Beyond Norms: A Configurational Analysis of the EU’s Arab Spring Sanctions

Abstract

This paper explores and explains the EU’s use of sanctions in response to the Arab Spring in 13 Middle East and North Africa (MENA) states. A Qualitative Comparative Analysis (QCA) shows that a combination of historical factors and human rights violations contributed to the EU’s decision to impose sanctions in Libya and Syria, while transitional void seems to have been the most important trigger for sanctions in Egypt and Tunisia. The absence of both transitional void and historical economic coercion explains why the EU has refrained from imposing sanctions in negative cases such as Saudi Arabia and Bahrain. Exposing the complex causality of the EU’s Arab Spring sanctions, this paper nuances the EU’s self-proclaimed normative foreign policy approach and demonstrates that combinations of factors matter for explaining the EU’s decision to invoke sanctions in the MENA region.