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The Potential Impact of Economic Sanctions Against South Africa

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 November 2008

Janice Love
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Extract

The impact of economic sanctions against countries engaging in objectionable behaviour tends to be minimised by seemingly dispassionate analysts but overrated by those committed to punishing the target. Governments often act to impose economic sanctions despite controversies regarding their utility, and this article will examine the variables that contribute to their success or failure, and their potential impact on South Africa, including a brief analysis of the various measures recently imposed by western industrialised nations.

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Articles
Information
The Journal of Modern African Studies , Volume 26 , Issue 1 , March 1988 , pp. 91 - 111
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1988

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References

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Page 93 note 1 Ibid. pp. 13–14.

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Page 93 note 4 Ibid. p. 63.

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Page 94 note 2 Minter, William, ‘South Africa: straight talk on sactions’, in Foreign Policy (Washington, D.C.), 65, Winter 1986–1987, pp. 46–7, makes an important distinction between eliminating apartheid in a narrow sense (‘the explicit ideology of rigid racial separation that was tagged as introduced in 1948 by Afrikaner nationalists’) and in a broad sense (‘the system that has reserved political rights and economic privilege for whites in South Africa for more than a century’). The goal of compliance assumes that the latter would be the object of the sanctions effort.Google Scholar

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Page 111 note 1 Research is needed into just how many western partners would be sufficient to impose the various degrees of hardship outlined by Porter. Specifically, since Britain and the United States are the two largest partners, an investigation might be able to determine whether or not they alone (assuming others do not increase their levels of trade and investment at the same time) could impose sanctions severe enough to create significant economic hardships in South Africa.