Leader-contingent sanctions as a cause of violent political conflict

Abstract

Economic sanctions are a policy tool that great powers frequently use to interfere with domestic politics of another state. Regime change has been a primary goal of economic sanctions over the past decades. This article studies the relationship between leader-contingent sanctions—sanctions that are designed to impede the flow of revenue to a specific leader—and violent political conflict in target countries. I build a theoretical model to illuminate two mechanisms by which leader-contingent sanctions destabilize a regime—the Depletion Mechanism and the Instigation Mechanism. The Depletion Mechanism works when sanctions mechanically deplete the government's resources so that it becomes unable to buy off domestic opposition even by making the largest possible offer. The Instigation Mechanism implies that as sanctions decrease the benefit of negotiated settlement relative to war, the government may strategically choose to repress rather than buy off the opposition even when it is able to do so. Leader-contingent sanctions lead to bargaining failure by rewarding the opposition for revolt while reducing the government's ability and willingness to appease the opposition.