A unifying theory of positive and negative incentives in international relations: sanctions, rewards, regime types, and

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A unifying theory of positive and negative incentives in international relations: sanctions, rewards, regime types, and compliance Byungwon Woo1   · Daniel Verdier2 Received: 25 August 2019 / Accepted: 29 May 2020 © Springer-Verlag GmbH Germany, part of Springer Nature 2020

Abstract Should democracies be rewarded and autocracies punished, or should it be the reverse? This is an important question for foreign policy makers who regularly find themselves wanting to alter the behavior of foreign governments favorable to their interests. Existing studies on economic sanctions and rewards provide an uneasy answer that sanctions are more effective toward democracies and rewards work better toward autocracies, suggesting democracies need to be punished while autocracies need to be rewarded. We revisit the issue of regime type and incentive form by building a game theoretical model focusing on domestic political dynamics in a Target country. When we distinguish betwen three types of reigmes lined up on an accountability continuum, the theoretical model yields the claim that sanctions and rewards work better with both extremes—democracies and dictatorships—than with the intermediate category of limited autocracy, for which only rewards work. Keywords  Sanctions · Rewards · Regime type · Compliance · Democracy · Dictatorship

1 Introduction Should democracies be rewarded and autocracies punished, or should it be the reverse? This is an important question for foreign policy makers who regularly find themselves wanting to alter the behavior of foreign governments in a way that is Electronic supplementary material  The online version of this article (https​://doi.org/10.1007/s1010​ 1-020-00239​-2) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users. * Byungwon Woo [email protected] 1

Department of Political Science and International Studies, Yonsei University, Seoul, South Korea

2

Department of Political Science, The Ohio State University, Columbus, OH, USA



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favorable to their interests. For instance, for US presidents, how to curb Jewish settlements in the West Bank and to contain nuclear proliferation in Iran and North Korea are important questions. In a world where she could have her wish, there is little doubt that the citizen of an established democracy would have a preference for proffering positive incentives to democracies while reserving sanction threats for nondemocracies. But what feels right may not be what is most efficient. As we shall see, a large number of political scientists who have done research on sanction threats have concluded that such threats are more effective when used against democracies than nondemocracies. And although rewards have not received as much attention as sanctions, at least one study concludes that democracies are less sensitive to promises of rewards than nondemocracies. Against popular wish, current science claims that democracies should be punished and nondemocracies rewarded. Israel should be threatened with san

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