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GIGA Research Programme:
Peace and Security
___________________________
How Authoritarian Regimes Counter
International Sanctions Pressure
Christian von Soest
No 336 September 2023
336/2023 GIGA Working Papers
GIGA Working Papers 336/2023
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GIGA Working Papers 336/2023
How Authoritarian Regimes Counter
International Sanctions Pressure
Abstract
Based on current literature, this paper analyses the nature and effects of external pressure
imposed on authoritarian regimes. Around three-quarters of all countries under United Na-
tions, United States, and European Union sanctions are authoritarian, and “democracy sanc-
tions” that aim at improving democratic and human rights in targeted countries constitute
the biggest sanctions category. Yet, authoritarian regimes represent particularly problematic
targets as they can more easily shield themselves from external pressure than their demo-
cratic counterparts can. Authoritarians have a tighter grip on the public discourse and the
struggle over the meaning of sanctions. They often even use them to their own advantage,
denouncing sanction senders as “imperialist” and blaming them for their economic woes.
The paper presents trends in the application of sanctions pressure against authoritarian re-
gimes, reviews mechanisms of how economic and diplomatic restrictions work, and exam-
ines authoritarian targets’ attempts to engage in pressure proofing.
Keywords: Authoritarian regimes, external pressure, sanctions, rally-round-the-flag
effect, pressure proofing
Prof. Dr. Christian von Soest
is a Lead Research Fellow at the GIGA Institute for African Affairs and Head of Research
Programme 2 “Peace and Security” at the German Institute for Global and Area Studies
(GIGA). He is also an Honorary Professor at the University of Göttingen and a member of
the GIGA Berlin Office.
<christian.vonsoest@giga-hamburg.de>
<www.giga-hamburg.de/en/the-giga/team/von-soest-christian>
336/2023 GIGA Working Papers
I thank Abel Escribà-Folch and Natasha Lindstaedt for their extremely helpful comments
and suggestions. A revised version of this paper with the title “Pressure Proofing: How Au-
thoritarian Regimes Respond to Sanctions” will be published in Lindstaedt, N. and J. Van
den Bosch (eds), Research Handbook on Authoritarianism, Cheltenham: Edward Elgar, forth-
coming.
GIGA Working Papers 336/2023
How Authoritarian Regimes Counter International Sanctions Pressure
Christian von Soest
Article Outline
1 Introduction
2 Existing Literature
3 Different Forms of Pressure
4 The Success of Sanctions
5 Pressure-Proofing Strategies: How Authoritarian Regimes Counter Sanctions
6 Conclusion and Outlook
Bibliography
1 Introduction
Traditionally, Comparative Politics scholars have focused on the inner workings of authori-
tarian1 rule and regimes. However, authoritarian regimes are also prime targets of interna-
tional pressure, for instance from Western countries or the United Nations. Research on au-
thoritarian regimes has, in turn, increasingly acknowledged the importance of international
factors for the maintenance and (de)stabilisation of authoritarian rule (Levitsky and Way 2010;
Tansey 2016a; Whitehead 1996) and has incorporated insights from research on foreign policy
1 In this paper, I use the terms “authoritarian,” “autocratic,” and “non-democratic” interchangeably.
6 Christian von Soest: How Authoritarian Regimes Counter International Sanctions Pressure
GIGA Working Papers 336/2023
instruments – for instance, sanctions (Escribà-Folch and Wright 2015; von Soest and Wahman
2015). Analysing pressure imposed on non-democratic regimes is indispensable to learning
more about the international as well as internal politics of authoritarianism.
Two fundamentally opposing developments have characterised the last 15 to 20 years: On
the one hand, growing autocratisation processes (Tomini 2021) and the “return of authoritar-
ian great powers” (Gat 2007) have created an increasingly permissive environment for author-
itarian practices worldwide. On the other, authoritarian rule is under considerable domestic
and international pressure. For example, sanctions are mostly enacted on non-democratic re-
gimes. Around 75 per cent of all countries under UN, United States, and European Union sanc-
tions are authoritarian. In addition, “democracy sanctions” that aim at improving democratic
and human rights constitute the biggest sanction category (Portela and von Soest 2012; von
Soest and Wahman 2015). As military intervention has become largely discredited and with
the public in the West having become increasingly war-weary, sanctions are arguably the most
common foreign policy tool used to deal in the twenty-first century with hostile behaviour by
authoritarian regimes – such as Russia’s aggression towards Ukraine.
In this paper, I present findings from current research on the nature and political conse-
quences of exerting pressure on authoritarian regimes. I review how economic and diplomatic
restrictions work and examine authoritarian targets’ pressure-proofing strategies. Authoritar-
ian governments represent particularly problematic targets as they can shield themselves from
external pressure more easily than their democratic counterparts can. With their limited or –
in extreme cases – even non-existent level of political competition, participation, rule of law,
as well as considerable control over the public discourse (Brooker 2009; Dahl 1971; Wintrobe
1998), they are harder to influence from the outside than liberal democracies are. In particular,
as will be shown, in an attempt to proof themselves against external pressure, authoritarians
can more easily fall back on economic, discursive, and repressive resources.
Before analysing the pressure imposed on authoritarian regimes, it is important to make
two clarifications. First, there is a fundamental difference between the general international
and/or regional environment for authoritarian rule – be it permissive or hostile – and foreign
policies, which are directed and intentional: in this case, external pressure applied to authori-
tarian regimes. Here, I focus on the latter: specific pressure applied to destabilise authoritarian
regimes or change their policies. Second, it is a well-established research finding that Western
countries and international organisations are not consistent in imposing such pressure. On the
contrary, their related decisions are highly selective or even strategic. To be sure, the US and
its allies have regularly supported authoritarian rule, for instance in Egypt (Brownlee 2012) or
in sub-Saharan Africa (Hagmann and Reyntjens 2016).
Given the wealth and breadth of existing research on the topic, the overview offered in this
paper must be selective. I proceed in four steps: First, I present trends in the application of
pressure, in particular sanctions, against authoritarian regimes. Second, I review factors that
Christian von Soest: How Authoritarian Regimes Counter International Sanctions Pressure 7
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influence the success of sanctions and, third, I examine authoritarian targets’ attempts at pres-
sure proofing to counter the effects thereof. Fourth and finally, I suggest avenues for further
research concerning the questions to be tackled, research design, and data.
2 Existing Literature
Two strands of Political Science have examined how external pressure affects authoritarian
regimes. Unfortunately, they have often worked in isolation. The first is Comparative Politics
research on authoritarianism. Boix (2011, 809) found that the “structure of the international
system affects the resources and strategies of pro-authoritarian and pro-democratic factions in
client states.” Directly after the collapse of the Soviet Union and the Eastern Bloc, the interna-
tional context became overwhelmingly supportive of democracy. Yet, the global dominance of
liberal democracy proved short-lived. The ascendance of authoritarian great powers (Gat
2007), most notably China and Russia, and of authoritarian states, like Saudi Arabia, has
turned the tide once again. The success of populist leaders across the globe (Mudde and Rovira
Kaltwasser 2018) has also created a more permissive environment for authoritarian regimes.
China and other authoritarian powers provide massive material, military, and ideological sup-
port while the so-called China Model sets an internationally appealing example (Bader 2015).
Scholars have analysed the different international dimensions of authoritarianism. Levit-
sky and Way (2010) examined how international linkage and leverage affect “competitive au-
thoritarian” regimes in different world regions. In the following, scholars have also investi-
gated processes of authoritarian diffusion (Bank 2017; Weyland 2017), the collaboration of au-
thoritarian regimes (Tansey 2016b; von Soest 2015), aid provided to authoritarians (Hagmann
and Reyntjens 2016), and the international image-building of non-democratic regimes (Dukal-
skis 2021). This has resulted in a better conceptualisation and more fine-grained understand-
ing of how international factors contribute to the strengthening or weakening of authoritarian
rule across the globe.
Second, International Relations research has provided fundamental new insights into the
effect of specific foreign policies. The literature on international sanctions has massively ex-
panded in the last 10 to 15 years. The first major data-collecting endeavour on sanctions came
from Hufbauer, Schott, and Elliot (2007; first published in 1990). Following in their footsteps,
the number of captured sanctions episodes has grown significantly. This has allowed research-
ers to better differentiate targets, measures, and sanctions goals. Consequently, it has become
possible to examine the effect of sanction threats (Morgan, Bapat and Kobayashi 2014); to dis-
entangle different policy demands, most notably separate “democracy sanctions” aiming at
strengthening democracy and human rights from measures pursuing other demands (von
Soest and Wahman 2015); and, to assess UN targeted sanctions (Biersteker, Eckert, and Touri-
nho 2016) and EU sanctions (Weber and Schneider 2022), regionally imposed measures, as well
as the ending of sanctions (Attia and Grauvogel 2023; Attia, Grauvogel, and von Soest 2020).
8 Christian von Soest: How Authoritarian Regimes Counter International Sanctions Pressure
GIGA Working Papers 336/2023
Furthermore, new approaches have served to cover the broad range of economic restrictions
sanctioning powers utilise (Felbermayr et al. 2020).
In principle, this sanctions data permits scholars to comparatively test factors that affect
democracies and authoritarian regimes, as well as various types of the latter, in greater detail.
However, only a fraction of newer works has closely investigated the sanctions–authoritarian-
ism nexus (most notably, Escribà-Folch and Wright 2015; Lektzian and Souva 2007). Most stud-
ies, if at all, work with an autocracy dummy, to differentiate between democratic and non-
democratic regimes, typically using Polity IV as their data source (Marshall and Jaggers 2010).
In addition to the compilation of datasets and statistical analysis, scholars have qualitatively
assessed the effect of external pressure in authoritarian settings (e.g. Jones 2015; Raynor 2022).
However, efforts to explicitly link qualitative and quantitative approaches and combine their
respective benefits have remained rare (e.g. Biersteker, Eckert, and Tourinho 2016).
3 Different Forms of Pressure
External pressure may be applied for various reasons: to fight armed conflicts; to stop the pro-
liferation of weapons of mass destruction; to counter support for terrorism; to punish human
rights violations; to address democratic deficiencies; to tackle drug trafficking; or, to combat
money laundering and corruption. Following Baldwin’s (1999) “logic of choice,” states, inter-
national and regional organisations can react in different ways to undesirable behaviour by
authoritarian regimes: They can stay silent or provide incentives – for instance, material ones
– to bring about change (Blanchard and Ripsman 2013). Beyond that, they have a large foreign
policy toolbox at their disposal to impose pressure on authoritarian regimes.2 Table 1 presents
these measures.
Table 1. Means of Coercion
Form of pressure
Main mode
Military intervention
Military
Economic sanctions
Economic
Foreign-aid withdrawals (and conditionality)
Human rights prosecutions
Legal
Naming and shaming campaigns
Political/Discursive
Diplomatic efforts
Note: Measures are presented in descending order of severity.
Seen as being between “words and wars” (Wallensteen and Staibano 2005), sanctions have
arguably been the most prominent foreign policy tool used to exert pressure on authoritarian
regimes since the end of the Cold War. They can be understood as “penalties linked to real (or
2 In their excellent review, Krasner and Weinstein (2014) consider several external policies and group them into
three categories: contracting, coercion, and imposition.
Christian von Soest: How Authoritarian Regimes Counter International Sanctions Pressure 9
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alleged) misconduct,” or, more elaborately, as “penalties threatened or imposed as a declared
consequence of the target’s failure to observe international standards or obligations” (Doxey
1996, 9). It is important to note that economic and/or diplomatic restrictions are not only coer-
cive tools but are also applied to constrain a target’s actions and to send a strong signal about
international norms (Giumelli 2011). Regularly, they are used in conjunction with other policy
means, such as diplomatic negotiations or military interventions.
The term “sanctions” encompasses a wide variety of measures, ones that are specifically
packaged in each instance (see Table 2 below). Triggered by the devastating humanitarian con-
sequences of the UN embargo on Iraq in the 1990s, the last 20 years have seen a major trans-
formation of the sanctions tool. In contrast to traditional trade embargoes that indiscriminately
affect the whole economy and/or population, Western powers and the UN now almost exclu-
sively impose targeted sanctions. These focus on particular economic sectors and social groups
(sectoral sanctions) or on specific persons and entities (individual sanctions) to minimise the
adverse humanitarian impacts (Biersteker, Tourinho, and Eckert 2016; Drezner 2011). The most
notable trend has been the “individualisation” of sanctions since the early years of the new
century. In line with this tendency to individualise accountability (Sikkink 2009), such sanc-
tions seek to coerce responsible individuals and entities into changing their behaviour, con-
strain their actions, and to send a strong signal about a particular international norm (Giumelli
2011). Yet, as the most recent sanctions packages against Iran, Russia, and Syria demonstrate,
sanctions have become more comprehensive again.
Table 2. Nature of Sanctions
Type
Economic costs
Comprehensive trade embargo
High (particular sectoral sanctions such
as arms embargos might impose low
economic costs; the costs of financial
sanctions vary widely)
Sectoral sanctions:
a) import and export restrictions
b) Investment restrictions
c) Stopping arms supplies and military cooperation
Financial controls and limiting of access to international financial
markets
Suspension of development aid
Individual sanctions against persons and entities (“blacklists”),
mainly by banning them from entering the country and freezing
their assets
Low
Diplomatic sanctions (expulsion of diplomats or severance of di-
plomatic relations)
3.1 The main sanctioning entities
The imposition of pressure on authoritarian regimes has become widespread since the end of
the Cold War. This is due to two main developments: First, the effective blockage on the United
Nations Security Council (UNSC), as the highest and most legitimate international body, im-
posing such pressure ended in 1990. While the UNSC had only imposed two sanctions regimes
up to 1990, namely against Rhodesia and Apartheid South Africa, it has since enacted over 23
10 Christian von Soest: How Authoritarian Regimes Counter International Sanctions Pressure
GIGA Working Papers 336/2023
such regimes against 18 countries (Biersteker, Tourinho, and Eckert 2016, 23). All of these tar-
gets can clearly be rated “authoritarian.” Accordingly, scholars dubbed the 1990s the “sanc-
tions decade” (Cortright and Lopez 2000). However, following this “unipolar moment,” the
UNSC is now blocked again – the main international decision-making body can hardly agree
on new multilateral sanctions. Russia’s aggression against Ukraine is the most obvious exam-
ple here – UN sanctions against this permanent member of the UNSC are completely unreal-
istic.
Second, the US and later the EU, as the most active sanction senders globally, massively
stepped up their use of autonomous sanctions – that is, ones not mandated by the UNSC. As
the world’s most powerful democracy, the US regularly acts unilaterally on issues of interna-
tional democracy and human rights promotion (Ignatieff 2009; Moravcsik 2005). Since the 9/11
terrorist attacks, the US has entered into a “new era of financial warfare” (Zarate 2013) and
uses the country’s dominant position in the global financial system to block the funding of
state and non-state actors it perceives as a threat to its security interests. Since the passing of
the 2012 Global Magnitsky Act, the US has a special law in place that requires the government
to ban purported human rights offenders from entering the country and to freeze their assets
(Tama 2018).
In line with its self-understanding as a union of liberal values, the EU has recurrently used
“restrictive measures” to strengthen human rights and democracy abroad (Hazelzet 2001; for
a critique, see Brummer 2009). Only recently has the EU implemented its own “horizontal”
human rights sanctions regime, providing the legal basis for individual designations. With the
adaption of this new regime in December 2020, alongside similar initiatives addressing
cyberattacks and the proliferation of chemical weapons, EU member states have created the
legal basis for sanctions addressing particular issues rather than behaviours linked to specific
countries’ governments (Portela 2021; von Soest 2019). Australia, Canada, Japan, and the
United Kingdom have their own sanctions policies in place and regularly align with US and
EU sanctions. Finally, it is important to note that not only Western countries apply autono-
mous, non-UN-mandated sanctions. Russia and increasingly China use this foreign policy tool
themselves, too (Harrell, Rosenberg, and Saravalle 2018; Timofeev 2021).
4 The Success of Sanctions
For years, academics, practitioners, and policymakers have discussed whether sanctions
“work,” meaning whether they help sanctioning powers achieve their political goals. Accord-
ing to Hufbauer et al.’s (2007) ground-breaking study, sanctions attain their objectives in one-
third of all cases. Pape (1997), however, established a considerably lower success rate of just 5
per cent. He set a very high, potentially unrealistic, threshold for success; for him, only com-
plete target acquiescence to the sender’s demands counts. Also, concurrent military interven-
tion would render the effect of sanctions meaningless. As a second fundamental consequence,
Christian von Soest: How Authoritarian Regimes Counter International Sanctions Pressure 11
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external restrictions might – in ways intended or not – contribute to the destabilisation or even
collapse of authoritarian regimes or rulers’ removal from office (Marinov 2005). In principle,
the effect of sanctions depends on three groups of factors: the target’s institutional character-
istics; pressure-inherent factors; and the policy objectives attached to a given sanctions pack-
age. In the following, I will address each of these in more detail.
4.1 Institutional characteristics
One of the most established findings in the scholarship is that sanctions are more successful in
attaining concessions from democracies than authoritarian regimes (Allen 2008a; Brooks 2002;
Lektzian and Souva 2007; Peksen 2009). Authoritarians are less reliant on the consent of their
citizens. Going by these studies, authoritarian rulers and their coteries are generally better able
to isolate themselves from outside pressure or even use it to their advantage. Democratic gov-
ernments, on the other hand, are less able to repress growing domestic dissent and tarnish
their electoral chances through the economic crises and international isolation caused by out-
side pressure. They can simply be voted out of power.
Within the category of “authoritarian regimes,” there are notable differences when it
comes to susceptibility to outside pressure. It is important to note that it is less the sheer size
of the winning coalition (Bueno de Mesquita et al. 2003) but more its composition that funda-
mentally influences authoritarian-elite behaviour in the face of external pressure. Generally,
less institutionalised regimes are more susceptible to sanctions (Escribà-Folch and Wright
2015; Jeong and Peksen 2019). Personalist regimes are more prone to both making concessions
and collapsing in the face of such measures. These regimes are highly centralised around the
leader at the top while formal institutions such as an impartial bureaucracy or judiciary are
weak (Geddes, Wright, and Frantz 2014; Frantz et al. 2020; Grundholm 2020). Regularly, per-
sonalist regimes lack the capacity to extract taxes on a large scale and are based on patron–
client relations (von Soest 2009). In consequence, they tend to be reliant on foreign-aid flows
and/or natural-resource rents that can be cut off more easily by economic sanctions.
It is important to take the sender’s perspective into account, too. The growing literature on
“the determinants of public support for democracy-promotion instruments” (Escribà-Folch,
Muradova, and Rodon 2021, 2) implies that public opinion in sender countries like the US
regularly drives target selection. For instance, US citizens supported in one study the use of
coercive measures against personalistic, oil-rich countries with no ties to their own – charac-
teristics that all make sanctions’ success extremely unlikely (Escribà-Folch, Muradova, and
Rodon 2021). These findings help to explain why governments impose sanctions in cases
where coercive measures and other instruments hardly work.
Sanctions reduce the funds available to co-opt members of the elite, the ruling coalition, as
well as the domestic population at large (Gandhi and Przeworski 2006; Morrison 2009). Fur-
12 Christian von Soest: How Authoritarian Regimes Counter International Sanctions Pressure
GIGA Working Papers 336/2023
thermore, the resources available for the repressive apparatus and the military dwindle. Es-
tablished and institutionalised party regimes such as China, military juntas, and monarchies
are therefore all better able to withstand external pressure.
4.2 Pressure-inherent factors
The nature of pressure – for instance, how economically costly sanctions are and whether tar-
gets can redirect trade to alternative partners (“sanctions busting”) – determines whether sanc-
tions successfully affect (authoritarian) targets (Early 2011, 2021). All else being equal, higher
economic costs increase the chances that a target will capitulate. However, as shown above,
this relationship is not linear but instead contingent on factors such as the target’s regime type.
Furthermore, studies show that multilateral sanctions, for instance by the UN, tend to be more
effective than restrictions imposed by one or a small number of countries (Bapat and Morgan
2009; Miers and Morgan 2002). Multilateral sanctions provide fewer loopholes and opportuni-
ties for sanctions busting (Early 2011) and enjoy higher legitimacy, particularly mandatory UN
sanctions. In these cases, targeted regimes have a harder time denouncing sanctions as “impe-
rialist.” These findings counter earlier concerns that to forge multilateral sanctions, sanction
senders would settle on the lowest common denominator – meaning weak sanctions (Drezner
2000). Finally, sanctions issued by trade partners and politically aligned senders tend to be far
more successful than measures imposed by other countries (McLean and Whang 2010).
4.3 Policy objectives
The nature of the “disputed policy” (Dorussen and Mo 2001) or the “issue salience” (Ang and
Peksen 2007) – as seen from the target’s perspective – fundamentally affects the prospects for
sanctions success. The policy objectives tied to sanctions can be divided into attempts to de-
stabilise the authoritarian regime in question and improve democratic and/or human rights,
on the one hand, or to force changes in particular policies, on the other. Naturally, demanding
democratisation or even outright regime change goes to the core of authoritarian rule and di-
rectly puts the security of rulers’ and authoritarian elites’ tenure in office at risk (Escribà-Folch
and Wright 2015; von Soest and Wahman 2015). Demanding free and fair elections or respect
for political freedoms threatens the targeted regime’s grip on power. These sanctions goals
send strong signals of disapproval and potentially directly undermine the targeted regime’s
survival and national security. Unsurprisingly, the demand for democratisation or regime
change regularly meets stern resistance. In addition, salient goals such as Russia’s unlawful
territorial conquest of Ukraine can hardly be achieved through sanctions alone. On the other
hand, authoritarian targets are more likely to succumb to limited and clearly defined policy
demands.
Christian von Soest: How Authoritarian Regimes Counter International Sanctions Pressure 13
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5 Pressure-Proofing Strategies: How Authoritarian Regimes Counter Sanctions
Scholars have devoted their attention and energy mostly to answering the question of how
successful sanctions are, meaning the extent to which they manage to coerce the target and
stop a particular behaviour. Less discussed is the issue of how economic pressure actually
translates into policy shifts. Going by a micro-foundations approach (Kirshner 1997), we can
differentiate three main ways in which sanctions affect the cost–benefit calculations of author-
itarian rulers: they can change tack (“it’s not worth it”); the coterie around the ruler or other
powerful members of society can force a rethinking of policy (or even regime change); or, cit-
izens may take to the streets. Naturally, these processes are not mutually exclusive and thus
feed into each other.
Innovative research applying an interest-group model (Kaempfer and Lowenberg 2000)
has shown that measures harming powerful segments of society who initially support govern-
ment policy tend to be the most successful. Similarly, affecting the interests of “innocent by-
standers” (Major and McGann 2005) – that is, internationally linked businesspeople with po-
litical influence – is a particularly effective strategy. These groups might, in turn, lobby for
policy changes to get sanctions lifted. The crucial insight emanating from this public-choice
perspective is that the political pressure coming from influential groups is regularly more de-
cisive than the will of the general population (on authoritarian regimes in general, see Svolik
2012).
Research findings on sanctions’ effects on protest remain inconclusive. Sanctions com-
municate regime disapproval (Schwebach 2000) and may thereby trigger domestic political
protest to bring about the desired behavioural changes. Visible sanction threats can work as a
signal of support for would-be protestors and stimulate collective action against targeted gov-
ernments (Grauvogel, Licht, and von Soest 2017). Furthermore, anti-government protest is
more likely to occur in times of economic hardship (Kricheli and Livne 2011; Ulfelder 2005).
Thus, sanctions’ economic costs increase the probability of anti-regime activity. However,
there is no consistent empirical support for this deprivation mechanism. The perceived proba-
bility of success is at least as influential a mechanism for triggering protest as deprivation is
(Allen 2008b).
Sanctions put authoritarian rulers at risk – be it through increased elite and/or popular
pressure and deprivation and/or signalling mechanisms. Consequently, one of the most solid
findings from extant quantitative research is that sanctions increase the probability of regime
collapse and a change of ruler (Escribà-Folch and Wright 2015; Licht 2017; Marinov 2005; von
Soest and Wahman 2015). Authoritarian leaders are well aware of these destabilising risks. In
an attempt to shield themselves, they draw on their power resources and even try to turn such
external pressure to their advantage.
At the international level, autocratic regimes try to evade sanctions and find alternative
political and trade partners (Early 2011; Lektzian and Biglaiser 2013). In 2019, for instance, the
Iranian foreign minister Mohammad Javad Zarif proudly declared that his country had “a
14 Christian von Soest: How Authoritarian Regimes Counter International Sanctions Pressure
GIGA Working Papers 336/2023
Ph.D. in sanctions busting” (De Luce 2019). The extent of this “black knight” support depends
on how isolated the target is regionally and internationally. Internally, authoritarian regimes
use economic, discursive, and repressive strategies to limit the domestic repercussions of out-
side pressure. As a result, sanctions – be they comprehensive or targeted – often fail to achieve
their political objectives and can even have negative consequences: they may strengthen the
targeted government’s role in distributing scarce resources, contribute to a “rally-round-the-
flag effect,” and/or induce increased state repression and corruption. Evidence from survey
experiments in targeted societies, such as Venezuela, suggests that the framing of external
pressure is decisive for public attitudes towards sanctions (Sejersen 2021). Citizens in target
countries find external pressure more legitimate when they perceive sanctions to be directed
at the incumbent elites and imposed to improve the local human rights situation.
5.1 Economy: Strengthening the role of government
Comprehensive sanctions inhibit the flow of imports and exports as well as financial ex-
changes. They thereby contribute to the shortage of specific goods and investments or even to
economic crisis, as in Iran or in Iraq during Saddam Hussein’s rule. However, unintentionally,
these restrictions also increase the role of the targeted government in distributing scarcer re-
sources and providing support in countering sanctions’ repercussions for citizens and the do-
mestic economy (Escribà-Folch 2012). Thus, the population often becomes more dependent on
government subsidies. They can be revoked. In Syria, for instance, the government cut subsi-
dies for oil products, thereby fundamentally increasing the cost of living for citizens (Daher
2021). Regularly, targeted governments focus their resource distribution on politically well-
connected businesspeople and those population groups that support the ruler in power.
In principle, targeted sanctions are expected to minimise economic and social harm to the
general population (Cortright and Lopez 2002). However, targeted sanctions are no silver bul-
let. Recent studies have criticised them for having adverse humanitarian impacts similar to
comprehensive measures (e.g. Gordon 2019; Moret 2021). In addition, even though scholars
and policymakers alike deem sanctions targeting top decision-makers to be most effective in
changing the policies in question and sending strong signals about international norms (Wa l -
lensteen and Grusell 2012), only recently have powerholders become increasingly blacklisted.
Currently, Russia’s Vladimir Putin, Belarus’s Alexander Lukashenko, North Korea’s Kim Jong-
Un, Venezuela’s Nicolás Maduro, and Syria’s Bashar al-Assad have asset freezes and travel
bans imposed on them, while other powerful decision-makers who have committed similarly
egregious human rights violations are not targeted by the US or the EU (von Soest 2019).
Christian von Soest: How Authoritarian Regimes Counter International Sanctions Pressure 15
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5.2 Discursive strategies: Using sanctions to authoritarians’ advantage
Using censorship and propaganda, authoritarian governments have a tight grip on the public
discourse and the struggle over the meaning of sanctions. Targeted authoritarian regimes reg-
ularly even try to use sanctions to their advantage, integrate them into their legitimation strat-
egies, and blame senders for their economic woes – thus diverting attention away from their
own mismanagement. Governmental legitimacy and ideology fundamentally influence the
vulnerability of rulers to external pressure. Regimes with strong anti-imperialist ideologies
can even turn it to their advantage to create a rally-round-the-flag effect (Galtung 1967) and
quell internal dissent. Such an effect occurs when the sanctioned government can portray that
external pressure as an attack on the entire country and thus successfully appeals to the soli-
darity of its population (Grauvogel and von Soest 2014; Tannenberg et al. 2021). This is partic-
ularly relevant for regimes that have a strong ideological foundation, for instance as a result
of past revolutions or wars of liberation (Goldstone 2001; Levitsky and Way 2022). China,
Cuba, Iran, Venezuela, and Zimbabwe are prominent examples. On the other hand, regimes
that have a thin ideological base and pursue a performance-based legitimation strategy are, all
things being equal, more vulnerable to outside coercion (Grauvogel and von Soest 2014).
On the whole, however, current experimental evidence suggests that such a rallying effect
is rarely caused by external pressure alone. After the 2014 annexation of Crimea, for example,
Russian national euphoria and President Putin’s approval ratings skyrocketed because of the
deed itself, rather than the subsequent confrontation with the West (Alexseev and Hale 2020;
Frye 2019).
5.3 Repression: Tighter grip
There is solid empirical evidence that sanctions on the whole – albeit unintentionally – con-
tribute to increased human rights violations and state repression in targeted regimes (Liou,
Murdie, and Peksen 2021; Wood 2008). This negative effect also holds when targeted sanctions
are imposed. Sanctions also contribute to reduced human rights protection (Gutmann, Neu-
enkirch, and Neumeier 2020). Further empirical research shows that political violence tends to
increase most in regimes situated between liberal democracies and full autocracies in the face
of international sanctions (Allen 2008b) (for a summary, see Table 3 below).
The long-term effects might be more positive. First, as outlined, sanctions are particularly
corrosive for personalist regimes. Peksen (2019, 638) states that “[w]eak state capacity and in-
stitutions also reduce their ability to use repression and other coercive tools to suppress grow-
ing domestic dissent and opposition following the sanctions imposition.” Second, sanctions
that aim at improving democratic and human rights on average seem to have a slightly posi-
tive effect and contribute to increased democracy levels in targeted states in the long run (von
Soest and Wahman 2015).
16 Christian von Soest: How Authoritarian Regimes Counter International Sanctions Pressure
GIGA Working Papers 336/2023
Table 3. Targeted Authoritarian Regimes’ Internal Means of Pressure Proofing
Strategies
Examples
Economic
Redistribution to political constituencies, elites, supportive regions and actors
Discursive
Recurrence to glorious past, outsiders’ imperialism, and to nationalism; rallying
effects
Repressive
“Hard” and “soft repression”: increased censorship and propaganda, declaring a
state of emergency, quelling protests, extrajudicial killings, greater use of police,
military, and intelligence apparatus
6 Conclusion and Outlook
Authoritarian regimes are the prime targets of external pressure designed to alter their policies
or even contribute to their destabilisation and regime change. Yet, compared to their demo-
cratic counterparts, authoritarians are harder to influence from the outside. Their institutional
characteristics – a lower degree of political competition and participation, as well as a more
modest rule of law – mean that authoritarian regimes can shield themselves from external
pressure more effectively. (As outlined, in addition to these regime-specific characteristics,
prior relations between senders and targets and the size of the economy determine the vulner-
ability to outside pressure.) Variation within the broad category of “authoritarian regimes” is
substantial, however. Overall, such pressure is most harmful to less institutionalised person-
alist dictatorships, while sanctions can hardly affect highly isolated and repressive targets like
North Korea.
6.1 Pressure proofing
Potentially influencing state–society relations in targeted countries, external pressure directly
affects the “politics of autocratic survival” (Escribà-Folch and Wright 2015). Authoritarian re-
gimes tend to maintain power with a mixture of repression, co-optation, and legitimation strat-
egies (Gerschewski 2013; von Soest and Wahman 2015; Wintrobe 1998). They regularly draw
on these strategies to shield themselves against externally imposed sanctions: they redistribute
scarce goods to supporters, portray even targeted measures as an imperialist attack on the
whole country, and step up repression to intimidate would-be protesters. In addition to these
domestic resources, authoritarian regimes are active in the international arena: they try to cir-
cumvent sanctions (Early 2011); forge ties between themselves to impede democratic forces
(von Soest 2015); attempt to influence public opinion in Western countries (Dukalskis 2021);
and, impose retaliatory sanctions (Fuchs and Klann 2013; Timofeev 2021). In sum, the effects
of such pressure depend on sanctions-specific factors (most notably the political demands
made and economic costs imposed) and on the domestic resources that the targeted regime
can draw on (economic, discursive, and repressive).
Christian von Soest: How Authoritarian Regimes Counter International Sanctions Pressure 17
336/2023 GIGA Working Papers
6.2 Outlook: Avenues for further research
Concurrent with the increasing use of international sanctions – former US president Donald
Trump’s “maximum pressure campaign” comes to mind – to influence authoritarian regimes,
analysis of and knowledge about this key foreign policy tool has fundamentally expanded in
the last 15 to 20 years. Conversely, Comparative Politics research increasingly acknowledges
how external factors and outright pressure affect authoritarian rule (Levitsky and Way 2010).
As authoritarian regimes will remain the main targets of Western powers’ pressure in the years
to come, further scholarly progress in examining its consequences for incumbents, as well as
their pressure-proofing strategies to counter it, is of the utmost importance.
First, despite the considerable advancements made, scholars still largely investigate sanc-
tions in isolation – that is, without linking them to other means of exerting pressure. Yet, sanc-
tions are always used in conjunction with other foreign policy tools – for instance, diplomacy,
foreign aid, mediation efforts, and material incentives. In the spirit of Escribà-Folch and
Wright (2015), and of Biersteker, Brubaker, and Lanz (2022), future studies should systemati-
cally theorise and empirically explore the effect of sanctions on authoritarian regimes vis-à-vis
other coercive measures. In doing so, qualitative and quantitative perspectives could be more
systematically connected, as could Comparative Authoritarianism and IR research on sanc-
tions.
Second, existing research often fails to capture the highly dynamic and non-linear listing
patterns that dominate current sanctions practice. Even targeted measures are normally con-
ceived of as single events with a sole start and end date (Peksen 2019). Individual sanctions
are almost exclusively aggregated at the annual and country levels as if they were comprehen-
sive sanctions. One promising analytical strategy to overcome this simplification has been
Eriksson’s (2011, 47–51; see also, Biersteker, Tourinho, and Eckert 2016, 17) disaggregation of
country-level sanctions regimes into separate episodes. This could form a fruitful starting
point for further investigations.
Third and finally, newer developments – such as so-called horizontal sanction regimes in
the EU and other jurisdictions – that directly target specific persons and entities have led to a
sharp increase in individual listings. These require new data-collection efforts. Doing so will
help us analyse their repercussions for targeted individuals and entities in authoritarian set-
tings in a more fine-grained manner.
Autocratisation processes across the globe, the increasing antagonism between democratic
and authoritarian regimes, and the “weaponized interdependence” (Farrell and Newman
2019) all mean that external pressure and related pressure-proofing strategies will become
even more important issues going forward. Continued scholarly efforts will therefore be in-
strumental to gaining further key knowledge about how authoritarian rule can be influenced
from the outside (or not).
18 Christian von Soest: How Authoritarian Regimes Counter International Sanctions Pressure
GIGA Working Papers 336/2023
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