The Effect of Female Politicians on the Imposition of Economic Sanctions

• In Event: Economic Instruments of Foreign Policy

Abstract

How does the presence of female politicians in the government affect the imposition of sanctions? Previous work has shown that democratic countries are more likely to impose sanctions against non-democracies in order to promote democratization and the protection of human rights. However, there is limited research that examines the mechanisms that explains the use of sanctions as a foreign policy instrument used by democracies. I argue that the presence of female politicians provides one explanation for the use of sanctions. I expect that the more female politicians are included in government, the more likely democracies are to use sanctions to alter the behavior of the target countries. This argument is based in previous work that has demonstrated that female politicians are less supportive of military coercion and more inclined toward resolving issues with non-violent methods. I use a zero-inflated negative binomial regression model to test my theory. The results show that with an increase of female politicians, the government is less likely to use sanctions as foreign policy tool.

Author

• Meilin Li, The University of North Texas