Please use this identifier to cite or link to this item: http://hdl.handle.net/10419/103655
Year of Publication: 
2014
Series/Report no.: 
GIGA Working Papers No. 255
Publisher: 
German Institute of Global and Area Studies (GIGA), Hamburg
Abstract: 
This paper examines the impact of regionally imposed sanctions on the trajectory of the Burundian regime and its involvement in the peace process following the 1996 coup in the country. Despite the country's socioeconomic and geopolitical vulnerability, the Buyoya government withstood the pressure from the sanctions. Through a vocal campaign against these sanctions, the new government mitigated the embargo's economic consequences and partially reestablished its international reputation. Paradoxically, this campaign planted the seed for comprehensive political concessions in the long term. While previous literature has attributed the sanctions' success in pressuring the government into negotiations to their economic impact, the government actually responded to the sanction senders' key demand to engage in unconditional, inclusive peace talks under the auspices of the regional mediator once the economy had already started to recover. The regime's anti-sanctions campaign, with its emphasis on the government's willingness to engage in peace talks, backfired, with Buyoya forced to negotiate after having become entrapped in his own rhetoric.
Subjects: 
sanctions
signals
argumentative self-entrapment
Burundi
Document Type: 
Working Paper

Files in This Item:
File
Size
497.22 kB





Items in EconStor are protected by copyright, with all rights reserved, unless otherwise indicated.