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While there is little evidence to suggest that broad sanctions support democratic transition, we know that they often obstruct human rights efforts and can strengthen a repressive regime.
A range of sanctions scholarship focuses on ways in which authoritarian states use external sanctions to cement their hold on power, regardless of how severe the overall economic costs are.
Political scientist Daniel Drezner observes that broad economic sanctions not only tend to intensify pressure on politically weak groups, but that target governments are increasingly able to manipulate the effects of sanctions to benefit their supporters and constituencies. And David Lektzian and Mark Souva, experts in economic sanctions and international disputes, advise against the imposition of broad economic sanctions in non-democratic countries as the economic cost is often felt hardest by the population. They argue that broad economic sanctions increase a regime’s ability to extract rents and secure the loyalty of its support base.
