Chapter 1 Introduction
1.3 Argument in Brief and Hypothesis
國
立 政 治 大 學
‧
N a tio na
l C h engchi U ni ve rs it y
According to the information in Table 1.1, it is clear that the sanctions threats that the EU made against seven Asian countries were quite effective. Out of the seven cases, the EU has seen success in four cases overall. The goal of this thesis is to find an answer to one particular question; what are the factors that contributed to the success and failure of the sanctions threats that the EU made against seven countries in Asia for their lack of commitment in the international fight against the issue of IUU fishing? In a bid to achieve this goal, I will conduct a comparative case study across the seven cases by employing Mill’s method of agreement and Mill’s method of difference, which I will explain in detail in part 1.4 of this chapter.
1.3 Argument in Brief and Hypothesis
In the 1990s, there has been a major debate among scholars in the field of international political economy on whether economic sanctions are an effective tool of economic statecraft. Scholars like Hufbauer et al. (1990), for example, believed that economic sanctions can be used effectively by sender states to coerce target states into changing their policies. Meanwhile, there was also a scholar like Pape (1997) who did not have much faith in the effectiveness of economic sanctions.
However, the focus of the studies of scholars in this field completely changed in the early 2000s. In 1997, Morgan and Schwebach (1997) published a work in which they encouraged scholars in the field of international political economy to focus more on finding when economic sanctions work instead of finding if sanctions work at all. Aside from this, they also claimed in the paper that sanctions will have a higher chance of producing favorable outcomes if target states are expecting to bear a high economic cost from the imposed sanctions.
Since then, many scholars have published more works to discuss the determinants of sanctions success and failure. Drezner (1999), for example, published his work in 1999 which stated that allies are more likely to comply with demands from sender states than adversaries. After that, in 2002, Morgan and Miers (2002) claimed that sender states will be more likely to succeed in using economic
‧
國立 政 治 大 學
‧
N a tio na
l C h engchi U ni ve rs it y
sanctions to coerce target states into complying with their demands if there is an involvement of an intergovernmental organization in the sanctions episode. In 2005, Allen (2005) found that leaders in democratic states are more likely to concede to demands from senders than those in autocratic states. Finally, in 2007, Ang and Peksen (2007) argued that economic sanctions will be more effective if the states perceive the issue in dispute as highly salient.
Based on the aforementioned works of scholars in this field, I assume that there are four variables that could determine the success and failure of economic sanctions; the involvement of an intergovernmental organization, the target’s dependency on the sender’s market, the target’s political regime type and the saliency of the issue in dispute. However, the involvement of an IO cannot be a factor that caused the difference in outcomes of the sanction episodes of the seven Asian countries as those countries were being sanctioned by the same IO, which was the EC. Thus, this leaves me with only the other three variables.
In order to determine the regime type of each target state, I have looked into the Polity and Political rights scores of that country. Aside from this, I have also looked into each country’s fish exports data to determine its degree of dependency on the EU’s fish market (this will be further discussed in the third chapter). According to my findings, there were three countries that can be considered as democracies when their sanctions episode started; Taiwan, South Korea and the Philippines. Meanwhile, there were three countries whose fisheries sectors depended a lot on the EU market; Thailand, Sri Lanka and Vietnam. As for the saliency of the issue (as perceived by the target), I have looked into each country’s level of preparedness to address the issue in dispute at the time that the threat was received and determined that there were three countries that perceived the issue as significant and were well-prepared to fight illegal fishing; South Korea, the Philippines and Taiwan.
Aside from these three variables, I would also like to add one more
variable to the study, which is the involvement of the US in the sanctions episode.
The reason for adding this variable to the study is because I have found that the
‧
國立 政 治 大 學
‧
N a tio na
l C h engchi U ni ve rs it y
US had gotten involved in three countries’ sanctions episodes during the 2010s and this may be a factor that leads the countries to their compliance. Those countries were; Thailand, the Philippines and South Korea.
Table 1.2 in the next page shows the variables present in each case.
‧
Table 1.2 Preconditions for the EC’s Threat to Become Effective that Were Present in the Case of Each Country
Country Countries that did not comply during the threat stage
Wave 1
Cambodia Nov-12 N/A
Sri Lanka Nov-12 N/A ✓
Countries that complied during the threat stage
Wave 2
Countries that are still caught in the threat stage
Wave 4 Vietnam Oct-17 N/A ✓
Note: Table created by the author.
‧
國立 政 治 大 學
‧
N a tio na
l C h engchi U ni ve rs it y
Based on the information in Table 1.2, it can be clearly seen that the country’s level of preparedness was actually correlated to the country’s degree of democracy. A democratic country was interestingly more well prepared to address the issue of IUU fishing than an autocratic state. Thus, the country’s level of preparedness cannot be considered as an “independent variable” that contributed to the success or failure of the EC’s sanctions threat in the case of each country.
This variable is more like a dependent variable in the causal chain that links between each country’s level of democracy and the outcome of the sanctions episode. Thus, this leaves me with only three independent variables that might be the determinants of the outcome of each case; the country’s regime type, the country’s dependency on the EU market and the involvement of the United States.
Based on all the findings from this initial phase of the research, I would like to construct my hypothesis that “democratic states are more likely to comply with demands from the sender during the threat stage of the sanction episode than autocratic states. However, there is also a high chance that autocratic states will comply with demands from the sender during the threat stage if their economy depends a lot on the sender’s market and if there is an involvement of another superpower in the sanction episode”. In a bid to support my hypothesis, I argue that if states are democracies, they are more likely to comply with demands sooner because they would receive more political benefits from doing so and democracies are also more likely to be well-prepared to address the issue in dispute at the time when it receives the threat from the sender. Instead, if the targets are autocracies, dependency on the sender’s market is not a sufficient concern for them to comply with demands from the sender during the threat stage.
In this situation, the involvement of another superpower like the US is an
important condition for them to comply. This is because the country will receive more pressure if it is being threatened by two parties simultaneously and the involvement of another superpower will increase the damage of the sanctions to the country’s economy.
‧
國立 政 治 大 學