The Imposition and Effectiveness of Sanctions : “It’s the Economy, Stupid!”

Abstract

When sender states consider the imposition of sanctions, they also take into account the consequences that these measures have on their own economy and on their domestic economic actors. How do these economic considerations affect the imposition of sanctions as well as the effectiveness of coercive measures after their imposition?Trade restrictions that have been imposed because of the perceived political misbehavior of a target state do not simply limit the activities between the governments of the sanctioning states and the target state. Sender governments rather have to restrict the activities of their own domestic actors in the target country. Despite the importance of economic actors within sender states, their role has often been neglected in research on sanctions. The goal of this dissertation is to provide a conceptual framework for the different aspects how economic considerations affect the imposition and effectiveness of sanctions. I show that there are three important dimensions: first, lobbying by economic actors can lead to restrictive measures that are less comprehensive than they would have been without these efforts. Second, there are resulting selection effects on the effectiveness of sanctions, which reflect the impact of domestic economic actors on the sanctioning process. Finally, the way companies of the sanctioning states operate in a sanctions regime also has an impact on the effectiveness of these measures. This dissertation contributes four articles to analyze these different dimensions.