Beg, Borrow, or Steal? The Effect of Sanctions on Target Governments' Finance
With T. Clifton Morgan
Working Paper
Working Paper
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Previous studies on economic sanctions have emphasized the role of costs inflicted on the target state in an attempt to change its behavior. Sanctions are known to have a negative effect on the target’s GDP, FDI flows, trade and other indicators. However, the target government has agency over how it handles a sharp reduction in available resources. We argue that target governments have three options: increase taxes, borrow, or cut spending. Therefore, we should observe changes in its behavior along those dimensions once sanctions are imposed. Additionally, we argue that this phenomenon may occur only in a narrow time frame. Invoking economic theories of firms, domestic firms in the target state would adjust to sanctions as an external shock. Over time they would be able to replenish a target government’s treasury and the government would return to the pre-sanctions level of activities while still being under the sanctions regime. This suggests that the design of sanctions should take into consideration a target’s capacity to adjust its economy. To evaluate this argument, we use the TIES dataset on sanctions (1945-2005) along with data on government taxes, spending, and deficits to assess how, and how long, sanctions affect target government finance.
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Fighting Back: Economic Sanctions Effectiveness and Target's Ability to Respond
Working Paper
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Why do some target states succeed in deflecting economic sanctions while others give in? Previous research has focused on the features of sanctions such as their costs and the number of senders to explain their effectiveness. However, whether sanctions are effective or not also depends on characteristics of target states, as these vary in their ability to respond to sanctions by implementing countermeasures to alleviate their impact. Some scholars have addressed this heterogeneity in targets by accounting for their regime type. This study builds on the idea of the differences in domestic governance and expands it beyond the democracy-dictatorship dichotomy. We argue that target governments can be differentiated along the dimensions of flexibility and bureaucratic capacity. A government’s flexibility is determined by the number of players involved in policymaking, as well as the range of economic tools available to the government. Bureaucratic capacity, in turn, is required for proper implementation of those policies. Target states with higher values on both dimensions are more likely to successfully deflect the costs and resist sanctions. To empirically test this argument, we use the TIES dataset on sanctions (1945-2005) with additional data on specific political and economic features of a target state.
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Scraping Together: The Effect of Sanctions on Target Governments' Foreign Policy
Working Paper
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Do economic sanctions have unintended consequences for targets’ foreign policy? Recent research has shown that target governments’ reduce spending on low-priority domestic policies in response to budget constraints caused by sanctions. This study investigates similar effects on foreign policy by assuming that targets’ domestic and international policies compete for state resources. I argue that target governments’ may use their foreign policy to alleviate the pain from sanctions in two primary ways—1) They may cut spending in low-priority foreign policy areas, and in some cases divert these resources to more valuable domestic projects; 2) They may engage in a range of foreign policy activities that generate additional income. More specifically, target governments may impose counter-sanctions as a protectionist policy to support local producers. They may also become more active within the United Nations through non-permanent UN Security Council membership and UN peacekeeping in exchange for formal and informal benefits such as aid and loans. Finally, target governments may choose to host foreign military bases to receive compensation from basing states. To evaluate this argument, I use TIES sanctions dataset (1945-2005) with additional data on the foreign policy outcomes of interest.
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Keys to the Public's Heart: Countering Government Propaganda in Sanctioned States
Working Paper
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Can senders' framing and messages around sanctions counter a target government's state propaganda? To answer this empirical question, I conduct a survey experiment on the topic of Western sanctions against Russia in response to the invasion of Ukraine. I vary the framing of a message and its source (biased vs. unbiased) to evaluate their effect on public support for the Russian, US, and EU governments.
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Drafts available upon request.