Sanctions and Civil Conflict

Literature › Works

Gershenson, Dmitriy (2002). Sanctions and Civil Conflict. Economica 69. London School of Economics and Political Science (Blackwell).

Type	journal article
Scope	Comparative and methods
Method	theoretical or conceptual
Period studied	1945–1994
Regions	South Africa, Rhodesia/Zimbabwe, Soviet Union, Cuba, North Korea, Zaire
Themes	sanctions divestment, politics ideology elections, transition post apartheid, comparative theory, business and state
Citation key	gershenson2002

Argument

The paper builds a formal general-equilibrium contest model of civil conflict between an incumbent (a Stackelberg leader committed to defence) and a challenger. It adds a third equilibrium type, 'surrender', to engagement and deterrence. Sanctions shrink the incumbent's victory income and raise the challenger's stake in victory. Sufficiently strong sanctions therefore make the incumbent surrender, while weak sanctions can push deterrence into engagement and lower the challenger's expected consumption. Sanctions work better when the incumbent's income in defeat is high. Rhodesia and South Africa are offered as illustrations, set against the Soviet Union, Cuba and North Korea, where defeat income is low and rulers do not give way.

Evidence and method

No original data. The paper uses algebraic derivations (Appendices A and B), stylised case discussion of Rhodesia, South Africa, the USSR, Cuba, North Korea and Zaire, and secondary literature including Lowenberg and Kaempfer, Levy, Hayes and Hufbauer et al. The only figure cited is the emigration of nearly 39,000 South Africans in 1994-97.

Findings

• Weak sanctions can hurt the challenger while strong sanctions benefit it. (p. 1)

  It is shown that weak sanctions can hurt the contestant they are supposed to help, while strong sanctions augment the expected welfare of their intended beneficiaries.

• Sanctions succeed more readily when the target group retains positive income after defeat. (p. 1)

  sanctions are more likely to be successful if the contestant who is subject to sanctions can expect to derive a positive income in case of compliance.

• The paper defines surrender as a distinct equilibrium, not equivalent to deterrence. (p. 4)

  Surrender is defined as a choice by the incumbent to give up what is contested even though conflict, or continued conflict, is a feasible alternative choice that would result in a non-negligible probability of victory for the incumbent.

• The end of white rule in Rhodesia and the end of apartheid are classed as surrenders. (p. 5)

  Abolition of the white minority rule in Rhodesia in 1980 and abolition of apartheid in South Africa in 1994 constitute modern examples of surrender.

• Apartheid's economy carried system inefficiencies in addition to sanctions, which are an increment to them. (p. 1)

  the South African economy under apartheid suffered from a decentralization of industry for political rather than economic purposes, from overinvestment in capital and from bureaucratization

• A low defeat income makes the incumbent less likely to surrender (Proposition 1A). (p. 8)

  Low defeat income for the incumbent makes its surrender less likely.

• Sanctions are a necessary condition for surrender in the model. (p. 9)

  The results imply that the presence of sanctions is a necessary condition for surrender

• Weak sanctions hurt the challenger because of the twofold impact of sanctions. (p. 10)

  On the one hand, sanctions make the challenger’s victory more likely. On the other hand, sanctions reduce incomes in the economy if the challenger fails.

• South African whites surrendered partly because their skills gave them high defeat income. (p. 12)

  the whites, the incumbent group in both countries, were in general skilled and thus could apply themselves with reasonable success either in their country after the transition or abroad.

• The collapse of the communist bloc helps explain the timing of the South African transition. (p. 12)

  the dissolution of the worldwide communist bloc reduced the fear among the whites that the victorious African National Congress would attempt to establish a communist regime.

• Levy suggests sanctions at one point produced a rally-around-the-flag effect in South Africa. (p. 8)

  Levy (1999) suggests that, at least at some point, such was an effect of the international sanctions on South Africa.