Biased Sanctions? Methodological Change in Economic Sanctions Reconsidered and Its Implications

We investigate the influence of case selection and (re)coding for two vintages of a key resource for research on economic sanctions: the Peterson Institute database reported in Hufbauer et al. (second edition in 1990 and third edition in 2007, often identified by their abbreviations HSE and HSEO). The Peterson Institute has not transparently reported about these changes. These changes make it more likely to find sanction success. A multivariate probit analysis establishes upward bias related to modest policy change, duration, and cost to target and downward bias for regime change, military impairment, companion policies, and cost to the sender.     

How Effective Are U.S. Sanctions on Iran？

Iran＇s nuclear development has become a serious threat to the U.S.-led nuclear nonproliferation movement. It also threatens Israel and other U.S.allies in the Middle East. It is one of the U.S.＇ biggest problems in the area. The U.S. ratcheted up sanctions on Iran after 2003 as the nuclear issue grew more urgent. Iran has responded with its own policies.     

Coercive Assets? Foreign Direct Investment and the Use of Economic Sanctions

How does foreign direct investment (FDI) affect the use of economic coercion? This article argues that while FDI matters, the effect depends on the entry mode of the FDI. The economic interdependence created by FDI does not have a monotonic effect on economic statecraft because the relative costs incurred by economic disruption differ depending on the forms of foreign investment. In particular, the FDI that creates wholly-owned subsidiaries (for example, cross-border mergers and aquisitions) imposes greater costs to the sender's firms than cross-border joint ventures with local partners, while FDI through joint ventures incurs greater costs for the host than the home country and its firms. By utilizing US sanction episodes from the Threat and Imposition of Economic Sanctions (TIES) dataset, the empirical analysis supports the argument. The results show that economic sanctions are less likely to occur as the share of FDI through cross-border mergers and acquisitions increases.     

Targeted Versus Conventional Economic Sanctions: What Is at Stake for Human Rights?

ABSTRACT

The adverse impact of economic sanctions on human rights is well documented in the literature (Peksen 2009; Wood 2008) and so are the consequences of sanctions for democracy (Peksen and Drury 2009, 2010) and for the survival of leaders (Escribà-Folch & Wright 2010; Marinov 2005). Using data from the Targeted Sanctions Consortium (Biersteker, Eckert, Tourinho, and Hudákóva 2013), we analyze whether sanctions that target segmented groups within the leadership fare any better with respect to human rights protection. The analysis focuses on the universe of targeted sanctions against African countries, between 1992 and 2008, and finds that the adverse impact of this coercive instrument—though unintended—is not statistically distinguishable from the adverse consequences already identified by the literature with respect to conventional sanctions. All else equal, the protection of rights to physical integrity (the right to life and the prohibition of torture) in the targeted country is 1.74 times more likely to worsen under an episode of targeted sanction when compared to a situation where there is no sanction. We propose a signaling model wherein a targeted leader is perceived by the opposition as weakened by the sanctions, which leads to more protest and repression. Higher levels of human rights violations follow.     

Power Politics or Public Pandering? An Empirical Investigation of Economic Sanctions and Presidential Approval

How do economic sanctions affect presidential approval? Competing claims have been made about the domestic political consequences of economic sanctions. One claim is that sanctions are unpopular because they have negative economic consequences; another claim is that sanctions are popular because they project an image of strength; and another claim is that sanctions are neither popular nor unpopular because the public is uninformed about international affairs. These arguments imply competing identification restrictions. I test these competing models using a Bayesian Structural Vector Autoregression (B-SVAR) model. The results show that sanctions have a moderate negative effect on presidential approval. I use these findings as a basis for a broader set of auxiliary analyses. Despite received wisdom, sanctions imposed for different reasons against different target states do not produce disparate effects on public opinion. These analyses resolve an important empirical dilemma that weighs on a range of theoretical perspectives in the sanctions literature and highlights fruitful avenues for future research.     

“The Worst of all Worlds:” Oil Sanctions and Italy's Invasion of Abyssinia, 1935–1936

Italy's invasion of Abyssinia in 1935 caused a crisis for the League of Nations. League members imposed limited sanctions against Italy and debated at length the imposition of an embargo on oil shipments to Italy, which came to stand as a symbol of the League's determination to punish the Italian aggressor. The British government conducted a detailed investigation to determine whether or not an oil sanction could compel Italy to abandon its invasion. Although Italy imported the vast majority of its oil, British and League experts concluded that an oil embargo would not succeed. Even if the League instituted a comprehensive embargo amongst its members, Italy could still have secured sufficient supplies from non-members, particularly the United States, which could not legally prevent American companies from trading with Italy. Italy could also have secured additional supplies through third-party transshipments. An additional ban preventing Italy from using League tankers to carry its purchases would not have succeeded either, although the various sanctions together would have increased Italy's costs to import oil and the amount of pressure on its gold reserves. In spite of the technical difficulties involved in implementing an embargo, the British Cabinet continued to support the idea for domestic political reasons; it needed to placate the British public that considered it vitally important to put into practice the League's collective security rhetoric. The League's unwillingness to impose an oil sanction and its evident failure to prevent Italy's conquest of Abyssinia discredited the League and its collective security provisions.