The Determinants of Economic Sanctions Success and Failure

In this article, we consider the puzzle of whether unilateral or multilateral sanctions are more likely to be successful in changing a targeted state's behavior. Policymakers maintain that multilateral sanctioning efforts will be more likely to succeed, while the majority of empirical academic research suggests otherwise. We present an argument, based on multidimensional spatial models, to explain why multilateral sanctions may not be more effective than unilateral sanctions. We present the basic model and show that they can explain why, in general, multilateral sanctions fail more often than do unilateral sanctions. We also show that the model leads to additional, testable hypotheses. We conduct a simple empirical test of the major hypothesis produced by the spatial application and show that it is consistent with the historical record.     

Neo-Kantianism and Coercive Diplomacy: The Complex Case of Economic Sanctions

Although voluminous research connects the neo-Kantian triad—democracy, economic interdependence, and intergovernmental organization membership—to amelioration of conflict processes, comparatively little is known about how these factors relate to economic coercion. We advance the relevant literature on neo-Kantianism and the determinants of sanction decisions by (1) analyzing the impact of all three neo-Kantian factors on economic coercion and (2) assessing the effects of these factors across both the onset of threat and imposition of sanctions. Results from the time-series, cross-national data analyses indicate a significant but complex connection between the neo-Kantian variables and sanctions. Specifically, we find that although democratic regimes are less likely to threaten each other with sanctions, once a threat is made, democracies are more likely to impose sanctions against each other. Economic interdependence and common IGO membership are likely to increase the probability of sanction threats. Yet, the results also suggest that common IGO membership decreases the probability of sanction imposition while economic interdependence has no statistically significant effect on the decision to impose sanctions. Overall, these results highlight the importance of a more nuanced study of sanction decisions for a better understanding of the factors that lead to sanction use.     

Economic Sanctions,Poverty, and International Terrorism: An Empirical Analysis

This study examines the impact of economic sanctions on international terrorism. It is argued that sanctions intensify economic hardships on the poor within countries and this increases their level of grievance and makes them more likely to support or engage in international terrorism. Further, economic sanctions are conceptualized as creating an opportunity for rogue leaders to manipulate aggrieved poor people to terrorize foreign entities who are demonized as engaging in a foreign encroachment on the sanctioned nation's sovereignty. A cross-sectional, time-series data analysis of 152 countries for the past three decades provides evidence that ceteris paribus, economic sanctions are positively associated with international terrorism. This finding suggests that, although the main purpose of economic sanctions is to coerce rogue countries to conform to international norms and laws, they can unintentionally produce a negative ramification and become a cause of international terrorism.     

International Signaling and Economic Sanctions

Do economic sanctions serve international signaling purposes? A fully structural statistical model that employs a signaling game as a statistical model is used to investigate the existence of signaling effects of sanctions. Estimation results suggest that sanctions fail to work as a costly signal. The cheapness of sanctions prevents a target state from being able to distinguish a resolute sender state from a sender who is bluffing. When sanctions are imposed, a target rarely updates its initial evaluation of the sender state’s resolve, much less than when a military challenge is observed.     

Fools Suffer Gladly: The Use of Economic Sanctions in International Crises

A number of recent international situations have raised again questions regarding the usefulness of economic sanctions as an instrument of foreign policy. Sanctions continue to be applied in a variety of contexts, yet we have not developed a sufficient understanding of the processes involved to determine when, or even if, sanctions can "work." While a great deal has been written on the subject, there have been neither attempts to subject the theoretical arguments to empirical testing nor efforts to provide systematic theoretical explanations for the empirical results that have been produced. In this article, we attempt to address this shortcoming in the literature. We propose a theory of sanctions effectiveness that is based on the spatial model of bargaining in international crises and use this theory to derive a number of hypotheses regarding when sanctions should produce favorable policy outcomes. We then subject some of the derived hypotheses to an empirical test based on a large number of international disputes. The model suggests that while sanctions will not work in many cases, they can have a slight effect on the distribution of expected outcomes if the costs of the sanctions are sufficiently high relative to the values at stake. The available evidence appears to support these expectations.     

Coercive or Corrosive: The Negative Impact of Economic Sanctions on Democracy

This article seeks to analyze the impact that sanctions have on democracy. We argue that economic sanctions worsen the level of democracy because the economic hardship caused by sanctions can be used as a strategic tool by the targeted regime to consolidate authoritarian rule and weaken the opposition. Furthermore, we argue that economic sanctions create new incentives for the political leadership to restrict political liberties, to undermine the challenge of sanctions as an external threat to their authority. Using time-series cross-national data (1972–2000), the findings show that both the immediate and longer‐term effects of economic sanctions significantly reduce the level of democratic freedoms in the target. The findings also demonstrate that comprehensive economic sanctions have greater negative impact than limited sanctions. These findings suggest that sanctions can create negative externalities by reducing the political rights and civil liberties in the targeted state.     

Hearing the Noise: Economic Sanctions Theory and Anomalous Evidence

Our understanding of economic sanctions has progressed significantly over the past three decades. Sanctions scholars have done a remarkable job at using empirical anomalies to guide theoretical developments and then using these to guide the next iteration of data collection and empirical testing. Here, I argue that mounting empirical evidence suggests it is time to develop a new theoretical perspective. I identify a number of empirical results, some unpublished, that are hard to reconcile with existing theory, and I argue that there is enough consistency in these results to suggest which way to turn.     

Economic Sanctions and the Politics of IMF Lending

What effect do economic sanctions have on the IMF lending decisions? Though countries under economic sanctions often face significant economic and financial difficulties, no comprehensive research to date has explored whether the IMF as a de facto lender of last resort intervenes in those countries in need. We posit that economic coercion is likely to hinder the target’s access to IMF credits as sanctioning (sender) countries are likely to use their political influence in the IMF to deny funds to the destabilized target economies. To assess the empirical merits of the hypothesis, we combine data on the IMF lending with the economic sanctions data for 120 emerging market economies from 1975 to 2005. Results indicate that target countries are less likely to receive IMF funds, especially when under sanctions by the United States and international institutions. Our findings contradict the conventional wisdom that the IMF is tasked with providing lifelines to member governments in need of help to ease their short-term balance of payment problems. Further, as much as IMF loans can be used as positive inducements to acquire a country’s strategic cooperation, we show that they might also be used by sender countries as a punishment tool against target countries to amplify the impact of sanctions regimes.     

西方国家放宽经济制裁背景下的缅甸经济发展前景

西方国家对缅甸实施长期经济制裁,深刻影响了缅甸的经济发展。2011年3月,缅甸新政府执政以来,采取了一系列政治经济改革举措,得到国际社会普遍认可,也促使西方国家放宽对缅甸的经济制裁。在此背景下,缅甸未来经济发展潜力巨大,但也面临诸多问题和挑战。     

The New Aerospace Diplomacy: Reconstructing Post-Cold War US-Russian Economic Relations

Post-Cold War U.S.-Russian diplomacy reveals the increased importance of new diplomatic actors and processes, whilst underscoring the continued key role of state-state negotiation in reconstructing the bilateral relationship between the United States and post-Soviet Russia. The Clinton administration and Yeltsin government negotiated measures to promote political stability, democratization, and conversion to a neoliberal market economy in Russia, a centrepiece of which was the integration of Russia’s globally competitive aerospace sector into the global production chain. Establishing the Gore-Chernomyrdin Commission, a top-level binational economic and technology policy committee, and signing a bilateral trade liberalization treaty on commercial satellite launch services paved the way for public-public and public-private bilateral space cooperation, and for major private joint ventures between US and Russian aerospace firms.     

The New Aerospace Diplomacy: Reconstructing Post-Cold War US-Russian Economic Relations

Post-Cold War U.S.-Russian diplomacy reveals the increased importance of new diplomatic actors and processes, whilst underscoring the continued key role of state-state negotiation in reconstructing the bilateral relationship between the United States and post-Soviet Russia. The Clinton administration and Yeltsin government negotiated measures to promote political stability, democratization, and conversion to a neoliberal market economy in Russia, a centrepiece of which was the integration of Russia's globally competitive aerospace sector into the global production chain. Establishing the Gore-Chernomyrdin Commission, a top-level binational economic and technology policy committee, and signing a bilateral trade liberalization treaty on commercial satellite launch services paved the way for public-public and public-private bilateral space cooperation, and for major private joint ventures between US and Russian aerospace firms.     

冷战后欧盟与阿拉伯国家的经贸合作

冷战后欧盟与阿拉伯国家的经贸交往主要是在两大架构下进行。一个是南地中海伙伴关系框架，另一个是欧盟与海湾合作委员会的合作关系框架。在这两个框架下，双方的经贸合作不仅实现了数量上的增长，而且还逐步建立起一套经贸交往机制，建立合作机构、定期或不定期召开合作与对话会议、规划和实施合作项目等。     

Structural Sources of Post-Communist Market Reform: Economic Structure, Political Culture, and War

Why did some post-communist countries implement more thorough market reforms than others? Four different structural explanations are considered: (1) relative size of economic interest group coalitions hurt by market reform; (2) predominant religious traditions, which may incorporate norms and institutions more or less favorable to market reform; (3) variation in historically based national economic and political expectations, in which greater pre-communist political and economic achievements may create collective rationales for more aggressive institutional and policy reforms; and (4) duration of large-scale military conflict, which may distract and undermine reformist governments. These explanations are tested both directly, and mediated through plausible process predictors—democratization, party ideological moderation or extremism, strength of the presidency, and party system concentration. The 28 post-communist countries are examined over shorter and longer time spans—2 years after the fall of the old regime and a decade or so after the fall. The two political culture variables—predominant religious tradition and national economic and political expectations—provide the most statistically significant and powerful predictors. War is also a significant and powerful predictor. Relative size of economic interest group coalitions is estimated to have little impact. Among the process variables, democratization and party ideological moderation have the most consistently significant and powerful impacts. One implication is that middle-range theories of political culture, which can be more firmly grounded in rational calculation and historical context, may be a promising way to remedy the weaknesses of political culture theories operating at the broader level of religion or civilization.     

War, Peace, and the Invisible Hand: Positive Political Externalities of Economic Globalization

Studies of signaling in international relations reveal how punishing bluffing ex post through domestic audience costs or opposition groups facilitates credible ex ante communication among states and reduces the impetus toward war. Global integration of economic markets may also reduce uncertainty by making talk costly ex ante. Autonomous global capital can respond dramatically to political crises. To the degree that globalization forces leaders to choose between pursuing competitive political goals and maintaining economic stability, it reveals the intensity of leaders' preferences, reducing the need for military contests as a method of identifying mutually acceptable bargains. Asymmetric integration can dampen the pacific effects of globalization, but asymmetry does not in itself exacerbate dispute behavior. We present the theory and offer preliminary corroborative tests of implications of the argument on postwar militarized disputes.     

At the Dawn of a New Era of Sanctions: Russian-Ukrainian Crisis and Sanctions

This article outlines the objectives of the EU-sanctions against Russia, comparing the expectations of the politicians, media and the public with the views expressed in theoretical debates, as well as experiences gained from historical lessons. The essay seeks to answer the question: what could be realistically achieved as a result of the sanctions and what remains beyond their reach?     

Sanctions and public opinion: The case of the Russia-Ukraine gas disputes

The Review of International Organizations - Economic sanctions usually fail, sometimes even provoking the opposite of the intended outcome. Why are sanctions so often ineffective? One prominent...     

War, Economic Development, and Political Development in the Contemporary International System

The European state-building experience has led many scholars to argue that war forces states to increase their fiscal-administrative capacity, or what we might refer to as political development, in order to compete in the international system. War also requires states to generate wealth to support such competition, which should lead to progressively increased levels of economic development. Yet, in contemporary empirical studies, war is often studied as a dependent variable, with economic and political development modeled as affecting its origination. This reading of theory and empirical work suggests that war, economic development, and political development constitute an endogenous system. In this paper, we develop expectations about how these three processes interact and test them using a three-stage least squares regression model. The results show significant simultaneous relationships between the three processes. We conclude that war, economic development, and political development are mutually constitutive processes in the contemporary international system.     

经济风险的战争效应：安全跨域外溢机制研究

巴里.布赞的新综合安全分析框架提供了安全跨域外溢的分析方法，克服了不同领域的安全研究相互割裂的局限。文章基于新综合安全观的视角分析经济风险的战争效应，提出“二阶段论”的理论框架，将经济风险促成战争的过程分为经济安全和军事安全两个阶段。第一阶段通常是线性逻辑，经济风险通过影响一国经济基本面演变为经济威胁；第二阶段是复杂的多线程逻辑，经济威胁可能通过激励和诱发两种机制作用于军事安全领域，产生或加强实力—安全困境、破窗困境、存续困境和防御困境等四种困境，最终促成战争爆发。二阶段论在现实中有五种运行逻辑，分别是直接与军事安全相关、效率与安全的矛盾、货币霸权的衰落、经济依附和(国际)金融危机，历史案例为这五种逻辑提供了佐证。由此证明，二阶段论亦可作为新综合安全观在中观层面的补充与完善。