Sanctions on South Africa: What Did They Do

Philip Levy

Working Papers from Economic Growth Center, Yale University

Abstract: This paper considers the economic sanctions that were applied in the mid-1980s to pressure the South African government to end apartheid. It asks what role those sanctions played in the eventual demise of the apartheid regime and concludes that the role was probably very small. An alternative explanation for the regime change is offered: the communist bloc combined to bring about the change. If one is to argue for the efficacy of sanctions, two key obstacles are their limited economic impact and the substantial lag between the imposition of sanctions and the political change. Since sanctions preceded the change of government, it is impossible to rule them out as a determinant. However, their principal effect was probably psychological. The implication is that the South African case should not serve as the lone major instance of effective sanctions.

Keywords: Keywords: Sanctions; South Africa; Political Economy; Trade (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: F14 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 13 pages
Date: 1999-02
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (28)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.econ.yale.edu/growth_pdf/cdp796.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
Journal Article: Sanctions on South Africa: What Did They Do? (1999)
Working Paper: Sanctions on South Africa: What Did They Do? (1999)
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:egc:wpaper:796

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Working Papers from Economic Growth Center, Yale University Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Benjamin King ( this e-mail address is bad, please contact ).