The Consequences of Sanctions Results on Human Rights, Democracy and Life Expectancy, 1978-2012

The efficacy of sanctions as an instrument of foreign policy is still in great doubt, in fact, one of the main features in this kind of works is the focus on the consequences of economic sanctions. The common rationale behind the imposition of these measures is that the higher are the costs for the target countries, the higher will be the probability that their government behavior could be affected because of welfare losses [1,2] in fact, without any attention of the consequences of this pressure on Human Right, Democracy and Life Expectancy in the target countries. This study is an attempt to deals with these aspects of negative sanctions based on Hufbauer and Schott’s data [1]. Economic sanctions are domestic penalties applied unilaterally by one country (or multilaterally, by a group of countries) on another country [1]. The concept of sanctions as a blunt tool of diplomacy has been around at least from the time of the ancient Greeks. As Gary Hufbauer and Jeffrey Schott note in their classic book on the topic, the history of economic sanctions goes back at least to 432 BC, when the Greek statesman and general Pericles issued the so-called “Megarian decree” in response to the abduction of three Aspaisan women, there has been a long history of countries blockading their enemies to compel a change in behavior [3]. It is understandable that economic sanctions are used as a tool of foreign policy by many governments and may include various forms of trade barriers and restrictions on financial transactions and also are usually imposed by a larger country upon a smaller country for one of two reasons either the latter is a threat to the security of the former nation or that country treats its citizens unfairly. They can be used as a coercive measure for achieving particular policy goals related to trade or for humanitarian violations. Economic sanctions are used as an alternative weapon instead of going to war to achieve desired outcomes. For example, in modern times, the United States has employed economic sanctions in pursuit of diverse goals, from the Carter administration’s efforts in the 1970s to promote human rights, to attempts to impede nuclear proliferation in the 1980s [4]. They may be high-tech than a flotilla at sea, but we don’t know exactly that sanctions are any more effective and more humane today than they were 2,400 years ago and why do traditional sanctions lead to these unintended consequences? A traditional line of reasoning regarding sanctions is the “naive theory” of economic sanctions [5]. In this, the sender state or sender coalition applies economic coercion at the outset of a confrontation against the target country, with the expectation that the sanctions will lead to economic hardship among the civilian population. This economic hardship will harm the legitimacy and the capacity of the political leadership and create pressure from the general public and opposition groups on the government to either give in to the sanction sender’s demands, or step down so a new government with a different policy can take over [6]. This naive theory asserts that the economic coercion will encourage opposition groups to be more active in challenging the targeted leadership, knowing they have support from the sender state (Drury and Peksen) also point out that the suffering and frustration caused by the sanctions makes the target state’s population more likely to commit political violence against the regime [7]. The economic effects of the sanctions decrease the target regime’s wealth and therefore shrink the funds the regime can pay to supporters for their loyalty, also result in fewer resources for the police and military which is crucial when repressing the population. Subsequently, once targeted regimes feel the impact of economic pressure from outside states or alliances, they should give in to the foreign demands for political reform and this is done in order to curtail the suffering for the civilian population [8]. Sanctions are least likely to be imposed when they are most likely the policy goals will be achieved and traditional broad economic coercion rarely harms the target regime or their coercive capacity, instead, the sanctions cause severe humanitarian and political consequences for the civilians in Table 1. The political elite is usually successful in transferring the hardship to the civilian population while mostly remaining insulated from the coercion themselves and economic disruptions caused by the sanctions can be used as a strategic tool to manipulate access to and redistribute resources made scarce by the sanctions [9].


Introduction
The efficacy of sanctions as an instrument of foreign policy is still in great doubt, in fact, one of the main features in this kind of works is the focus on the consequences of economic sanctions. The common rationale behind the imposition of these measures is that the higher are the costs for the target countries, the higher will be the probability that their government behavior could be affected because of welfare losses [1,2] in fact, without any attention of the consequences of this pressure on Human Right, Democracy and Life Expectancy in the target countries. This study is an attempt to deals with these aspects of negative sanctions based on Hufbauer and Schott's data [1]. Economic sanctions are domestic penalties applied unilaterally by one country (or multilaterally, by a group of countries) on another country [1]. The concept of sanctions as a blunt tool of diplomacy has been around at least from the time of the ancient Greeks. As Gary Hufbauer and Jeffrey Schott note in their classic book on the topic, the history of economic sanctions goes back at least to 432 BC, when the Greek statesman and general Pericles issued the so-called "Megarian decree" in response to the abduction of three Aspaisan women, there has been a long history of countries blockading their enemies to compel a change in behavior [3]. It is understandable that economic sanctions are used as a tool of foreign policy by many governments and may include various forms of trade barriers and restrictions on financial transactions and also are usually imposed by a larger country upon a smaller country for one of two reasons either the latter is a threat to the security of the former nation or that country treats its citizens unfairly. They can be used as a coercive measure for achieving particular policy goals related to trade or for humanitarian violations. Economic sanctions are used as an alternative weapon instead of going to war to achieve desired outcomes. For example, in modern times, the United States has employed economic sanctions in pursuit of diverse goals, from the Carter administration's efforts in the 1970s to promote human rights, to attempts to impede nuclear proliferation in the 1980s [4]. They may be high-tech than a flotilla at sea, but we don't know exactly that sanctions are any more effective and more humane today than they were 2,400 years ago and why do traditional sanctions lead to these unintended consequences? A traditional line of reasoning regarding sanctions is the "naive theory" of economic sanctions [5]. In this, the sender state or sender coalition applies economic coercion at the outset of a confrontation against the target country, with the expectation that the sanctions will lead to economic hardship among the civilian population. This economic hardship will harm the legitimacy and the capacity of the political leadership and create pressure from the general public and opposition groups on the government to either give in to the sanction sender's demands, or step down so a new government with a different policy can take over [6]. This naive theory asserts that the economic coercion will encourage opposition groups to be more active in challenging the targeted leadership, knowing they have support from the sender state (Drury and Peksen) also point out that the suffering and frustration caused by the sanctions makes the target state's population more likely to commit political violence against the regime [7]. The economic effects of the sanctions decrease the target regime's wealth and therefore shrink the funds the regime can pay to supporters for their loyalty, also result in fewer resources for the police and military which is crucial when repressing the population. Subsequently, once targeted regimes feel the impact of economic pressure from outside states or alliances, they should give in to the foreign demands for political reform and this is done in order to curtail the suffering for the civilian population [8]. Sanctions are least likely to be imposed when they are most likely the policy goals will be achieved and traditional broad economic coercion rarely harms the target regime or their coercive capacity, instead, the sanctions cause severe humanitarian and political consequences for the civilians in Table 1. The political elite is usually successful in transferring the hardship to the civilian population while mostly remaining insulated from the coercion themselves and economic disruptions caused by the sanctions can be used as a strategic tool to manipulate access to and redistribute resources made scarce by the sanctions [9]. freedoms and civil liberties of the citizens so they can stay in power, examples of this are seen in the sanctions applied against Cuba, Rhodesia, Iraq and Iran [10]. Although economic coercion aims to restrict political elite's access to scarce economic and military resources, the leaders more often than not can mitigate the negative effect of economic coercion by controlling the allocation of the increasingly scarce resources within the society as well as using transnational black markets and illegal smuggling [4]. As an economy shrinks from the restriction of economic ties imposed by the sanctions, the leadership can redirect the economy so that they still have sufficient access to scarce goods while making the rest of the population bear the burden [11]. For example, Saddam Hussein and Ahmadinezhad did not seem to suffer personally from the UN and USA sanctions in the same way that the Iraqi and Iran public suffered. A major argument against the use of economic sanctions is that the sanctioned state has time to adapt to economic hardships, sanctions as a bargaining game, sanctioning as an attempt to wear down a target into acquiescence, without specifying a date for resolution. Instead, acceptance by either side of the other side's terms could happen at any time during the sanctioning episode. For this to rationally occur, both sides must face a constant balance between accepting and waiting further, a condition we call countervailing. Catherine CL suggest that place sanctioning behavior in the context of rational bargaining in continuous time, drawing out, as a result, a new relationship between the cost of sanctions and the duration of sanctioning episodes [12]. The presence of a alliance, signifying a positive pre-sanctions relationship between the target and sender states, increases the likelihood that sanctions will end more quickly with concession from the target state. Leventoglu [13] argues that the impact of sanctions when the sanctioned state has the ability to adapt in an otherwise standard bargaining model. She shows that bargaining leverage gained through constant sanctioning depends on the adaptability of the sanctioned state. In contrast, alternate sanctioning is immune to adaptability and provides more bargaining leverage for the sanctioning state. This finding is robust to introduction of informational asymmetry. Moreover, alternate sanctioning may eliminate informational asymmetry without actual use of sanctions using a formalized bargaining model; Krustev argues that credible war options are of critical importance in determining whether economic coercion will be used and what distributional impact it might have. Evaluating the model's empirical implications reveals that state choices to initiate economic coercion and what coercion level to set indeed depends on both military and economic factors [14]. The success rate importantly depended on the type of policy or governmental change sought. Episodes involving modest and limited goals, such as the release of a political prisoner, succeeded half the time. Cases involving attempts to change regimes e.g., by destabilizing a particular leader or by encouraging an autocrat to democratize, to impair a foreign adversary's military potential, or to otherwise change its policies in a major way succeeded in about 30% of those cases as shown in Table  1. Efforts to disrupt relatively minor military adventures succeeded in only a fifth of cases where that was the goal. Sanctions are more likely to succeed when the sender firms' strength in the target's market is moderately strong, that is, it is not too weak or too strong. On the other hand, senders have disincentives to enforce their sanctions policies, given that the restriction of business transactions with target states may undermine their firms' competitiveness relative to foreign firms. In this study, we estimate the effects of exposure to economic sanctions on Human Rights, Democracy and Life Expectancy at birth.

Related Literature Review
A large part of the early work on sanctions has focused on their effectiveness as a coercive policy tool, and the conditions under which sanctions can achieve successfully their intended policy objectives. Evaluation of the consequences of sanctions results on human rights, democracy and life expectancy is a new approach, but the Phenomenon of international negative sanctions is generally studied in relation to its effectiveness.
Since its publication, Hufbauer et al.'s Economic Sanctions Reconsidered (1985) became the central point of reference for the empirical study of economic sanctions. Many scholars have devoted their efforts to distinguishing characteristics of degrees of success and failure of the economic punishment. Baldwin et al. [15] examined economic sanctions and the success of foreign policy goals. Ling [16] found that conclusions of Hufbauer and Schott explored that economic sanctions do not contribute very much to the achievement of foreign policy goals, except in several situations involving small target countries and modest policy goals, are sensitive to and unduly biased by the methodology adopted. Peksen [17] argues that, evidence that import controls have some leverage. And reject the hypothesis that the sanctions and their consequences jointly have no impact on foreign policy goals. He concluded that further empirical work is required before pronouncements on the effectiveness of economic sanctions can be made. Kimberly, Peter (1993) re-examined to use a probit estimation technique to examine some of the variables that may determine success or failure in the use of economic sanctions as an alternative to military action [18].
They found that, the conclusions of Hufbauer, Schott and Elliott regarding the effectiveness of economic sanctions in achieving foreign policy goals. While Lam's criticisms of the HSE methodology are valid, the results of the model developed here differ in lending support to the HSE conclusions. In addition, the model can be used to predict the probability of sanctions contributing to a peaceful resolution of the recent Middle East crisis. The predicted probabilities of success in the Iraq case were above average and well above 50%. Susan [8] she examined the determinants of economic sanctions success and failure. With strong results suggesting that political structures do affect the way states respond to economic coercion. She argues that the presence of a democratic target shortens the duration of sanctions, regardless of which side concedes and the factors that do not cause sanctions success do not necessarily cause sanctions to fail and the regime type of the target state is an important factor on both sides of the sanctions equation.
Susan and David suggested in economic sanctions, a blunt instrument? Economic sanctions have been referred to as a blunt instrument that the international community has often wielded without full consideration of the impact that these measures will have on the population of the targeted countries, particularly the weakest elements of society. They studied Case studies of sanctions against Cuba, Iraq, and Yugoslavia have demonstrated the impact that sanctions can have on the availability of food, Clean water, and medicine, causing many to conclude that all sanctions have extensive public health consequences. They examined the generalizability of these conclusions in a quantitative cross-national study of sanctions and their public health effects. They compared these effects to those associated with both civil and interstate conflicts as critics have recently suggested that sanctions are not a humane alternative to armed warfare. They find that when sanctions have a large economic effect on the target they can have severe public health consequences. These consequences are substantively similar to those associated with major military conflicts. However, when sanctions have little or no economic effect on the target, they also have no substantive effect on public health. Building on recent work to explore the human consequences of war, this work also helps to demonstrate the importance of smart sanctions and humanitarian exemptions in sanctions policy. Matthias and Florian analyzed the effect of US economic sanctions on the target countries' poverty. Their results indicate that US sanctions are indeed affecting the wrong people as we observe a 2.3-5.1 percentage points (pp) larger poverty gap in sanctioned countries compared to their nearest neighbors. Severe sanctions, such as fuel embargoes, trade restrictions, the freezing of assets or embargoes on most or all economic activity are particularly detrimental and lead to an increase in the poverty gap by 6.1-7.4 percentage points [19].

Research Question
The main question is, based on the Policy Result index and the Sanctions Contribution index qualitative analysis in Hufbauer, Schott, and Elliott, we are trying to find out whether, any of the sanctions results (successful outcome, positive outcome, minor outcome and failed outcome), caused improving the variables of human rights, democracy and life expectancy at birth in the target countries or has harmful consequences, as shown in Table 2.
In fact, we want to answer that, in the target countries when sanctions are applied, the amount of autocracy, disappearances, torture, political imprisonment and executions, extrajudicial killings, will increase and worker's rights, political participation, freedom of religion, freedom of speech, freedom of movement and life expectancy at birth will decrease in the target countries if probability of sanctions successfully will increase [20], as seen from Table 3.

Methodology and Data
The main independent variables data for this paper were gathered using the new version of Hufbauer, Schott, Elliott, and Oegg dataset [1] for the main independent variables. The Imposition of Economic Sanctions (IES) dataset includes 2765 cases in 73 countries and during 35 years, since 1978-2012. Economic sanctions are defined as actions that one or more countries take to limit or end their economic relations with a target country in an effort to persuade that country to change its policies. All sanction variables are binary and takes the value of 1 if the sanction type was implemented for duration of more than two months that year, and 0 if the sanction or sanction type wasn't in place. The dependent variables data for the Physical Integrity Rights Index is taken from Cingranelli and Richards's (CIRI) human rights dataset [21]. The data for the state department political terror scale and the amnesty international political terror scale impact of sanctions on human rights is also tested on two different versions of Gibney and wood's political terror scale from the polity IV dataset, the level of government respect for a variety of internationally recognized human rights. The two index variables are based on data from the United States State Department and Amnesty International. The data for the policy variables of democracy is taken from online dataset of systemic peace. The data for the empowerment rights index is taken from Cingranelli and Richards's human rights dataset. The data for GDP per capita (log) and GDP Growth is taken from the World Bank. The data for (LEB) Life expectancy at birth, total (years) is taken from sources such as world population prospects, international database. The data for Civil War is taken from the polity IV dataset. The data for both the civil war and interstate war variables are taken from the polity IV dataset. Because all the dependent variables utilized in the analysis are ordinal variables with scales of at least five points, all the regression models are reported using ordinary time-series cross sectional regressions with fixed effects. We used Stata version 13 to analysis impact of predictor on dependent variable with panel data [22].

Empirical Results
In fact, the real question was, based on the Policy Result index and the Sanctions Contribution index qualitative analysis in Hufbauer, Schott, and Elliott, does any of the sanctions results, caused improving the variables of human rights, democracy and life expectancy at birth in the target countries or has harmful consequences? Table 4 reports the effects sanctions in general have on three proxies of human rights. The coefficients for comprehensive controls in affecting the Physical Integrity Rights Index and Political Terror Scale of State Department of human rights are negative but insignificant. Of the three economic sanctions, capital controls are negative significant at the 0.1% level of significance in affecting the Physical Integrity Rights Index, and positive significant at the 0.1% level of significance in affecting the Political Terror Scale of State Department and Political Terror Scale Amnesty International, but only import controls are negative significant at the 1% level of significant of human rights, after controlling for all other possible factors. The coefficients for export controls in affecting the Political Terror Scale of State Department and Political Terror Scale Amnesty International of human rights are negative, but insignificant.
The coefficients for import controls in affecting the Political Terror Scale Amnesty International of human rights are negative, but do not attain statistical significance. When Physical Integrity Rights Index and the Political Terror Scale of State Department are the dependent variables, disrespect for human rights actually will increase when comprehensive sanctions are applied [23]. Tables 5 and 6 reports the results indicate for four models specifications of sanctions results on Physical Integrity Rights Index, proxy of human rights. The successful, positive and the minor outcomes are negative and failed outcome is positive coefficients, expected significant at the 0.1% level of significance, but successful outcome is insignificant on the physical integrity rights index. This, however, simply indicates that in this model there is much evidence to suggest that any of these particular results of sanctions have undue effect on the human rights variable case. When Physical Integrity Rights Index is the dependent variables, disrespect for human rights actually will increase (the amount of Extrajudicial killings, disappearances, political imprisonment and torture are covering different aspects of human rights abuses will increase) when probability of sanctions successfully will increase [24]. Table 7 reports the effects of comprehensive economic sanctions which have two proxies of democracy and life expectancy at birth conditions. The comprehensive controls are not unexpected and have negative significance at 0.1% level of significance in affecting the Polity and New Empowerment Rights Index, upon controlling all other possible factors. The two economic sanctions, export and import are not unexpected and have negative insignificance on two proxies of democracy. As it is observed only capital controls has negative significance and expected at 5 and 1% level in affecting the Polity and New Empowerment Rights Index. When Polity and the New Empowerment Rights Index are the dependent variables, disrespect for democracy actually will increase when sanctions are applied. The effect of comprehensive sanction, export, import and capital controls are not statistically significant in affecting the Life Expectancy at Birth. Table 8 reports the results for four models specifications of sanctions results on Polity, a proxy of democracy. The successful and the minor outcome are negative and have expected significant at 1, 0.1% level of significance, but positive outcome has a negative insignificance on the polity and failed outcome are significant at 5% level of significance with positive coefficient. This, however, simply indicates that in this model there is much evidence to suggest that any of these particular results of sanctions

Polity
Polity variable from two variables, 1. Autocracy, 2. Democracy, (autocracy score from the democracy score, and ranges from -10 (lowest levels of democracy and highest level of autocracy) to 10 (highest levels of democracy and lowest level of autocracy) [6].
New EMPINX New Empowerment Rights Index from five variables, 1.worker's rights, 2.political participation, 3.freedom of religion, 4.freedom of speech and 5.freedom of movement, (ranges from 0 (most violations of democratic rights and civil liberties) to 15 (no violations of democratic rights and civil liberties) [6].
LEB Life expectancy at birth, total (years), Life expectancy is a statistical measure of how long a person may live, based on the year of their birth, their current age and other demographic factors including gender. At a given age (age x) is the average number of years that would be lived by a group of individuals (of age x) exposed to the same mortality conditions until they die. The most commonly used measure of life expectancy is life expectancy at age zero, that is, at birth (LEB) [6].

Independent Variables
Dummy variables taking the value one if: Sanction All The main independent variables of the study are coded based on the Hufbauer, Schott, Elliott, and Oegg dataset (2008). All sanction variables are binary and takes the value of 1 if the sanction type was implemented for a duration of more than two months that year, and 0 otherwise, including restrictions on trade in several goods (export & import), finance (financial transaction, exchange an asset for payment, investment), transport sector, travel restrictions, asset freeze, fuel embargoes, arm embargo [1].

Export
Sender country imposes export controls.

Import
Sender country imposes import controls.

Successful outcome
Found by multiplying by the policy result index (4.sucessful outcome) which the outcome sought by the sender country was achieved, and which the sanctions contributed (4. decisive contribution) successful outcome [1].

Positive outcome
Independent variable taking the value of 8 to 12 is the sanction was positive outcome. Found by multiplying by the policy result index (2.minor outcome & 3.positive outcome) which the outcome sought by the sender country was achieved, and which the sanctions contributed (3. substantial contribution & 4. decisive contribution) outcome result. Meaning the sender's goals were partly realized [1].

Minor outcome
Independent variable taking the value of 2 to 6 if the sanction was minor outcome. Found by multiplying by the policy result index (2.minor outcome) which the outcome sought by the sender country was achieved, and which the sanctions contributed (2. minor contribution & 3. substantial contribution) outcome result [1].

Failed outcome
Independent variable taking the value of 1 if the sanction was failed. Found by multiplying by the Policy Result index (1.failed outcome,) which the outcome sought by the sender country wasn't achieved, and which the Sanctions Contributed (1.negative contribution) outcome result. In the sense that the sender's goals were largely or entirely realized [1].

Control Variables
GDP per capita denotes the natural log of Gross Domestic Product per capita.
GDP Growth denotes the annual change in GDP in percentage.
Interstate war Denotes the Magnitude score of episode(s) of international warfare involving that state in that year Scale: 1 (lowest) to 10 (highest) for each MEPV (Major Episodes of Political Violence); Magnitude scores for multiple MEPV are summed; 0 denotes no episodes.
Civil war Denotes the Magnitude score of episode(s) of civil warfare involving that state in that year Scale: 1 (lowest) to 10 (highest) for each MEPV (Major Episodes of Political Violence); Magnitude scores for multiple MEPV are summed; 0 denotes no episodes.  Std. errors in parentheses beneath the coefficients, regression results.
*Sig at p < 5%; **Sig at p < 1%; ***Sig at p < 0.01% *Sig at p < 5%; **Sig at p < 1%; ***Sig at p < 0.01% have undue effect on the democracy case variable. When Polity is the dependent variable, disrespect for democracy actually will increase (the amount of autocracy will increase) when probability of sanctions successfully will increase. Table 9 results show the models testing the effect of the four economic sanctions results on New Empowerment rights Index democracy, proxy of democracy. The successful, positive and the minor outcomes are negative and have expected significance at 0.1, 1, 0.1% level of significance, but failed outcome has a positive expected insignificant on the New Empowerment.
Rights Index, this means, when New Empowerment Rights Index is the dependent variable, disrespect for democracy actually will increase (the amount of worker's rights, Political participation, freedom of religion, freedom of speech and freedom of movement will decrease) when probability of successful sanctions will increase. *Sig at p < 5%; **Sig at p < 1%; ***Sig at p < 0.01%  *Sig at p < 5%; **Sig at p < 1%; ***Sig at p < 0.01%  Std. errors in parentheses beneath the coefficients, regression results.
*Sig at p < 5%; **Sig at p < 1%; ***Sig at p < 0.01%  Table 10 reports the results for four models specifications. The effect of the four economic sanctions results on life expectancy at birth variable. The positive and the minor outcome are significant at 0.1% level of significance, but positive outcome has a positive significance on the LEB and minor outcome has a negative significance on the LEB, both they take on an unexpected sign. The successful outcome obtains a negative but insignificant coefficient in affecting the LEB. The failed outcome obtains a positive but insignificant coefficient in affecting the LEB and controlling all the other possible factors. This, however, simply indicates that in this model there isn't any evidence to suggest that any of these particular results of sanctions have any undue effect on the life expectancy at birth case variable.

Conclusion
While incorporating several changes to the original model by Hufbauer and Schott, this paper is an attempt to test whether any of the sanctions results (successful outcome, positive outcome, minor outcome and failed outcome), Causes improving to the variables of human rights, democracy and life expectancy at birth in the target countries or has harmful consequences?
We tested using redefined independent and dependent variables to take out the component related to the role of sanctions.
We are able to deduce from the coefficients of the sanctions on the right-hand side based on the Policy Result index and the Sanctions Contribution index which is in the qualitative analysis of the original model by Hufbauer, Schott and Elliott. We for the first time, show that the conclusions achieved using Hufbauer and Schott are sensitive to the methodology adopted. Therefore we cannot easily reject the sanctions and their consequences jointly have no impact on Human Rights, Democracy and Life Expectancy. This is solely dependent on the outcome results and polity of target countries. In addition we show that based on the conclusions it is too hasty to disregard the consequences of sanctions results. A direction for future research would be to create a clearer picture of consequences of sanctions results and to study each target country case by case.