International Law, Security, and Sanctions: A Decolonial Perspective on the Transnational Legal Order of Sanctions

Abstract

This article reviews recent literature on sanctions from international law, political science, sociology, anthropology, and history. It shows how the literature during the comprehensive sanctions decade (the 1990s), with a largely critical view on sanctions in the age of globalization, was co-opted by the targetization of sanctions in the sanctions miniaturization decade (the 2000s). It then reviews the sanctions literature in sociology and anthropology during the sanctions enforcement decade (the 2010s), addressing the transnational characteristics of sanctions, their infrastructural materiality in the digital economy, and the deputization of private actors to police their implementation. Last, the article reviews the literature in colonial governmentality to encourage sanctions specialists to take a longer-term view of transnational orders of sanctions. This section ends with a call to decolonize sanctions research—or rather, to question the colonial origins of sanctions as an instrument of world making so that a properly decolonial perspective on sanctions can be elaborated.