Introduction to the Research Handbook on Economic Sanctions

Abstract

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

Como efetuar o monitoramento e a avaliação da política externa? As contribuições oferecidas por estudos focados no desempenho de instrumentos de política externa alternativos

“…Em outras palavras, em que pesem suas deficiências, as conclusões resultantes do trabalho entregaram aportes que se propuseram a cumprir com as principais funções tradicionalmente esperadas de pesquisas avaliativas: disponibilizar informações à administração pública, na forma de recomendações claras e objetivas, que lhe permitam antecipar com maior precisão os resultados potenciais da adoção de um instrumento de política externa, de maneira que ela possa tomar melhores decisões, bem como implementá-lo de forma mais eficiente. Bergeijk (2021) relata que a maior parte das críticas recebidas pela obra podem ser agrupadas em três conjuntos de problemas: i) o viés de seleção dos casos, cuja fonte está na escolha das condições para que um episódio fosse caracterizado como o de uma sanção econômica; ii) a subjetividade envolvida na atribuição e na estimação dos valores de grande parte dos indicadores das variáveis categóricas; e iii) a imprecisão e a insuficiência das categorias utilizadas na composição do índice que mede o sucesso das iniciativas, devido à adoção de um parâmetro muito baixo, o qual favorece que o desempenho seja injustificadamente avaliado positivamente. A despeito das discussões sobre a pertinência dessas críticas ou do debate sobre qual dos problemas seria o mais grave, a principal evidência da existência de deficiências importantes se constitui no fato de que alguns países seguiram suas recomendações e os resultados não foram positivos.…”

Adjustment strategies for firms affected by international sanctions

“…Oxenstierna and Olsson (2015, p. 9) note that sanctions represent a “foreign policy instrument commonly used by the twenty-first century West to signal disapproval of countries breaking international law,” aimed at accomplishing what diplomacy and military intervention are unable to achieve (The Economist, 2021). Considering the political and economic consequences of imposing sanctions, some scholars argue that sanctions represent an important policy tool for dealing with threats, human rights violations and other international issues (Baldwin, 2000; Meyer et al , 2023; van Bergeijk, 2021). According to van Bergeijk (2021), we are in an era of a “tsunami of sanctions”; the average number of sanctions has almost doubled annual during the past 10 years.…”

“…Considering the political and economic consequences of imposing sanctions, some scholars argue that sanctions represent an important policy tool for dealing with threats, human rights violations and other international issues (Baldwin, 2000; Meyer et al , 2023; van Bergeijk, 2021). According to van Bergeijk (2021), we are in an era of a “tsunami of sanctions”; the average number of sanctions has almost doubled annual during the past 10 years. On the other hand, others argue that imposing economic sanctions can be unproductive and potentially detrimental to the civilian populations of targeted countries.…”

“…For example, the sanctions imposed on Iraq during the 1990s received criticism for their alleged contribution to a humanitarian crisis (Moret, 2015). There are ongoing debates over when and how sanctions should be used, the ways in which they can be formulated to reduce adverse effects on civilians and the methods to assess their efficacy (Felbermayr et al , 2021; van Bergeijk, 2021).…”

Interdependence and multilateral economic sanctions

“…More recent literature instead speaks of ‘weaponised interdependence’ (Farrell & Newman, 2019; Weber & Schneider, 2020; Whang et al, 2013) and policy space constrained by global trade rules (Felbermayr et al, 2020; Hufbauer & Jung, 2020; van Bergeijk, 2021).…”