1. Dealing with an international pariah.
- Author
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Hirschi, Christian
- Subjects
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APARTHEID , *SEGREGATION of Black people , *INTERNATIONAL sanctions , *INTERNATIONAL relations - Abstract
This paper discusses first the insights from the literature on international sanctions for an assessment of the effects of such measures in the case of South Africa under apartheid (1948-1994). It is shown that empirical studies draw in general a pessimistic picture of the effectiveness of international sanctions as a foreign policy tool of influence. Furthermore, testing the effect of international sanctions has to deal with several theoretical and methodological challenges. The case specific consideration of international South Africa sanctions is not much more illuminative, because nearly every theoretical argument about the potential impact of sanctions on a target state was made with respect to South Africa. Therefore, I present an alternative research design for the evaluation of international sanctions against South Africa under apartheid, focusing rather on the outcome of individual foreign policy measures in the international relations between sender and target than on their impact on the political situation in the target state. The study combines a case study approach and the analysis of data on international events as reported in the open press. This approach proves to be fruitful to investigate international South Africa relations following the patter "who did what to whom", although it has to put up with several restrictions. Further work in the project involves therefore additional data on the bilateral relations between sender states (selected Western countries) and target state (South Africa). A social network analysis of available event data will also be applied. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]
- Published
- 2005