Sanctions and Repression
Causality Hypotheses: A Research Report
Deutsche Fassung
Abstract
The EU and the United States have imposed sanctions, economic and financial, on authoritarian or dictatorial regimes in Russia, Belarus, Iran, and North Korea. The purpose of these sanctions is to punish and prevent violations of peace and international law, as well as domestic repression and human rights violations. Sanctions research is divided over the question whether economic sanctions are an appropriate means to these ends. The prevailing opinion is that sanctions are counterproductive. They give regimes an economic, political, and power-sociological pretext for intensifying domestic repression. But there is no proof.
(Osteuropa, 10-12/2021, pp. 243–252)