Britain’s Sanctions Policy: Institutional Design and Targeting Russia

Abstract

Britain is one of the key initiators of sanctions against Russia. It is pursuing an independent policy of restrictive measures against Russia since its withdrawal from the European Union. However, both the institutional design and practice of the UK’s sanctions policy remain poorly covered by the academic literature. These gaps generate a number of questions that are central to this article. What are the institutional characteristics of the contemporary UK policy of sanctions? What are the trends in comparison with other players like the United States, the European Union, and others? In what way are these institutional and practical features implemented in relation to Russia? Three assumptions follow. (i) the UK institutional design provides considerable autonomy to the executive branch to implement sanctions, although the instruments used are standard and similar to the ones applied by other Western countries (including blocking sanctions and export control); (ii) Britain is quite active in using sanctions. Although the UK applies sanctions less actively than the US or the EU, it uses them far more actively than China and Russia; (iii) Russia is becoming a priority target for London both in terms of the number of sanctions imposed and the variety of methods used. These assumptions are tested in this article based on the analysis of legal and official documents, as well as the Sanctions Events Database (SED) designed by the Russian International Affairs Council (RIAC).