Advancing Democracy Abroad by Michael McFaul

Author:Michael McFaul [MCFAUL, MICHAEL]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-1-4422-0111-8
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers

The Limits of Sanctions for Aiding Democracy

When governments violate human rights or deny democratic practices to their citizens, the United States and other democracies increasingly respond by imposing economic sanctions.36 The theory is that economic sanctions enforced by the world’s largest economy will restrict those resources controlled by the autocratic regime, thereby undermining the popularity and legitimacy of the targeted dictator, especially if sanctions can spark an economic crisis. The use of sanctions to punish autocratic behavior is growing. While only 3 percent of illiberal regimes endured sanctions for anti-democratic behavior in 1983, 21 percent of those regimes were targeted in 2000.37 In the last decade, economic sanctions were applied virtually every time democratic rights and freedoms were suspended, human rights were grossly abused, or a civil war broke out.38 A country in Latin America that experienced a lapse in democracy in 2000 had a greater than 80 percent risk of being punished by economic sanctions.39

Even if one goal of sanctions is democratic change, others goals often coexist. For instance, American sanctions against the Soviet Union also aimed to weaken Soviet military capacity and increase Jewish emigration. International sanctions against South Africa focused first on ending apartheid, but also aimed to end South African military aggression in the region.40 American sanctions have purportedly aimed to undermine the Cuban and Iranian regimes, but also to punish the way autocrats in these two countries seized power. Presidents also have applied sanctions frequently to alter the behavior of states without seeking regime change. For instance, sanctions against Iraq in the 1990s aimed to punish Saddam Hussein for invading Kuwait, impede his regime from acquiring weapons of mass destruction, and weaken Iraq’s capacity to threaten other countries in the region.41 More recently, many who advocate sanctions against Iran explicitly argue that regime change has to be taken off the table if sanctions are to work in curtailing Iran’s nuclear weapons programs. In general, the United States often applies economic sanctions as a way to do something rather than nothing or to appease a particular domestic constituency, sometimes without tying sanctions to a desired policy outcome.

These multiple objectives make it hard to evaluate the role of sanctions on fostering democratization. The very premise that sanctions weaken autocrats must be questioned. Some sanctions may weaken the democratic opposition more than the regime. Other sanctions might serve to rally society behind the ruling autocrats. Not surprisingly, therefore, the literature on the efficacy of sanctions shows rather limited results. In one survey, Clifton Morgan and Valerie Schwebach report that “most studies in political science have concluded that sanctions do not ‘work’ at least not in the sense of bringing about a desired change in the policy of the target country. . . .”42 In summarizing the academic literature on whether sanctions are effective, Nikolai Marinov says, “The consensus view seems to be somewhere between ‘no’ and ‘rarely.’”43 Their effectiveness has been limited especially when in place over long periods of time. They work most effectively when deployed against a country to restore democracy after a coup.

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