International economic sanctions and conflict prevention in self-determination disputes

Abstract Can international sanctions prevent civil war? Despite the increased scholarly and policy focus on conflict prevention, we lack an understanding of the impact of a commonly used tool of the international community – economic sanctions. We examine the impact of sanctions targeted against states with self-determination (SD) disputes. We argue that the threat of sanctions leads states to decrease repression and increase accommodation in these disputes, thus decreasing the likelihood of civil war. The imposition of sanctions, however, incentivizes the state to increase repression and makes the state a more attractive target for dissidents. Both dynamics make civil war more likely in the short term. Over time, however, states can adapt to the new economic reality created by a sanctions regime, and the risk of escalation to civil war will decrease. We conduct a series of statistical tests of the effect of threatened and imposed sanctions against the state on armed conflict onset in SD disputes, accommodation of SD groups, and repression. We find that threatened sanctions decrease the likelihood of armed conflict onset, make government accommodation of SD groups more likely, and lead to overall decreases in repression by the state. Imposed sanctions, meanwhile, increase the risk of civil war in the next year, but this effect dissipates over time. These results suggest that sanction threats can be a useful tool of conflict prevention, but failed threats can increase the risk of escalations of violence in SD disputes.