WHEN INCENTIVES CROSS SOCIETAL TYPES: WHY SANCTIONS, AID, AND RIGHTS PRODUCE NON-EQUIVALENT RESPONSES

Анотація

Sanctions, development assistance, and legal rights are often evaluated as if their behavioural effects were stable across recipient societies. This article argues that the same instrument can produce different responses because it passes through institutions that determine what counts as value, who controls resources, how losses are distributed, and whether individuals can leave the structures that mediate access. Drawing on the author's H-model, the study develops a conceptual account of transmission across Consumer, Legal, Dogmatic, and Rigidly Hierarchical configurations. Economic damage, operational-capacity reduction, and political-goal revision are treated as separate outcomes. The argument is developed through four illustrations: sanctions and leadership disruption in Iran, wartime resource allocation in Russia, reconstruction assistance to Afghanistan, and the relationship between individual rights and mediated access to support in European integration policy. Four mechanisms explain why intended and observed effects may diverge: doctrinal recoding of external pressure, hierarchical displacement of losses, aid capture through existing coordination structures, and the dependence of practical autonomy on effective freedom of exit. The cases illustrate the framework rather than establish comparative causal effects; alternative explanations and falsification requirements are specified explicitly. The principal implication is that intervention should be evaluated through verified changes in function and control, rather than damage inflicted, money disbursed, or protections enacted alone. An economy can suffer while its governing priority remains financed; an organisation can grow without becoming autonomous; and a right can exist while the intended beneficiary cannot exercise it. Transmission compatibility therefore becomes a necessary question in the design and assessment of sanctions, aid, and rights.

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