To Help or to Hurt? Economic Sanctions and Democratic Backsliding

• In Event: The Political Economy of Democratic Backsliding

Abstract

What impact do economic sanctions have on the quality of democracy within target regimes? In recent years, economic sanctions have been increasingly employed to support states’ foreign policy goals as a form of coercive statecraft. Existing scholarship, however, has recently highlighted the negative externalities of economic sanctions. While this growing literature has examined how sanctions impact the rule of law, human rights, and civil liberties, little attention has been paid to the link between economic sanctions and the overall quality of democracy. This study seeks to contribute to this negative externalities literature. Building upon the economic sanctions and the democratic backsliding literatures, we argue that economic sanctions are negatively associated with democratic quality within target regimes. Specifically, we contend that economic sanctions lead to diminished rule of law, increased political suppression, and increased executive aggrandizement. We test this expectation using a staggered difference-in-difference design combined with causal mediation analysis. Our results indicate that the imposition of economic sanctions is associated with a decrease in the quality of democracy in target states, acting through the mechanisms of reduced rule of law, increased government suppression, and increased executive aggrandizement. This work contributes to the economic sanctions and democratic backsliding literatures by providing direct causal evidence of the negative impact of economic sanctions on democratic quality. Broadly, it suggest that the use of economic sanctions as coercive statecraft should be reimagined to reduce their negative impact on the quality of democracy within target states.

Authors

• Noah Pruitt, Texas Tech University

• Nila Zarepour-Arizi, Texas Tech University