions regime. Independently from the real economic costs of sanctions, the country will adopt policies that protect crucial sectors of the economy. Protectionism strengthens the role of politics in business and the role of business in the economy, thus leading to clientelism and kleptocracy. Definition: Vulnerability is the ability to be influenced or hurt. The economic vulnerability of a country is an indicator for the degree how much a country may be affected by external economic shocks. It can be measured by the economy’s dependence on export and import with the world.

Hypothesis 6: The less developed the target country is, the more likely is a negative impact of economic sanctions on the level of democracy. One of the most famous theories in comparative politics is that democratic and economic development are systematically interrelated. Lipset claimed that democracy was enabled by a process of modernization that includes industrialization, education, and more factors.⁷ Definition: Development is a process of change and advance. The development level of a country is an indicator that measures how advanced a country is in important areas such as wealth, education and healthcare.

Mechanism

The theoretical model assumes three main players within a political system: the leader/leadership, his winning coalition, and the population.⁸ The secret of leader survival lies in the careful balancing of repression and loyalty rewards (economic transfers or political power) and its constant re-adjustment. Political stability is understood as the equilibrium of these three elements (economic transfers, ←20 | 21→political power, repression). External shocks such as economic sanctions can disrupt the system. Usually, sanctions decrease the leader’s budget. As soon as he is no longer able to provide goods to his supporters or the population, his political survival is in danger. If the winning coalition is not satisfied, it might attempt a coup (vertical threat). If the population is not satisfied, it might protest and attempt a revolution (horizontal threat). It depends on many factors how the leader is going to react to crises. His tools are always the same: economic transfers, political rights, repression/civil liberties. They belong to different spheres of the state, and regime stability is based on an equilibrium of these tools. They mirror the tripartite definition of democracy and autocracy (state capacity, civil liberties, political rights). The factors that explain the leader’s reaction and the following process are the variables (and their combination) mentioned in the previous section.

Before applying repression or redistributing political power, the leader will transfer economic goods, either to his winning coalition (private goods) or the population (public goods). In a personalist regime (variable 3), he has to increase goods to his coalition because the coalition supports him in exchange for monetary advantages. If the economic vulnerability of the country is low (variable 5), the leader might not need to change the mix of redistribution because the economy (and his budget) is not very much affected. The higher the economic costs of sanctions are (variable 1), the more difficult is the remix of goods. Very high economic costs can decrease the leader’s budget substantially, and he might not have any goods, neither for the population nor for his coalition, and may rely on repression.

In contrast, a high level of development (variable 6) helps the population to decrease the information asymmetry and to overcome the collective action problem, which may lead to a revolutionary attempt. When the population, however, agrees on the leader’s offer (more or less public goods), it can lead to stability and an equilibrium. This happens especially when the level of legitimacy of the leader is very high (variable 4), and when the leader succeeds in stimulating nationalist feelings. In such cases, sanctions have a so-called rally around the flag effect. Another threat to the leadership comes from his winning coalition: If the coalition does not accept the goods it got (or didn’t get), it can stage a coup d’état (vertical threat). A coup is more likely if the sanctions target specific groups within the system as most democratic sanctions do (variable 2).

After facing the mentioned vertical and horizontal threats, the leader still has two tools: The first one is increased (or also decreased) repression of the population or a purge of his coalition. If repression is too expensive or not effective, he can rely on his second tool: (de-)centralization of his political power. He can ←21 | 22→centralize political power, or he can establish political institutions and co-opt oppositional forces or enfranchise larger parts of the population. His actions rely on the mix of variables.

Methodology

The unit of analysis is the country-year of countries that were targets of sanctions (n =1440). Due to data issues, only sanctions with the UN, the EU or the U.S. as sender are considered. Only sanctions that were imposed between 1990 and 2015 and were in place for more than one year are included (60 target countries). In addition to the known sanctions datasets HSEO, GIGA, TIES, and TSC, primary sources such as the UNSC resolutions and other legal texts are used. The dependent variable is the change of the level of democracy. In order to compensate for the flaws of both scores, a combined score of Freedom in the World and Polity IV is used.

Sanctions variables: Variable 1, economic costs of sanctions to the target state, proved to be most difficult to operationalize. If the measurement is only based on the design, the results will be misleading. The most comprehensive sanctions will have no impact, if the pre-sanctions trade level is close to zero (as North Korea post-1993 shows). If the measurement is based on absolute numbers such as the decline of GDP, it is impossible to distinguish the sanctions effects from other effects such as economic stagnation (cf. post-2014 sanctions against Russia). Therefore, most scholars simply estimate the economic damage done by sanctions. This book uses a combination of ex-ante threat (using GIGA) and ex-post damage (using TIES or HSEO). Variable 2, democratic goal of sanctions, is based on the GIGA sanctions dataset. Each sanction episode that explicitly focuses on democracy is coded as 1; otherwise, it is coded as 0 (dummy variable).

Regime variables: Variable 3, personalist regime, is a dummy variable based on Geddes et al.’s Autocratic Regimes dataset (GWF). In addition, liberal democracies are coded as non-personalist. Variable 4, regime legitimacy, is taken from the State Fragility Index and Matrix (SFIM).

Economic variables: Variable 5, economic vulnerability, measures the export dependency of the target state. The World Bank provides comprehensive data on the exports of goods and services in percent of the GDP. Variable 6, development, uses data from the Human Development Index (HDI), with the sub-indicators life expectancy at birth, expected years of schooling, mean years of schooling, and GNI per capita.

Control variables: One variable for natural resources controls for the resource curse hypothesis, using World Bank data. Another variable controls for civil war, using the dataset Major Episodes of Political Violence (MEPV).

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The econometric model for the variables is:

democracy=α1costs+α2goal+α3personalism+α4legitimacy+α5vulnerability +α6development+β1resources+β2war+μit

Data type: panel data; regression analysis with two-step system GMM (SYSGMM); statistical software: Stata 14.

Findings

There is no correlation between any of the sanctions variables and an increased level of autocracy. Instead, some of the variables show a correlation between sanctions and an increased level of democracy, some are not significant at all.

Variable	Hypothesis	Result
IV 1: Economic costs	The higher the economic costs of the sanctions to the target state are, the more likely is a negative impact on the level of democracy in the target state.	Not confirmed, opposite correlation: The higher the economic costs of the sanctions to the target state are, the higher is the level of democracy.
IV 2: Democratic goal	The less sanctions focus on democracy, the more likely is a negative impact on the level of democracy.	Confirmed. Furthermore, sanctions with a democratic goal correlate with a higher level of democracy.
IV 3: Personalist regime	The more personalized rule in the target country is, the more likely is a negative impact on the level of democracy.	Not confirmed, no correlation.
IV 4: Regime legitimacy	The higher the level of legitimacy of the targeted regime is, the more likely is a negative impact on the level of democracy.	Not confirmed, no correlation.
IV 5: Economic vulnerability	The higher the level of economic vulnerability of the target economy is, the more likely is a negative impact on the level of democracy.	Confirmed, but weak and negligible impact.
IV 6: Development	The less developed the target country is, the more likely is a negative impact on the level of democracy.	Confirmed. Furthermore, the more developed the target country is, the more likely is a positive impact on the level of democracy.

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Variable 1: Previous literature argued that sanctions have a negative impact on the level of democracy, especially when they are comprehensive. Economic theory suggests an even stronger political impact with higher economic costs. The present analysis, however, did not confirm that, and found a correlation with a higher degree of democracy instead. Economic sanctions do not cause autocratization, both variables do not even correlate. This does not necessarily mean that sanctions are a cause of democratization, but it shows that anecdotal evidence of cases of sanctions with a negative impact on the level of democracy cannot be generalized. The finding is in line with the most basic sanctions mechanism that was described as naïve: Sanctions with high economic costs disrupt the targeted political system and have transitional effects, perhaps in the context of a global, regional or temporal trend. External punishment legitimizes oppositional forces and may help the citizens to overcome their collective action problem.

Variable 2: Democratic sanctions (sanctions with the goal of improving democracy) correlate with a higher level of democracy. In these cases, sender states impose sanctions in a smart way to target specific groups within the political system of the targeted state. Sanctioning the right groups deprives the leader of crucial support and strengthens oppositional forces. This finding confirms Soest & Wahman.⁹

Variable 3: A personalist regime does not correlate with a higher or lower level of democracy. Many autocratic regimes are perhaps not consolidated enough to distinguish different mechanisms.

Variable 4: A high degree of legitimacy of the regime in the target state does not correlate with a lower or higher level of democracy.

Variable 5: In the main model, a high level of vulnerability (economic interdependency or interconnectedness) correlates with a lower level of democracy, ←24 | 25→but the coefficient is negligible and varies substantially in different robustness checks.

Variable 6: As theory and empirical evidence suggests, a higher level of development correlates with a higher level of democracy. The result confirms modernization theory that assumes a relation between economic and political development. A high level of development – education, income, health – decreases the information asymmetry of autocracies and helps the population to overcome the collective action problem.

Types of sanctions: A further analysis looks at the types of sanctions. Arms embargoes correlate with a higher level of democracy. Arms embargoes hurt a ruler’s repressive capacity. This may force him to rely on other tools such as decentralizing political power and giving more civil rights. Aid sanctions – the cut of financial aid – also correlate with a higher level of democracy. Foreign aid is often aimed at state building and promoting rule of law and democracy but is also an external revenue source for the leader that helps him providing private goods to his supports, thus financing kleptocratic structures. Once these revenue streams disappear, the leader needs other means to keep the system stable such as providing more political rights. Improving the level of democracy is also the best way to make sure that foreign aid will re-appear in the future.

Implications

The findings have several implications at the metatheoretical and macrotheoretical level. The operationalization showed how difficult it is to operationalize sanctions and to measure their effects or even their “success.” In everyday life, the question of success is not that relevant. Policymakers are not so much concerned about the usefulness of sanctions per se; they need to choose the best possible tool in a specific situation under specific circumstances.

Furthermore, sanctions do not exist in a vacuum: In the toolkit of foreign policy, the economy is only one sphere besides diplomacy, military and information.¹⁰ When states apply sanctions against countries with which they have no pre-sanctions trade, sanctions are clearly signaling. The variable economic costs help to see whether sanctions are aimed as a signal. This book distinguishes between de jure and de facto goal: Whereas the de jure goal refers to the publicly stated goal, the de facto goal refers to Giumelli’s taxonomy of coercing, constraining and signaling sanctions.¹¹ This categorization has the implication ←25 | 26→that signaling sanctions cannot be evaluated as non-successful just because they did not reach their ambitious goal.

There are more methodological implications of the findings. Democratic sanctions after 2000 have a much stronger positive effect on the level of democracy than those before. This may indicate that the sanctions re-design around 2000 made the sanctions tool much more sophisticated. However, the basic problem of all quantitative sanction research is the quantification of sanctions. It is extremely difficult if not impossible to compare them with each other and to describe their effects. Large-N analyses have only limited validity.

Policy recommendations

Policymakers need to be aware of different mechanisms of sanctions. Some sanctions are coercing, others constraining, others signaling. The goal does not need to be communicated publicly – information asymmetry is an important good in international relations. However, policymakers need to be aware of different mechanisms of sanctions.

Policymakers should recognize so-called secondary sanctions as normal sanctions against their state. Secondary sanctions are not some sort of collateral damage of ‘normal’ sanctions. Instead, they directly target a state and its economy.

Policymakers should develop sanctions and counter-sanctions capabilities. Sanctions need to be implemented properly. Numbers suggest that the EU is under-developed regarding its sanctions capabilities, especially in comparison with the U.S. Recent so-called secondary sanctions by the U.S. made clear that the EU is not only sender but also target of sanctions.

Lessons learned

1. Sanctions with high economic costs do not cause autocratization. The findings of this book debunk the argument that economic sanctions with high economic costs are responsible for an autocratization of the targeted state as a myth. The analysis conducted in this book finds a significant correlation between sanctions with high economic costs and the level of democracy. Cases that suggest otherwise are not prototypical sanctions cases but infamous anomalies, particularly known for their “failure”. In other cases, sanctions follow (not cause) autocratization, such as post-2014 sanctions against Russia. This book does not claim that economic sanctions with high economic costs cause democratization, but it claims that they do not cause ←26 | 27→autocratization – there is no correlation, so the claimed causality cannot be true.

2. Aid sanctions and arms embargoes correlate with a higher level of democracy. The type of sanction is crucial for its side-effects. Arms embargoes hurt the repressive capacity in the targeted state. Aid sanctions are particularly harmful to an autocrat because they directly hurt his revenue streams. Once they disappear, he needs to rely on other tools to keep the system stable – such as granting political rights. This will also guarantee the lifting of sanctions. This finding should be an incentive for further research.

3. Sanctions are not a binary variable and should, therefore, not be used as such in quantitative analyses. Though this seems to be self-evident, many articles use sanctions as a dummy variable. Similarly, many scholars assume that comprehensive economic sanctions equal high economic costs of sanctions. This is wrong. High economic costs result from the affected trade linkage and the implementation of sanctions. Sanctions consist of a complex net of legal regulation and laws, from different bodies, and their goal, design, and scope need to be included in a quantitative analysis of sanctions. Using sanctions as a binary variable is misleading and may suggest wrong findings.

4. 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. Whereas the de jure goal refers to a publicly stated purpose of sanctions, the de facto goal refers to the inherent mechanism (coercing, constraining, signaling). Many sanctions function as a signal; they should not be evaluated as non-successful just because they did not reach their de jure goal. An evaluation of sanctions needs to include the de facto goal, though it may be very difficult to establish in most cases.

In conclusion, sanctions are not as bad – and probably not as useless – as academic and non-academic debates suggest. When policymakers want to employ them, they should not forget that the economy is only one sphere in foreign policy. The right combination of tools is necessary to achieve a goal.

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1 Peksen & Drury 2010.

2 Soest & Wahman 2015.

3 Soest & Wahman 2015, p. 957.

4 Geddes 1999, pp. 121–122.

5 Wright 2008, p. 323.

6 Grauvogel & Soest 2014, p. 635.

7 Lipset 1959, p. 80.

8 The model is based on Wintrobe’s view of a political system as marketplace; Wintrobe 1990.

9 Soest & Wahman 2015.

10 Baldwin 1985, pp. 13–14.

11 Giumelli 2010, 2011, 2013, 2015.