Rallying cry? Economic sanctions and the domestic politics of the target state

Despite the frequency with which economic sanctions are implemented, very little is understood about how these measures can and do bring about the political change they are initiated to create. Conventional wisdom suggests that economic sanctions can influence politics by imposing economic hardship on the targeted public who, in turn, will pressure their government to yield to the demands of the initiating states. Scholars have criticized this logic as being too naive or simplistic. Some suggest that instead of weakening a target government, sanctions may in fact strengthen it by inspiring a "rally 'round the flag" effect.; In this dissertation I explore how international economic pressure can be utilized to the greatest effect to create policy change, probing how economic sanctions affect the domestic political dynamics of targeted states. Do economic sanctions strengthen the government in power (Galtung 1967; Drezner 1999)? Or does punishment work as sanctions serve to legitimize the grievances of opposition groups, enabling them to increase influence (Blanchard and Ripsman 1999/2000)?; To address these questions, I employ advanced techniques of quantitative analysis to examine whether or not sanctioned publics increase participation in mass political actions, if sanctions influence leadership tenure, and how these domestic political dynamics influence sanctions outcomes.; The findings suggest that domestic political response, which influences sanctions outcomes, varies greatly by the regime type of the target. In democratic states, domestic public can---and do, to some degree---create political costs for leader's resisting sanctions. In addition to that pressure, the leader in these states must fear the shrinking pie of sanctions threatening a his or her incumbency. In autocratic states, leaders may actually benefit from sanctions as domestic public are unable to bring costs and the economic constraints of sanctions may allow a leader to extract greater rents as he or she oversees the trade of scarce goods. In light of these findings, current sanctions policy, particularly US sanctions policy which frequently targets states with closed political systems, may be flawed. To increase efficacy, the domestic political circumstances of the target state must be taken into account directly.