Success Of Economic Sanctions Research Articles

Shadow Economies and the Success of Economic Sanctions: Explaining Why Democratic Targets Are Disadvantaged

AbstractThe sanctions literature has identified numerous mechanisms by which the adverse economic effects of sanctions impact their success rate. This body of work, however, has mostly focused on targets’ formal economies and has thus overlooked whether sanctions-induced changes in shadow (also known as informal) economic activity influence sanctions’ effectiveness. In this article, we develop two rival arguments that can potentially explain how shadow sector growth affects sanctions’ outcomes. Our grievance mitigation theory argues that increased shadow sector activity decreases the political pressure on leaders to capitulate to sanctions, while our disadvantaged democracy theory asserts that shadow economies create budgetary resource demands and deficits that disproportionately hamper democratic targets’ ability to resist sanctions. We assess the empirical merits of the two theories using time-series cross-national data for 1950–2005. We find robust evidence that the growth of shadow economies increases the likelihood of sanctions’ success in democratic targets while not significantly affecting the success rate of sanctions against non-democratic regimes. Our findings shed new light on the processes by which the economic disruptions and hardships created by sanctions translate into pressure on targeted regimes to concede to sanctions.

Economic sanctions and globalization: Assessing the impact of the globalization level of target state on sanctions efficacy

Purpose - When do states resist the threat of sanctions or comply with the demands of the political unit imposing sanctions? This article argues that if the target has a high globalization index, it conforms to the demands of the sender. Therefore, the article examines the impact of target’s globalization level on the initiation and success of economic sanctions as a frequently used foreign policy tool. Methodology - In combination of two datasets, (for sanctions cases, Hufbauer et al, 2007; and for globalization index Raab et al, 2007), this article, uses 72 sanctions cases from Hufbauer et al. (2007) dataset to examine some indicators of sanctions efficacy. A probit model is used to analyze the hypotheses. Findings - The findings of the empirical models presented in the article, reveal a positive relationship between the efficacy of economic sanctions and the high level of globalization in target state. Thus, as targets become globalized, the efficacy of sanctions increases. Empirical evidence has been found in the models as the relationship between sanctions success and globalization has been indicated, since cultural globalization index is used as an indicator of regime type and, most importantly, due to the presumed relationship between winning coalitions and cultural globalization. Conclusion - It has been found that cultural globalization leads to political change that causes transitional political systems to emerge for such states. Referring to the selectorate theory, it is claimed that the winning coalition is possibly wider and the scope of this coalition can be determined without identifying a regime type for the target. In addition, cultural globalization leads to social change that may affect public opinion. As such the audience costs are higher in culturally globalized targets because it requires a publicly accepted foreign policy behavior.

Friends or Foes? Major Trading Partners and the Success of Economic Sanctions

What is the relationship between international cooperation and the success of economic sanctions? Although it is commonly assumed that international cooperation is an important condition for the effectiveness of sanctions, empirical results have been mixed. We focus on the role of the sanctioned country’s major trading partners and develop a theoretical model that shows how their actions can affect the probability of sanctions success by raising or decreasing resistance costs to the sanctioned country. We then derive hypotheses from the theoretical model and test them using fully structural estimation. The empirical results lend support to the theoretical expectation that the sanctioner is more likely to succeed if it has the support of the sanctioned country’s major trading partners. We also find that international cooperation may be less crucial if sanctions are imposed by the sanctioned country’s main trading partner because such sanctions have a higher probability of success.

Economic sanctions as the propositional satisfiability problem

In this paper we are trying to answer the question of when economic sanctions have the best chance to succeed. Almost three hundred scholars from around the world participated in a survey designed to define which pre-conditions and actions by the sender are desirable in order for economic sanctions to succeed. The resolution algorithm is employed to find out whether there is a consensus among the scholars about the factors leading to the success of economic sanctions. The results provide evidence that when scholars were grouped by region the consensus could be reached that sanctions will succeed if: (1) modest policy change is sought, (2) sanctions are comprehensive, i.e., both trade and financial sanctions are imposed, (3) the target does not receive significant support from a third party, (4) the sender has much greater economy than the target, (5) there is international co-operation in the imposition of sanctions, and (6) the target is economically and politically weak and unstable. When scholars were grouped based on the level of economic development of their countries of origin, a consensus on all but one issue (sender’s welfare or economic interest are threatened by target’s action) was reached between scholars from economically developed nations and scholars from less developed nations. Surprisingly, experts from economically developed nations, i.e., the United States versus EU nations, could not reach a consensus on several issues.

The success and use of economic sanctions

This paper explains the use and the success of economic sanctions. In the model, a sender, nation A, uses sanctions to force a target, nation B, to alter its current policy. I use a continuous time, one sided incomplete information game to show that the decision of the sender to sanction is related to the decision of the target to resist I characterize the conditions under which sanctions occur, the conditions under which the sender threatens sanctions and the conditions under which sanctions are successful. The analysis reveals that the success of sanctions affects whether a nation chooses to sanction. I discuss how the implications of this result relates to the cases of sanctions that we empirically observe.