Why Sanctions Topple Some Dictators — But Not Others

What Question Do the Authors Ask?

Abel Escribà-Folch and Joseph Wright ask whether economic sanctions destabilize authoritarian rulers and why their effects vary across different types of dictatorships. The paper tests whether external pressure undermines regimes by cutting off revenue that fuels patronage and repression, and whether this dynamic differs for personalist, monarchical, single-party, and military regimes.

Why It Matters

Sanctions are a common foreign-policy tool, but their domestic political impact is contested. Identifying which types of dictatorships are most vulnerable clarifies when sanctions are likely to promote leadership change and when they simply provoke regime adaptation — a distinction with consequences for policymakers and scholars of authoritarian politics.

How the Study Is Done

• The authors compile data on international sanction episodes and authoritarian regimes covering 1960–1997.
• They estimate selection-corrected survival models to assess whether and how sanctions affect the duration of rulers' tenures.
• The analysis also examines modes of leader exit, distinguishing regular transfers from irregular ones such as coups.

What They Find

• The hypothesized mechanism is that sanctions reduce external revenue that many rulers use for patronage. Personalist rulers and monarchs are theorized to be especially exposed because they rely heavily on such external funds.
• Empirically, the strongest and most consistent result is that personalist dictators are significantly more vulnerable to sanctions than other authoritarian types: sanctions increase the probability of both regular and irregular leadership changes, including coups, in personalist regimes.
• By contrast, dominant single-party and military regimes appear resilient: these regimes tend to raise domestic tax revenues and reallocate spending toward co-optation and repression, blunting the destabilizing effect of sanctions.

What This Means for Policy and Research

The paper suggests sanctions do not have uniform effects across authoritarian governments. Where rulers depend on externally sourced patronage—most clearly in personalist dictatorships—sanctions are likelier to produce leadership turnover. In more institutionalized authoritarian systems, however, states adapt fiscally and politically to preserve incumbents. These findings refine expectations about sanctions as a tool of regime change and point to the importance of regime type in predicting domestic outcomes of international pressure.

(Article published in International Studies Quarterly; authors: Abel Escribà-Folch and Joseph Wright.)