Migration and Economic Coercion

The dominant narrative on economic coercion focuses on institutional, cultural, and reputational factors to explain why some countries use economic sanctions as a foreign policy tool. In this article, we argue that the linkage between economic sanctions and migration is an important consideration for potential sanction givers. Economic sanctions often increase the economic distress on the target country, which in turn causes more people to migrate to countries where their co-ethnics reside. Countries that host a large number of nationals from the target country face a disproportionately high level of migration pressure when sanctions increase emigration from the target country. Hence, policymakers of these countries oppose economic sanctions on the target country as an attempt to reduce migration. Analyzing the sanctions bills in the European Parliament from 2011 to 2015, we find empirical support for our prediction. ∗We would like to thank Nicole Rae Baerg, David Bearce, and Stefanie Walter for their comments and suggestions. All errors remain our own. In February 2011, the European Union (EU) deliberated the possibility of imposing economic sanctions on Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi’s regime for its perpetuation of violence on its own people. Although the proposal received overwhelming support from prominent Western European liberal democracies, such as Germany and France, Italy and Malta strongly opposed this act of coercion, which in part led to the EU’s overall refrain of issuing immediate sanctions against Libya as talks came to an end. Instead, the EU agreed on a symbolic joint communique condemning the “unacceptable use of force against civilians” in February 2011. It was only after the United Nations Security Council Resolution (UNSCR) 1973 was adopted on March 12, 2011 that the Council of the European Union adopted legislation to implement sanctions on the Gaddafi regime. Why were Italy and Malta against imposing economic sanctions on Libya? More generally, why do some countries favor the use economic sanctions, while others are more reluctant to resort to sanctions as a foreign policy tool? Italy and Malta present an interesting empirical puzzle considering their shared EU membership status with the other 26 member states who preferred the use of sanctions. Existing explanations of economic coercion are also unconvincing in the case of Libya given the series of institutional, economic, and cultural similarities between Italy, Malta, and the EU member states. Historically, states have imposed economic sanctions as punishment for the target country’s violation of international norms, for non-compliance with international agreements, or to shift the target country’s behavior in a way that serves the interests of sending country (Masters 2017). Conventional wisdom too holds that liberal democracies often impose sanctions on autocratic regimes that violate international norms or international humanitarian law. But while it is seen that democracies implement more sanctions (Lektzian and Souva 2003)—and primarily on autocracies rather than other democracies (Cox and Drury 2006)—this empirical regularity cannot explain why the fully democratic governments of Italy and Malta opposed restrictive measures against Libya. Other theories of economic coercion, such as domestic interest group dynamics, are