Should democracies be rewarded and autocracies punished, or should it be the reverse? This is an important question for foreign policy makers who regularly find themselves wanting to alter the behavior of foreign governments favorable to their interests. Existing studies on economic sanctions and rewards provide an uneasy answer that sanctions are more effective toward democracies and rewards work better toward autocracies, suggesting democracies need to be punished while autocracies need to be rewarded. We revisit the issue of regime type and incentive form by building a game theoretical model focusing on domestic political dynamics in a Target country. When we distinguish betwen three types of reigmes lined up on an accountability continuum, the theoretical model yields the claim that sanctions and rewards work better with both extremes—democracies and dictatorships—than with the intermediate category of limited autocracy, for which only rewards work.

民主制度应该得到奖励，独裁制度应该受到惩罚，还是相反？对于经常发现自己想要改变有利于其利益的外国政府行为的外国决策者来说，这是一个重要的问题。现有的有关经济制裁和奖励的研究提供了一个不容易的答案，即制裁对民主国家更有效，而奖励对独裁国家更有效，这表明民主应该受到惩罚，而独裁需要得到奖励。我们通过建立针对目标国家国内政治动态的博弈理论模型，重新审视政体类型和激励形式的问题。当我们在问责制连续体上区分三种类型的注册方式时，