IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/sae/joupea/v46y2009i1p59-77.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Better or Worse? The Effect of Economic Sanctions on Human Rights

Author

Listed:
  • Dursun Peksen

    (Department of Political Science, East Carolina University, peksend@ecu.edu)

Abstract

Does economic coercion increase or decrease government respect for human rights in countries targeted with economic sanctions? If economic sanctions weaken the target regime's coercive capacity, human rights violations by the government should be less likely. If, on the contrary, sanctions fail to attenuate the coercive capacity of the target elites and create more economic difficulties and political violence among ordinary citizens, the government will likely commit more human rights violations. Focusing on competing views of why sanctions might improve or deteriorate human rights conditions, this article offers an empirical examination of the effect sanctions have on the physical integrity rights of citizens in target countries. Utilizing time-series, cross-national data for the period 1981—2000, the findings suggest that economic sanctions worsen government respect for physical integrity rights, including freedom from disappearances, extra-judicial killings, torture, and political imprisonment. The results also show that extensive sanctions are more detrimental to human rights than partial/selective sanctions. Economic coercion remains a counterproductive policy tool, even when sanctions are specifically imposed with the goal of improving human rights. Finally, multilateral sanctions have a greater overall negative impact on human rights than unilateral sanctions.

Suggested Citation

  • Dursun Peksen, 2009. "Better or Worse? The Effect of Economic Sanctions on Human Rights," Journal of Peace Research, Peace Research Institute Oslo, vol. 46(1), pages 59-77, January.
  • Handle: RePEc:sae:joupea:v:46:y:2009:i:1:p:59-77
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://jpr.sagepub.com/content/46/1/59.abstract
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Grauvogel, Julia & von Soest, Christian, 2013. "Claims to Legitimacy Matter: Why Sanctions Fail to Instigate Democratization in Authoritarian Regimes," GIGA Working Papers 235, GIGA German Institute of Global and Area Studies.
    2. Haqiqi , Iman & Bahalou Horeh , Marziyeh, 2013. "Macroeconomic Impacts of Export Barriers in a Dynamic CGE Model," Journal of Money and Economy, Monetary and Banking Research Institute, Central Bank of the Islamic Republic of Iran, vol. 8(3), pages 117-150, July.
    3. Jerg Gutmann & Matthias Neuenkirch & Florian Neumeier, 2020. "Precision-guided or blunt? The effects of US economic sanctions on human rights," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 185(1), pages 161-182, October.
    4. Jerg Gutmann & Matthias Neuenkirch & Florian Neumeier & Armin Steinbach, 2018. "Economic Sanctions and Human Rights: Quantifying the Legal Proportionality Principle," Research Papers in Economics 2018-02, University of Trier, Department of Economics.
    5. Antonis Adam & Sofia Tsarsitalidou, 2019. "Do sanctions lead to a decline in civil liberties?," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 180(3), pages 191-215, September.
    6. Chen, Yin E. & Fu, Qiang & Zhao, Xinxin & Yuan, Xuemei & Chang, Chun-Ping, 2019. "International sanctions’ impact on energy efficiency in target states," Economic Modelling, Elsevier, vol. 82(C), pages 21-34.
    7. Zhike Lv & Ting Xu, 2019. "Do economic sanctions affect protectionism? Evidence from agricultural support," Economics and Politics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 31(1), pages 27-42, March.
    8. Lee, Yong Suk, 2018. "International isolation and regional inequality: Evidence from sanctions on North Korea," Journal of Urban Economics, Elsevier, vol. 103(C), pages 34-51.
    9. Kirill Chmel & Alexander Demin & Kirill Kazantcev, 2017. "Dictators’ Behavior Under Conditions of Economic Sanctions Cumulative Effect," HSE Working papers WP BRP 50/PS/2017, National Research University Higher School of Economics.
    10. Neuenkirch, Matthias & Neumeier, Florian, 2016. "The impact of US sanctions on poverty," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 121(C), pages 110-119.
    11. Mehmet Onder, 2019. "Regime Type, Issue Type and Economic Sanctions: The Role of Domestic Players," Economies, MDPI, vol. 8(1), pages 1-18, December.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:sae:joupea:v:46:y:2009:i:1:p:59-77. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: SAGE Publications (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.prio.no/ .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.