Energy sanctions and Russia’s democracy – autocracy: a dynamic VAR analysis, by Peter A.G. van Bergeijk and Sajjad Faraji Dizaji

Abstract                          

Our focus is the interplay of macroeconomic and political variables following a boycott of Russian oil and gas and on how these factors codetermine the result of sanctions. This paper uses an innovative approach to sanction success that provides a dynamic, forward-looking, perspective and deals with both the economic and the political outcome of economic sanctions simultaneously. We report the main results of a comprehensive set of 14 unrestricted VAR models that we use to analyse how negative oil and gas shocks impact on the Russian economy and Russian politics. A similar approach has been used before to analyse sanctions against Iran (Dizaji and van Bergeijk in Journal of Peace Research 2013) and offers us the possibility to investigate the dynamics of the economic-political interactions. The impact of an energy boycott is considerable, and economic costs act as powerful incentives.

Keywords

Energy boycott, Russia, VAR, sanction success

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