Abstract
Why do authoritarian states under economic sanction prioritize funding repression and military pursuits over social and economic initiatives? I suggest that authoritarian leaders choose this course of action because their primary source of power rests in the hands of their country's military and elites rather than its population. As such, authoritarian leaders repress their populations to quell dissent because they can not cut funding from the military or elites and expect to remain in office. I hypothesize that authoritarian leaders who increase or maintain repression in response to economic sanctions will see an increased likelihood of remaining in power five years after any given date during which sanctions were present. To test the validity of this hypothesis, I compiled data from the Threat and Imposition of Economic Sanctions, Polity5, Archigos, and Political Terror Scale datasets and ran a series of chi-square tests examining the relationship between sanctions, repression, and leader survival in autocracies, democracies, and anocracies. My results suggest that authoritarian leaders who repress their populations are more likely to remain in power within a five-year period than those who do not.
Advisor
Krain, Matthew
Department
Political Science
Recommended Citation
Peppers, Samuel J., "Let Them Eat Cake: How Economic Sanctions Affect Repression and Leader Survival in Authoritarian States" (2025). Senior Independent Study Theses. Paper 11334.
https://openworks.wooster.edu/independentstudy/11334
Keywords
Sanctions, Repression, Authoritarian
Publication Date
2025
Degree Granted
Bachelor of Arts
Document Type
Senior Independent Study Thesis
© Copyright 2025 Samuel J. Peppers