Description
How do revisionist actors perceive the use of sanctions against them? Extant literature suggests a clear link between the use of sanctions and the conveyance of norms of punishment. However in this paper I argue that when used against revisionist actors, sanctions can have the opposite effect. Rather than conveying norms of punishment by the international community, sanctions increase an actor’s self-perception of its legitimacy. I argue for two mechanisms: 1) revisionist actors perceive the use of coercive tools as an indicator that they pose a credible threat to the status quo; 2) the act of sanctioning adds new revisionist actors to a `club' of existing revisionist actors. To test my argument, I collect text data produced by Boko Haram and Al-Shabab in Mozambique and extract sentiment scores using LLMs. Using the date of the sanctions as a treatment, I conduct a difference in differences analysis of the effect of sanctions on the presence of pride. My findings suggest that instead of deterring terrorist organizations, sanctions serve as a catalyst for their internal perceptions of legitimacy.
