The Failure of the ‘Maximum Pressure’ Campaign : A Social Conflict Analysis of how U.S. Sanctions Transformed Coalitional Struggles in Venezuela 2017 – 2022
(2023) SIMZ11 20231Graduate School
- Abstract
- Despite economic sanctions generally failing to achieve their intended goals, the global use of sanctions has increased dramatically since the end of the Cold war. A recent example of a sanctions regime unsuccessful in realizing its ostensible goal is that of the U.S. ‘maximum pressure’ campaign against Venezuela between 2017 – 2022, which did not succeed in removing the incrementally authoritarian Maduro regime from power. Moreover, in spite of a plethora of sanctions research, there is still a poor understanding—both amongst academics and policy-makers—of how economic costs translate into political outcomes in target states. One promising framework to address this issue is Social Conflict Analysis as developed by Lee Jones (2015). This... (More)
- Despite economic sanctions generally failing to achieve their intended goals, the global use of sanctions has increased dramatically since the end of the Cold war. A recent example of a sanctions regime unsuccessful in realizing its ostensible goal is that of the U.S. ‘maximum pressure’ campaign against Venezuela between 2017 – 2022, which did not succeed in removing the incrementally authoritarian Maduro regime from power. Moreover, in spite of a plethora of sanctions research, there is still a poor understanding—both amongst academics and policy-makers—of how economic costs translate into political outcomes in target states. One promising framework to address this issue is Social Conflict Analysis as developed by Lee Jones (2015). This study applies this Gramscian framework to analyze how sanctions affected the Venezuelan political regime between 2017–2022. Using process tracing and historical-sociological analysis, the study draws on various textual sources relating to Venezuela and the sanctions conflict in order to examine how the major socio-political forces competing for state power were differentially impacted by the material brunt of U.S. sanctions, and how this in turn conditioned and transformed domestic political struggle. The analysis concludes sanctions had significant domestic political effects, although they did not radically change pre-existing conflict dynamics. Furthermore, the study concludes that sanctions had disproportionately negative political implications for the opposition coalition, whereas the regime quite successfully adapted sanctions-induced material constraints through shifting the state’s strategic selectivity to new and strategic support groups, as their previous ruling strategy was rendered unviable. This can explain why the U.S. sanctions campaign was largely abortive. (Less)
- Popular Abstract
- Economic sanctions, a tool used to influence other countries' behavior, have become increasingly popular globally since the end of the Cold War. However, they often fail to achieve their intended goals. A recent example is the U.S. 'maximum pressure' campaign against Venezuela from 2017 to 2022, which aimed to remove the authoritarian Maduro regime from power but did not succeed. Despite extensive research on sanctions, we still don't fully understand how the economic costs of sanctions lead to political changes in the targeted countries. A promising framework called Social Conflict Analysis, developed by Lee Jones in 2015, can help shed light on this issue. In this study, the Social Conflict Analysis framework is applied to understand how... (More)
- Economic sanctions, a tool used to influence other countries' behavior, have become increasingly popular globally since the end of the Cold War. However, they often fail to achieve their intended goals. A recent example is the U.S. 'maximum pressure' campaign against Venezuela from 2017 to 2022, which aimed to remove the authoritarian Maduro regime from power but did not succeed. Despite extensive research on sanctions, we still don't fully understand how the economic costs of sanctions lead to political changes in the targeted countries. A promising framework called Social Conflict Analysis, developed by Lee Jones in 2015, can help shed light on this issue. In this study, the Social Conflict Analysis framework is applied to understand how U.S. sanctions affected the Venezuelan political regime from 2017 to 2022. They used historical-sociological analysis and process tracing, studying various sources related to Venezuela and the sanctions conflict. The analysis revealed that the sanctions did have significant domestic political effects, but they didn't drastically alter the existing political dynamics. Interestingly, the opposition coalition suffered more negative consequences from the sanctions compared to the Maduro regime. The regime managed to adapt to the economic costs caused by the sanctions by seeking support from new strategic groups, as their previous governing approach became unsustainable. In conclusion, the study found that the U.S. sanctions campaign on Venezuela didn't achieve its desired outcomes due to the regime's ability to navigate and adapt to the imposed economic pressure. This provides important insights for policymakers and academics to better understand the complexities of economic sanctions and their political consequences. (Less)
Please use this url to cite or link to this publication:
http://lup.lub.lu.se/student-papers/record/9133341
- author
- Lind, Ruben LU
- supervisor
- organization
- course
- SIMZ11 20231
- year
- 2023
- type
- H2 - Master's Degree (Two Years)
- subject
- keywords
- sanctions, Venezuela, U.S., Social Conflict Analysis, social forces, political struggle
- language
- English
- id
- 9133341
- date added to LUP
- 2023-08-01 14:01:01
- date last changed
- 2023-08-01 14:01:01
@misc{9133341,
abstract = {{Despite economic sanctions generally failing to achieve their intended goals, the global use of sanctions has increased dramatically since the end of the Cold war. A recent example of a sanctions regime unsuccessful in realizing its ostensible goal is that of the U.S. ‘maximum pressure’ campaign against Venezuela between 2017 – 2022, which did not succeed in removing the incrementally authoritarian Maduro regime from power. Moreover, in spite of a plethora of sanctions research, there is still a poor understanding—both amongst academics and policy-makers—of how economic costs translate into political outcomes in target states. One promising framework to address this issue is Social Conflict Analysis as developed by Lee Jones (2015). This study applies this Gramscian framework to analyze how sanctions affected the Venezuelan political regime between 2017–2022. Using process tracing and historical-sociological analysis, the study draws on various textual sources relating to Venezuela and the sanctions conflict in order to examine how the major socio-political forces competing for state power were differentially impacted by the material brunt of U.S. sanctions, and how this in turn conditioned and transformed domestic political struggle. The analysis concludes sanctions had significant domestic political effects, although they did not radically change pre-existing conflict dynamics. Furthermore, the study concludes that sanctions had disproportionately negative political implications for the opposition coalition, whereas the regime quite successfully adapted sanctions-induced material constraints through shifting the state’s strategic selectivity to new and strategic support groups, as their previous ruling strategy was rendered unviable. This can explain why the U.S. sanctions campaign was largely abortive.}},
author = {{Lind, Ruben}},
language = {{eng}},
note = {{Student Paper}},
title = {{The Failure of the ‘Maximum Pressure’ Campaign : A Social Conflict Analysis of how U.S. Sanctions Transformed Coalitional Struggles in Venezuela 2017 – 2022}},
year = {{2023}},
}