Targeted Sanctions Against Authoritarian Elites

A significant part of economic coercion deployed by the US, EU and the UN targets authoritarian regimes’ ruling elites. We develop a formal model to study the effects of such measures. The ruler chooses how much power to delegate to elites, while bracing for a challenge from the latter or from the masses. The elite decides whether to fight for the ruler, walk away, or stage a coup. Depending on how much the ruler trusts the elite, the imposition of individual sanctions may lead to more power being delegated, thus inducing coups and repression, or it may lead to less power being delegated, which results in liberalization. We illustrate these predictions with two case studies.