Replication Data for: Counterfactual Coercion : Could Harsher Sanctions Against Russia Have Prevented the Worst?

Abstract

Numerous studies show that properly designed economic sanctions can force the tar-get to refrain from violating international norms. However, policymakers cannot inte-grate this finding into their ex ante assessments of whether more forceful coercive measures could prevent military coups, human rights violations, or a war of aggression such as the Russian invasion of Ukraine. In this article, we address this shortcoming and introduce counterfactual predictions to answer the what-if question of whether adequate sanctions by the European Union and the United States could have provoked targets to abandon severe norm violations. To this end, a training data set from 1989 to 2008 is used to predict the success of sanctions from 2009 to 2015. Our policy coun-terfactuals for key sanction cases suggest that stricter EU coercion against Russia after the annexation of Crimea could have triggered policy concessions from the regime of President Putin.