Replication Data for: Economic Sanctions and the Domestic Sources of Defiance to Foreign Pressure in Target Countries: The Case of Government Predation

What domestic policies do targeted regimes pursue to survive economic sanctions? Despite an abundance of research on the use and effectiveness of sanctions, scant research has been conducted on the domestic sources of the target’s defiance to foreign pressure. This study explores the extent to which sanctions prompt the target regimes to manipulate the domestic economic conditions through arbitrary confiscation and redistribution of private property and wealth. It is argued that economic coercion poses a direct threat to political survival and coercive capacity of the target government. The external threat of sanctions consequently creates incentives for politically insecure elites to engage in the policy of predation to counter the negative economic effects of the coercion on themselves and their constituency. Using time-series cross-national data from 1960 to 2005, the results indicate that as sanctions exact significant economic damage on the economy, the target government is more likely to pursue predatory policies. Focusing on the government use of predatory policies to evade foreign pressure, this study expands the current understanding of sanction ineffectiveness in pressuring the government to acquiesce to external demands. The findings of the study also show that economic coercion might become counterproductive, inadvertently contributing to the deterioration of the economic security and well-being of citizens in target countries