Unilateral Versus Multilateral International Sanctions: A Public Choice Perspective

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William H. Kaempfer; Anton D. Lowenberg (1999). Unilateral Versus Multilateral International Sanctions: A Public Choice Perspective. International Studies Quarterly 43(1). Blackwell Publishing for the International Studies Association.

Type	journal article
Scope	Comparative and methods
Method	theoretical or conceptual
Period studied	1914–1998
Regions	South Africa, Rhodesia, Iraq, Serbia and Montenegro, Haiti, United States
Themes	sanctions divestment, comparative theory, resistance social movements, unions strikes, politics ideology elections
Citation key	kaempfer1999

Argument

Multilateral sanctions do more economic damage to a target than unilateral ones, through larger terms-of-trade effects. The authors argue that this does not translate into political success. Larger terms-of-trade effects create bigger sanctions rents, which encourage circumvention, defection within the coalition, and capture of the rents by target-country elites. An interest-group (Stigler-Peltzman-Becker) model of endogenous policy shows that sanctions work politically only by changing the relative ability of pro-regime and opposition groups to organize collective action. This explains why sanctions with small economic effects, such as those on South Africa, could strengthen domestic opposition. The authors conclude that unilateral sanctions from a country with close ties to the target can be more politically effective than multilateral ones.

Evidence and method

Offer-curve trade theory and a graphical interest-group model. Bonetti's (1997) chi-squared tests on Hufbauer, Schott and Elliott's 115 sanctions episodes since 1914. Illustrative cases: Iraq, Serbia, Haiti, Rhodesia, the Soviet grain embargo, and South Africa. The South African evidence rests on the authors' own earlier empirical study (Kaempfer, Lowenberg, Mocan and Topyan 1995) and on secondary literature.

Findings

• In Hufbauer et al.'s data, any level of multilateral cooperation had lower success rates than no cooperation. (p. 4)

  yielded a lower percentage of successes, 25, 30, and 36 percent

• Multilateral sanctions concentrate sanctions rents in the target country, benefiting those being punished. (p. 10)

  multilateral sanctions are actually likely to distribute a larger share of the sanctions rents to residents of the country that is supposedly being punished than are unilateral sanctions.

• Unilateral sanctions have little economic effect where substitute buyers are abundant, as with the U.S. coal ban on South Africa. (p. 5)

  the U.S. prohibition on the importation of coal from South Africa was ineffective because there were scores of countries worldwide that could step in as alternative buyers of coal exports from South Africa.

• Uniform income losses across groups leave the equilibrium level of the objectionable policy unchanged. Only differential effects on groups matter. (p. 12)

  an embargo that reduces the incomes of both groups by the same amount will cause reductions of equal magnitude in the political effectiveness of both groups

• Empirical evidence links sanctions on South Africa to greater black anti-apartheid strike organization in the short run. (p. 16)

  sanctions against South Africa in the 1970s and 1980s were instrumental, at least in the short run, in enhancing the ability of domestic black antiapartheid groups to organize collective action

• South African sanctions were weak in economic terms but may have helped end apartheid by strengthening domestic opposition. (p. 16)

  although the sanctions against South Africa had relatively small terms-of-trade effects, they ultimately might have contributed significantly to the demise of apartheid because they helped to strengthen the substantial domestic black antiapartheid movement

• The sports embargo arguably hurt whites more than severe economic sanctions did, without hurting blacks much. (p. 17)

  the sports embargo on South Africa, imposed by a handful of rugby- and cricket-playing nations, arguably had a greater impact on whites in that country, without hurting blacks much, than did even the severest of the economic sanctions

• The mid-1980s market-imposed refusal of banks to roll over debt is singled out as the most damaging sanction on South Africa. (p. 17)

  the refusal of international banks to roll over South Africa’s short-term debt in the mid-1980s, which was a quite damaging sanction

• Sanctions against countries with cordial prior relations succeed more often than those against antagonistic ones. (p. 17)

  Table 1 confirms that sanctions against a friend are more likely to succeed than sanctions against an enemy