| Abstract [eng] |
The Detrimental Effect of Economic Sanctions? Human Rights Repression in the Russian Federation The thesis analyzes the possible effect of targeted economic sanctions on regime-sponsored violations of human rights in the Russian Federation. The problem of the thesis. A sufficient amount of research has already proven that economic sanctions hurt human rights within the targeted countries because they foster the target regime’s coercive behaviour as a means of ensuring status quo within the country, thus, the international community has increasingly endeavoured to replace conventional economic sanctions by targeted or, in other words, “smart” sanctions. Such measures were also introduced in the current case of Russia. Therefore, a research problem originating from the increased employment of “smart” sanctions is whether or not targeted economic sanctions help to prevent state-sponsored human rights violations. The hypothesis: The imposition of targeted economic sanctions on the Russian Federation has contributed to human rights deprivations within this country due to the fact that the intended economic hardship inflicted on the targeted entities is shifted on the general population as Russian authorities employ specific mechanisms allowing them to reduce economic pressure. The main conclusions: With the rising number of cases when economic sanctions have been imposed the eventual detrimental effects concerning the enjoyment of human rights in the targeted country have been raising some important questions of morality. Thus, a new type of sanctions – “smart” or targeted sanctions – was engineered to punish the recipients without harming the general population. So, this Master’s Thesis has made an attempt to investigate the effects of targeted sanctions by employing the recent example of Russia. A novel theoretical causal chain was constructed according to which the imposition of targeted sanctions causes economic hardship on targeted entities, which pushes the authorities to undertake mediating measures and reallocate the budget in order to support the financing entities at the expense of other state sectors. These measures result in a budget shortfall for social services, health and education, which may foster public dissent that the authorities perceive as a potential threat to stability. Eventually, a real or perceived threat of public dissent provokes state-sponsored repressions of civil and political rights. The components of the aforementioned causal chain have been investigated one by one referring to the Russian Federation. At first, it has been revealed that the effects of sanctions on Russia’s financial sector and the consequences of countersanctions had serious repercussions on Russia’s economic performance. Control variables helped to detect that major decreases in global oil prices are not the main determinant when it comes to human rights repressions in oil-dependent countries. Next, it has been found that after the imposition of sanctions state expenditure on defense continued rising while expenditure on education and healthcare was rapidly decreasing, proving that the imposition of sanctions could have actually fostered budget reallocation in Russia. The investigation of changes in public attitudes after the sanctions has found that public dissatisfaction is on the rise. Finally, an investigation of the human rights situation in Russia has revealed that after the imposition of sanctions there was a very steep decrease in the enjoyment of civil and political rights, as these years have been marked by an unprecedented number of events and legislation releases uncovering a nearly total absence of civil and political rights in Russia. The hypothesis of the thesis has been proved following the logic of the causal chain–it could be argued that targeted economic sanctions in Russia have provoked a chain of events which led to a serious deterioration of civil and political rights in the country. |
