International Sanctions and Elite Splits in Electoral Authoritarian Regimes: A Conceptual Framework

Sanctions are a prime instrument to confront countries’ undesirable behavior in the post-Cold War era. However, we still know very little about how members of the ruling coalition in a target country behave in the face of external pressure. Yet elite splits are one of if not the most fundamental mechanisms for political change: they may instigate democratization, but also lead to electoral violence, clampdowns on dissenters and even the emergence of civil war. To address this knowledge gap, the paper presents a new conceptual framework of how international sanctions - via material and/or symbolic mechanisms - affect the behavior of potential defectors within targeted electoral authoritarian regimes. These are the most common sanction targets, and the most pervasive form of contemporary authoritarianism worldwide. The paper seeks to make three contributions: It conceptualizes the behavior of the political elite in targeted regimes; it disaggregates the instrument of sanctions; and it analyzes regime characteristics, particularly elections, that shape actors’ behavior. Furthermore, it makes suggestions of how elite splits in reaction to sanctions can be empirically analyzed