Sanctioning smarter? : the impact of smart sanctions on democracy and human rights

Abstract

Do so-called smart economic sanctions, aimed at a target country's political regime, cause less political repression than traditional comprehensive sanctions? That is the main research question of this. By utilizing time-time series cross-sectional regressions with data from 77 sanctioned countries from 1980 to 2007, this thesis confirms the notion that economic sanctions in general, have severe negative consequences for the human rights conditions in the target countries. Smart sanctions are also found to have a negative impact on human rights conditions; however these results are not as consistent. The effects of sanctions and smart sanctions are also tested on two proxies for democracy, but the results are mostly insignificant and suggest that a methodological error has crept in.