[jollybean]

"Do you have any prior evidence that sanctions have led to protests/riots that have successfully overthrown a regime?"

Yes, the Soviet Union.

[necovek]

I don't see any mention of economic sanctions at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dissolution_of_the_Soviet_Unio..., care to elaborate?

[jollybean]

The 'Iron Curtain' was a giant set of sanctions. Limited mobility, trade, finances, goods, services, information.

[jollybean]

I'll double down: the Soviet Union represented 'sanctions' considerably worse than exist today.

So much so, that there wasn't much trade to sanction.

We have integrated economies now, there's a lot to directly sanction, we didn't back then.

Where was IKEA, Toyota, Nike, Apple, Intel etc. and their 1970's peers doing in Russia?

They were not. There just wasn't brand commercial integration. Same thing for information, services, travel, finance etc..

We'd have to shut down most of our trade now to reach the level of de-facto 'sanction' of the Soviet Union.