Paper short abstract:

Sanctions research strongly suggests that sanctions imposed by states on their allies and neighbors are most successful. We test whether complementary sanctions by regional organizations indeed contribute to sanction’s higher overall impact on democratization in Africa than in other parts of the world.

Paper long abstract:

Sanctions are a popular means of exerting pressure on non-democratic regimes. The European Union, for instance, increasingly makes use of the Article 96 under the Cotonou Agreement to confront severe human rights violations and, especially, coup d'états. A new global data set on EU, US and UN sanctions in the post-Cold War era suggests that these sanctioning entities, which disproportionally target regimes in Sub-Saharan Africa, use specific means, in particular aid sanctions. In addition, in almost all cases where sanctions aim at democratization, the African Union and sub-regional organizations have also implemented sanctions. Sanctions research strongly suggests that sanctions imposed by states on their allies and neighbors are most successful. This raises the question whether complementary sanctions by regional organizations contribute to sanction's higher overall impact on democratization in Africa compared to elsewhere. We test this proposition with a fuzzy set Qualitative Comparative Analysis (QCA) and, based on that, with case studies of four sanction episodes in Africa - two where sanctions led to improved democracy levels and two where they did not. We find that in addition to factors prominently discussed in the sanctions literature such as leverage vis-à-vis the target, regional engagement indeed plays a role. The other factors of crucial importance are the vulnerability of the targeted regime and linkage between sender and target.