19
Salience of Issues
There are mixed results for the different indicators of issue salience. It is only when the policy
change demanded threatens the support coalition of the target that we see a significant impact on coercion
compliance (Table 1 equation 3). In the cases where compliance would threaten the political authority of
the support coalition, we do see the expected lower rate of compliance.
While we see less compliance when it would threaten the political authority of the support
coalition, such is not the case when the demands are for regime change, or when compliance threatens the
material interests of the support coalition. The lack of a relationship for compliance threatening the
material interests of the support coalition may well be an artifact of the data. There are very few cases
where major sectors of the target economy will be harmed by compliance (only 5 of the 122 cases), and as
such are really too few to draw any conclusions from the data.
The lack of an impact for demands for regime change is more interesting. Since demands for
regime change also threatens the political authority of the support coalition (correlation is .63 between
the two variables) any impact on compliance rates when regime change is demanded appears to be
washed out by the impact on the support coalition. It does make sense that the interests of the support
coalition are more important than those of the regime itself, given the nature of the Political
Accountability model. The government is ultimately responsible to the support coalition and can be
replaced if it chooses poor policies.
Controls
There are several interesting outcomes related to the control variables included. One of the most
puzzling is that the effects of external support for both the sender and the target are the opposite of the
predicted effects (Table 1, all equations). One possibility for why external support for the sender leads to
less compliance is the difficulty coordinating enforcement (Drezner 2000). While that might account for
the results when the sender receives support, there is no apparent reason why targets that receive external
support should be more likely to comply with the demands of the sender.
Another surprising result is the way sanctions involving national security-related items reduces
the likelihood of compliance (Table 1 equations 1-3). Perhaps it is particularly easy to find alternate
sources of supply for those goods (they are always export or financial sanctions, not import sanctions),
possibly because they are relatively high profit items for sellers. The relationship is so strong and so
counter-intuitive that it certainly suggests an interesting area for future research. This holds true for when
only military hardware is restricted (Table 1 equation 4), which is also completely the opposite of what
would be expected if destabilization was leading to compliance.
There were no other surprises among the control variables, with the exception that some had no
effect on compliance. The existence of an alliance between the sender and the target is associated with
more compliance with the demands, which suggests that the vested interest key target groups have in the
relationship with the sender has an important impact on the decision to comply with the demands.
Likewise, as the sender’s Polity IV score increases there is more compliance, exactly as expected. This
indicates that democracies are more credible and are thus able to achieve their aims through coercion
more easily.
None of the other variables has a significant impact on compliance. The use of inducements does
not increase compliance, and the acceptance of higher costs by the sender does not help the sender gain
compliance, so perhaps it does not enhance credibility when using economic coercion. Politically and
economically unstable targets are not easier to coerce, which combined with the opposite impact for
sanctions on military hardware suggests that destabilization is not leading to compliance. Since issue
Convention