Sanctions can be counter-productive in instigating democratic reform in authoritarian regimes

International sanctions are one of the most commonly used tools to instigate democratisation in the post-Cold War era. However, despite long-term sanction pressure from the West, non-democratic rule has proven to be extremely persistent. Based on new research from 1990 to 2011, Julia Grauvogel and Christian von Soest provide new insights for the research on sanctions and on authoritarian regimes. Most significantly, sanctions strengthen authoritarian rule if the regime manages to incorporate their existence into its legitimation strategy.