Evaluating the success of international sanctions: a new research agenda

Jones, Lee; Portela, Clara

doi:10.24241/rcai.2020.125.2.39/en

Cited by 9 publications

(3 citation statements)

References 32 publications

(51 reference statements)

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“…In fact, the conditions of time and place need to play a stronger role in assessments of sanctions, and there is a firm consensus toward this conclusion. Also, the recognition that the literature is potentially biased due to the senderfocused, state-centric interpretation of sanctions as a stand-alone instrument, provides a solid incentive for new and exciting research agendas (see, for example, Peksen, 2019 andJones andPortela, 2020). The consequence is, first, that we need to recognize this heterogeneity and, second, that case-specific methods may need to be used that cannot yet be applied to large numbers of sanctions cases.…”

Section: Diagram 12 the Sanctions Black Boxmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…There is a clear demand for new ways of looking at the goals, (in)effectiveness, and impact of economic sanctions (see, for example, Peksen 2019;van Bergeijk 2019b;von Soest 2019;Early and Cilizoglu, 2020;and Jones and Portela, 2020). The value added of this Handbook is that it is as much about sanctions research as it is about economic sanctions per se, so that we can glean where the literature can be strengthened: a revival of country studies and case studies.…”

Section: What Next?mentioning

confidence: 99%

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Introduction to the Research Handbook on Economic Sanctions

Bergeijk¹

2021

Research Handbook on Economic Sanctions

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The contributions to this Handbook demonstrate that the breadth and depth of research on economic sanctions are expanding faster than ever before-with major implications for theory and policy. This Handbook shows that several of the divides that characterize the research on economic sanctions are being bridged. The Handbook brings together the two disciplines that study sanctions but often talk past each other: Economics and Political Science/International Relations. Moreover, both Political Science and Economics are crossing the bridge between quantitative and qualitative approaches, but from opposite sides. In the early years of sanctions research (i.e., back in the 1950s-1970s), the analysis of sanctions was dominated by qualitative case studies and descriptive statistics. Some analysts in that embryonic stage already tried to glean general lessons from (selected) collections of cases (Wallensteen, 1968, is an example). Initially, only a handful of cases was available but as sanctions were used more often, the sample increased. The breakthrough in the analysis of economic sanctions came with Economic Sanctions Reconsidered, the seminal data collection and analysis developed by Gary Hufbauer and Jeffrey Schott at the Peterson Institute. Economic Sanctions Reconsidered enabled analysis to be based on a large sample size and that helped to reduce an important source of selection bias apparent in the earlier narrative accounts of sanction failures and successes. Throughout the 35 years since its first publication in 1985, the Peterson Institute's sanction case collection has inevitably received a lot of criticism on the measurement of success, selection bias, and estimation method. 2 However, the main point should not be overlooked here: Economic Sanctions Reconsidered was a major scientific improvement that helped to address the major weaknesses of the existing literature of the 1980s.The universe of sanctions data expanded further when sanction threats were included in the Threat and Imposition of Economic Sanctions (TIES) project run by T. Clifton Morgan, Navin Bapat, Yoshiharu Kobayashi, and Valentin Krustev. That data set was constructed not so much to provide a more up-to-date overview but rather to bring new threats and uncertainties into the equation since new theories required different data. In 2020 Gabriel J. Felbermayr, Aleksandra Kirilakha, Constantinos Syropoulos, Erdal Yalcin, and Yoto Yotov at the Kiel Institute for the World Economy published the Global Sanctions Data Base, enabling research on the trade impact of sanctions. The sample of sanctions cases was expanded significantly and presently also covers the period of the Trump administration. Diagram 1.1 shows how these three projects relate and partially overlap. It suggests that results may be sensitive to the specific data set used (and even which vintage of that data set was used). The emergence of specialized large-N sources such as the UN targeted data set developed by

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Section: Diagram 12 the Sanctions Black Boxmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: What Next?mentioning

confidence: 99%

Introduction to the Research Handbook on Economic Sanctions

Bergeijk¹

2021

Research Handbook on Economic Sanctions

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“…Through stigmatization they reinforce concepts of normality, as understanding what is 'right' requires understanding what is 'wrong' (Adler-Nissen, 2014;Smetana, 2019). In sum, if sanctions would fail to coerce a change in behaviour, their use would still be justified through their signalling effect that affirms the importance of the violated norm (Jones and Portela, 2020). However seeing as these policy tools also include the imposition of costs they are much more than a form of stigmatization, they constitute international punishment.…”

Section: Defending Norms Through International Punishmentmentioning

confidence: 99%