Electronic Theses and Dissertations Archive

Date

2026

Document Type

Thesis

Degree Name

Master of Arts

Department

Political Science

Committee Chair

Dursun Peksen

Committee Member

James Fahey

Committee Member

Matthias Kaelberer

Abstract

The thesis examines whether economic sanctions erode the target countries’ state capacity and whether these effects differ by the identity of the sanctioning actors. Drawing on “the naïve theory of sanctions”, the thesis hypothesizes that economic sanctions reduce fiscal and administrative capacity but incentivize military capacity. By incorporating data from the Global Sanctions Database, the World Bank, and the V-Dem datasets, the thesis employs country-fixed-effects models to test hypotheses. The overall findings contradict the naïve assumptions and indicate that sanctions have limited efficacy in undermining the state capacity of target countries. The results can be summarized as follows: 1) economic sanctions do not systematically erode fiscal capacity; 2) there is no significant evidence that administrative capacity shows a decline following sanctions; and 3) military capacity, on the other hand, shows a positive and significant result associated with the aggregated economic sanctions. The thesis concludes with policy implications of the findings and avenues for future research.

Comments

Data is provided by the student.

Library Comment

Dissertation or thesis originally submitted to ProQuest/Clarivate.

Notes

Open Access

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