Human rights violations and public support for sanctions
| Published date | 01 January 2025 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1177/00223433231201450 |
| Author | Barış Arı,Burak Sonmez |
| Date | 01 January 2025 |
https://doi.org/10.1177/00223433231201450
Journal of Peace Research
2025, Vol. 62(1) 68 –84
© The Author(s) 2023
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DOI: 10.1177/00223433231201450
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1225162JPR0010.1177/00223433231201450Journal of Peace ResearchArı & Sonmez
research-article2023
Regular Article
Human rights violations and public
support for sanctions
Barıs¸ Arı
School of Politics, Philosophy, Language and Communication Studies, University of East Anglia
Burak Sonmez
Social Research Institute, University College London
Abstract
Public pressure to take punitive action against human rights violators is often a driving force behind international
sanctions. However, we know little about the way in which public support is shaped by varying types of abuse, the
costs and effectiveness of sanctions and the differential harm they inflict upon the target population and leadership.
Our study specifically addresses this gap by unpicking contextual factors that jointly sway the perception of morality
and the cost-benefit calculus. We propose that there is no simple trade-off between instrumental and moral concerns.
The context within which violations take place and the interactions between moral and instrumental dimensions
shape preference formation. Findings from our paired conjoint experiment suggest that whether respondents support
imposing sanctions depends on the category of human rights abuse and its perceived salience. Individuals also prefer
sheltering the target population while punishing the leadership, but collective punishment becomes less unacceptable
if the majority of the target population support the human rights infringements. The desire to do something
against the perpetrators amplifies the appeal of punishing the leadership but assuages the moral concerns of harming
the population.
Keywords
experiment, human rights, public opinion, sanctions
Introduction
Imposing economic sanctions on countries that abuse
human rights is a common foreign policy response.
Governments may also use sanctions to appease the
demands of domestic constituencies (Whang, 2011;
McLean & Whang, 2014; Kustra, 2022). For example,
bowing to the demands of his Christian support base,
President George Bush sanctioned Sudan as a response
to gross human rights violations in Darfur (Goldenberg,
2007). Similarly, the Obama administration imposed
sanctions on Uganda in 2014 by declaring that the intro-
duction of anti-gay laws was ‘counter to universal human
rights’ (BBC, 2014). As policymakers in democracies are
receptive to the demands of the public, campaigners
aiming to instigate action against human rights violators
face the task of mustering public support. This means
that studying the micro-foundations of citizen support is
important for understanding international sanctions,
because drivers of promoting human rights abroad are
also rooted in political considerations at home.
In this study, we investigate the factors that influence
citizen willingness to impose sanctions on countries that
violate human rights. Our starting point is that an indi-
vidual reflects on instrumental and moral dimensions
together as a whole when forming their opinion. Studies
grounded in the cost-benefit framework highlight the
costs of sanctions for the country imposing them and
their effectiveness in inducing the receiver’s compliance
as the two primary dimensions that the public consider
Corresponding author:
baris.ari@uea.ac.uk
Arı & Sonmez 69
(Heinrich, Kobayashi & Peterson, 2017; Putnam &
Shapiro, 2017). A competing approach draws attention
to the dimension of morality to argue that normative
considerations, as opposed to instrumental concerns, can
sway public opinion to pursue costly foreign policy tools
without significant material benefits (Kreps and Maxey
2018). Regardless of their effectiveness at securing com-
pliance, sanctions may have a costly but expressive pur-
pose of reinforcing morality (Galtung, 1967: 412).
Building on this debate, we identify contextual factors
that influence citizen opinion. Our key argument is that
there is no simple separation between instrumental and
normative considerations. When forming their opinion,
an individual makes a multidimensional trade-off by
reflecting on several contextual factors that jointly affect
the perception of morality as well as the cost-benefit
analysis (Heinrich & Kobayashi 2020). In particular,
we identify the cost of sanctions on the receiver in terms
of type and volume (i.e. who is hurting and to what
extent) as an influential – but insufficiently investigated
– factor.
We also contribute to the empirical study of public
opinion formation by recognizing the difference between
collective and targeted sanctions. Although this differ-
ence is central to both public debate and foundational
theory (Drezner 2011; Galtung 1967; Weiss 1999),
empirical studies have yet to consider the cost of inter-
vention that is borne by the public of the targeted coun-
try as a moral consideration. As Kirshner (1997: 33)
argues, a simple distinction between the country impos-
ing the sanctions and the target is insufficient: ‘instead of
considering how [economic] sanctions hurt the target
state’, research should account for ‘how groups within
the target are affected differentially’. We explicitly incor-
porate such an essential dimension into our study and
further propose that citizens use the information on the
type of abuse and the political context within which
human rights violations occur when they attribute indi-
vidual or collective accountability.
Our framework sheds further light on the mixed find-
ings in the empirical literature regarding public support
for foreign policy instruments. On the one hand, an
emerging line of research has challenged the conven-
tional wisdom that public opinion is driven by normative
concerns, arguing instead that individuals are more self-
serving and goal-oriented than previously assumed
(Heinrich & Kobayashi, 2020; Heinrich, Kobayashi &
Long, 2018). On the other hand, several recent studies
have found that individuals tend to prioritize the
humanitarian over the instrumental when asked about
military interventions (Kreps & Maxey, 2018; Tomz &
Weeks, 2020). Hence, our overarching research question
aims to investigate how normative concerns, instrumen-
tal goals and the trade-off between the two underlie
public support for economic sanctions against countries
that violate human rights.
Following this line of thought, we conducted a pre-
registered conjoint experiment to test simultaneously the
impact of previously omitted factors on citizen prefer-
ences towards economic sanctions aimed at promoting
human rights. Holding the volatile political environment
constant, we reveal a number of key factors – and the
interactions between them – that contribute to under-
standing preference-based third-party punishment.
More specifically, we consider the political morality of
human rights with respect to different types of infringe-
ments, the costs of promoting human rights, the like-
lihood of success of sanctions, and the juxtaposition of
norm enforcement and norm diffusion.
Our most prominent findings can be summarized
under three points. First, whether different types of
human rights abuses merit international sanctions
depend on the degree of their perceived salience.
Respondents perceive some types of human rights viola-
tions (e.g. torture and ill-treatment by state authorities)
to be more worthy of punishment than politically con-
tested ones (e.g. women’s reproductive rights and equal
marriage rights). Moreover, we find an interaction
between the type of violation and local support for it:
individuals are far more willing to punish infringements
concerning the language and religious rights of minori-
ties when the target population overwhelmingly support
their government’s transgressions.
Second, we find that individuals do differentiate
between the target population and its leadership and
show a clear preference for punishing the latter more
severely while sheltering the former from the harms of
sanctions. However, this aversion to harming the target
population is dependent on a number of factors. Most
notably, when only a small minority of the target popu-
lation support the transgressions of their government,
respondents are even more averse to inflicting harm on
the populace, but their willingness to differentiate
between the target population and the leadership
decreases as the proportion of locals supporting the pol-
icies that infringe human rights increases. As expected,
we also find that respondents are sensitive to incurring
costs when imposing sanctions. Contrary to our expec-
tations, however, their unwillingness to incur higher
costs remains remarkably consistent irrespective of the
harm that falls on the target population. Individuals nei-
ther become more magnanimous nor less averse to
2journal of PEACE RESEARCH XX(X)
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