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Why Economic Sanctions Do Not Work

Literature › Works

Robert A. Pape (1997). Why Economic Sanctions Do Not Work. International Security, Vol. 22, No. 2 (Fall 1997). MIT Press / Harvard University.
Type journal article
Scope Comparative and methods
Method mixed
Period studied 1914–1990
Regions Global (cross-national sanctions episodes), Rhodesia, Lesotho, South Africa (marginal), Iraq
Themes sanctions divestment, comparative theory, methods data sources, politics ideology elections
Citation key pape1997

Argument

Pape challenges the optimism about sanctions built on the Hufbauer-Schott-Elliot (HSE) database. He recodes HSE's 40 claimed successes and finds only 5 genuine successes: 18 were determined by force, 8 involved no real concessions, 6 were trade disputes, and 3 are indeterminate. He then argues deductively that modern states resist sanctions because of nationalism, substitution capacity, and the ability to shift costs onto weak groups. A stratified test of the recoded data shows no significant link between GNP loss and success. South Africa appears only marginally: the Lesotho case and a speculative remark that extreme inequality may have made white-ruled South Africa unusually vulnerable.

Evidence and method

HSE's 115-case database (1914-1990), recoded case by case in an appendix with secondary literature, memoirs, newspapers, EIU reports, US government documents and some archival material (e.g. British Treasury records, Eden's telegram). The South African inequality claim is sourced to a 1988/89 SAIRR Race Relations Survey. A simple OLS regression and a high/low GNP-loss stratification are used.

Findings

  • Of HSE's 40 claimed successes, only 5 survive recoding, and the errors fall into four classes. (p. 3)

    Practically none of the claimed 40 successes of economic sanctions stands up to examination. Eighteen were actually settled by direct or indirect use of force; in 8 cases there is no evidence

  • Recoding sets the valid success rate far below HSE's 34 percent. (p. 17)

    sanctions have been successful less than 5 percent of the time, not 34 percent of the time as HSE claim.

  • Excluding invalid cases, 85 valid cases remain, with a success rate of 6 percent (9 percent including overdetermined and indeterminate cases). (p. 17)

    This leaves a total of 85 valid cases, including 5 successes, or an overall success rate of 6 percent (9 percent if we include the overdetermined and indeterminate cases) versus the 34 percent HSE report.

  • Rhodesia's transition is attributed to guerrilla war rather than sanctions; the economic downturn followed the war. (p. 29)

    This outcome was determined by military force, not economic sanctions. By 1979 the government realized that it would be defeated by the guerrillas, and it surrendered.

  • Black unemployment in Rhodesia was flat 1965-75 and growth recovered after the initial sanctions shock, undermining the claim that sanctions fuelled recruitment. (p. 29)

    the rate of African unemployment was essentially flat from 1965 to 1975, as the increase in the black population (43.4 percent) was virtually identical to the increase in black employment (44.1 percent).

  • Sanctions can shift burdens onto politically weak groups, as in Rhodesia where black incomes fell while white living standards rose. (p. 18)

    Thus it was possible for economic sanctions to cause the incomes of blacks in Rhodesia to fall while the standard of living for whites rose.

  • Greater economic punishment does not significantly raise the chance of success. (p. 19)

    Ordinary least squares regression confirms that there is no statistically significant relationship between target state GNP loss and sanctions success.

  • Pape's hypothesis that sanctions work better against highly unequal societies, applied speculatively to apartheid South Africa. (p. 20)

    This logic might explain why economic sanctions are often claimed to have contributed to the fall of apartheid, while five years of intense economic punishment has not toppled Saddam Hussein.

  • South Africa's coercion of Lesotho in 1983 and 1986 is coded as overdetermined, since economic strangulation and military pressure were each sufficient. (p. 15)

    In 1983 and again in 1986, South Africa strangled Lesotho economically and simultaneously launched commando raids and sponsored insurgents on Lesothan territory.