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Cuba's Road to Serfdom
By Carlos Seiglie
Introduction
The last decade of the 20th century was marked by a profound change in the structure of the international political system and with it the foreign policy priorities of the United States. Yet, one policy that has remained unchanged for close to 40 years has been the use of a unilateral embargo on Cuba with the presumed objective of provoking a change in the behavior of a dictatorial and repressive government. That policy has continued in light of the evidence that the efficacy of unilateral economic sanctions in effectuating political change is at best inconclusive. In fact, Kaempfer and Lowenberg (1988) illustrate how domestic politics influences the design and severity of the sanctions to account for the varying interests of different constituencies (see Seiglie 1997 for an application to the case of Cuba).
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