To Russia with Love? The Impact of Sanctions on Regime Support

Robert Gold, Julian Hinz and Michele Valsecchi

No 11033, CESifo Working Paper Series from CESifo

Abstract: Do economic sanctions affect internal support of sanctioned countries’ governments? To answer this question, we focus on the sanctions imposed on Russia in 2014 and identify their effect on voting behavior in both presidential and parliamentary elections. On the economic side, the sanctions significantly hurt Russia’s foreign trade — with regional variance. We use trade losses caused by the sanctions as measure for regional sanctions exposure. For identification, we rely on a structural gravity model that allows us to compare observed trade flows to counterfactual flows in the absence of sanctions. Difference-in-differences estimations reveal that regime support significantly increases in response to the sanctions, at the expense of voting support of Communist parties. For the average Russian district, sanctions exposure increases the vote share gained by President Putin and his party by 13 percent. Event studies and placebo estimations confirm the validity of our results.

Keywords: economic sanctions; voting behaviour; gravity estimation; rally-around-the-flag (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: F12 F14 F15 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2024
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-cdm, nep-cis, nep-int, nep-inv, nep-pol and nep-tra
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (4)

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Working Paper: To Russia with love? The impact of sanctions on regime support (2023)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:ces:ceswps:_11033

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