The success of sanctions: Lessons learned from the EU experience
Abstract
The effectiveness of sanctions cannot purely be measured by the way they change the behaviour of their intended target. The degree to which sanctions constrain a rogue state's behaviour and the signals they send to future targets should also be prime considerations. In this thought provoking book Francesco Giumelli measures the true effectiveness of EU sanctions against a range of states including Belarus, Zimbabwe, Moldova, Uzbekistan, the USA and China. He demonstrates that focussing purely on behavioural change is limiting, especially when considering the actions and motivations of an international organisation, and develops a process to evaluate the direct and indirect impact of EU sanctions. Giumelli demonstrates the many different ways sanctions have been used by the EU to produce positive direct and indirect results and provides a multi-level framework to assess the success of sanctions in the future.
... Russia is a large economy and a major security player in the international system (Giumelli 2017), while the EU's confrontational attitude towards the United States regarding sanctioning Iran was certainly a blow to traditional transatlantic cooperation (Aggestam and Hyde-Price 2019). However, the EU has been practising sanctions ever since the entry into force of the Treaty of Maastricht in November 1993, in a number of circumstances and under different scenarios that have been investigated from a variety of angles (de Vries and Hazelzet 2005, Portela 2010, Eriksson 2011, Giumelli 2013a, Kreutz 2015. At the same time, while comprehensive overviews of sanctions already exist for the US and the United Nations (Hufbauer et al. 2007, Clifton et al. 2014, Biersteker et al. 2016, the sanctioning activity of the EU has not been systematically collected into a coherent database even in light of its 26 year-long experience therewith. ...
... The central focus of the literature on sanctions is on effectiveness; studies on the EU are no exception to this rule (Portela 2010, Giumelli 2011, 2013a, 2013b, Vines 2012, Giumelli and Ivan 2013. Already in 2002, de Vries drew attention to the potential ineffectiveness of targeted sanctions. ...
... The effectiveness debate has been informed by classical variables such as the multilateralism of sanctions, their impact and the clarity of the demands (Giumelli 2013a, Biersteker et al. 2016. More specifically in relation to the EU context, Boogaerts (2020) investigated the domestic coherence in action as defined by EU actorness and Kranz (2016) analysed the normative consensus that supports the sanctions regime in the first place (Eriksson andGiumelli 2011, Moret 2015). ...
The decisions to impose sanctions on Russia and to lift them on Iran, in opposition to the wishes of the United States, contributed to the elevation of the profile of the European Union among the main global actors in international politics. However, the EU imposes sanctions since the spring of 1994, shortly after the entry into force of the Treaty of Maastricht. Even though the EU consequently has 26 years of experience herewith, EU sanctions have been mostly studied only on a case-by-case basis. The aim of this article is to provide an up-to-date and comprehensive overview of the experience of the EU with sanctions. Specifically, it presents the results of a newly constructed database of EU autonomous sanctions constituted by 48 cases of these restrictive measures, which have been subdivided in 85 episodes. The analysis revolves around four questions that we asked in each case: when sanctions were in force, what type(s) were used, where the targets were located and why restrictive measures were imposed. The analysis of the empirical database leads to observations about the EU as an international actor and, more generally, on the trends vis-à-vis the utilisation of sanctions as a foreign policy instrument.
... The European Union (EU) increasingly uses sanctions as a foreign policy tool (Fürrutter, 2020;Giumelli, 2013;Keukeleire and Delreux, 2008). Sanctions are a non-military foreign policy instrument with the aim to punish the receiving actors, for example, a third country, a political regime, or members of elites or regimes, by imposing some costs or depriving them of some value to make the receiving actors comply with certain norms (Galtung, 1967;Gordon et al., 2019;Kelsen, 1957;White, 2017). ...
... Along with their increasing use in practice, there is a growing literature on sanctions that focuses on their effectiveness. The effectiveness or success of sanctions depends, amongst other things, on the support of regional powers and United Nations (UN) legitimation and also on a robust and smart design (Eriksson, 2011;Giumelli, 2013;Jones, 2007;Lopez, 2012;Mack and Asif, 2000;Portela, 2010Portela, , 2014. ...
Sanctions are increasingly prominent foreign policy tools, but research on the policy process that leads to specific sanction design is limited. Sanctions can have unintended effects on the provision of humanitarian aid in sanctioned countries, which has led to calls for humanitarian exceptions in sanction design. This study focuses on non-governmental organizations' (NGOs) advocacy for a humanitarian perspective on European Union (EU) sanctions in the period 2020–2021. Building on the Advocacy Coalition Framework and the triangulation of qualitative data sources including interviews and document analysis, this study describes an advocacy coalition of humanitarian NGOs in Brussels, their advocacy strategies and the effectiveness of these strategies. The analysis highlights the coalition's common policy beliefs and documents three advocacy strategies: coalition building, knowledge leadership and lobbying. The analysis then traces the link between these strategies and recent policy changes, namely, clearer European Commission guidelines on the implementation of humanitarian derogations. This policy change was further facilitated by policy brokers and an external shock, the Covid-19 pandemic. The findings shed light on an understudied design feature of sanctions, i.e., humanitarian exceptions, and on the role of non-governmental actors in shaping sanction designs.
... En relación con la medición de la eficacia de las sanciones, la literatura académica es profusa (Baldwin, 1985;Drezner, 1999), y va desde las posiciones más ortodoxas (Hufbauer et al., 2007;Pape, 1997: 93) hasta aquellas interpretaciones más laxas (Giumelli, 2013). Las primeras dan un índice de eficacia sostenido sobre la base del cambio de comportamiento, por lo que los éxitos de las sanciones en términos absolutos son muy limitados. ...
... Por consiguiente, el gran problema con el que se encuentra todo el sistema sancionador es que su efectividad coercitiva se ha mostrado ineficaz, mientras que en los ámbitos indicativos y de contención los índices de satisfacción son mucho más elevados. Una de las críticas que se ha realizado a la medición más estricta y dicotómica (éxito/fracaso) de las sanciones es que, en muchos casos, la simple amenaza de estas ha resultado suficiente para modificar el comportamiento del actor afectado, por lo que en ningún caso podría haber sido contabilizado desde ese posicionamiento (Giumelli, 2013). ...
Resumen: Este artículo analiza las sanciones internacionales impuestas a Rusia por parte de la UE como consecuencia de la anexión de Crimea y el conflicto en el Donbás, así como su impacto en términos políticos y económicos en los estados miembros, en determinados sectores económicos y sobre Rusia. Asimismo, aborda cómo la diversidad de posiciones en el seno del Consejo Europeo afecta al pro-ceso de toma de decisiones en esta materia, donde cada vez más se hacen oír voces crí-ticas contra estas medidas. El estudio se de-sarrolla sobre postulados normativos que se trasladarán al caso específico para observar el comportamiento de los actores involucrados y las distintas reacciones que se van dando a lo largo del tiempo, entre ellas la de España. Así, quiere ser una contribución a la literatura académica en materia de sanciones interna-cionales aplicando a este caso de estudio es-pecífico las tipologías de sanciones existentes. Abstract: This article analyses the international sanctions imposed on Russia by the EU as a result of the annexation of Crimea and the conflict in Donbass, and their impact in political and economic terms on member states, on certain economic sectors and on Russia. It also addresses how the diversity of positions within the European Council affects decision-making in this area, in which criticisms of these measures are growing louder. The study is developed on norma-tive postulates that will be transferred to the specific case to observe the behaviour of the actors involved and the different reactions that occur over time, including that of Spain. It thereby seeks to contribute to the academic literature on international sanctions by applying existing sanctions typolo-gies to this specific case study.
... Harmadrészt nem igaz, hogy a szankciók mindig költséget rónak a célországra. Negyedrészt -a célországra nézve -a szankciók hatásainak kizárólagos elemzése fi gyelmen kívül hagyja más külpolitikai eszközök használatának következményeit (Giumelli, 2013b). ...
... Véleménye szerint a szankciók hasznos külpolitikai eszközök lehetnek, hiszen közvetlen és közvetett hatásukat egyaránt felfedte könyvében. A szerző szerint ez magától értetődő következtetés lehet, azonban a szankciók irodalmára jellemző pesszimizmus szempontjából új eredmény, hiszen Giumelli szerint a szankciók működnek (Giumelli, 2013b). ÖSSZEGZÉS E kitekintő a gazdasági szankció politikai hatékonyságáról szóló szakirodalom jelentősebb szerzőinek nézeteit mutatta be, a komolyabb vitát kiváltó szempontok szerint. ...
ÖSSZEFOGLALÓ A politikatudósok és döntéshozók évtizedek óta vitáznak arról, hogy vajon mennyire lehet hatékonynak tekinteni a gazdasági szankciókat. A szerzők többsége lenézi a korlátozó in-tézkedések hatékonyságát, hiszen véleményük szerint képtelenek elérni külpolitikai célja-ikat. A szakirodalomban tapasztalható kutatói pesszimizmus ellenére a világon számos állam, különösen pedig az Egyesült Államok alkalmazza a gazdasági nyomásgyakorlás e formáját politikai céljaik elérése érdekében. Az utóbbi években az Európai Unió is sorra vet ki gazdasági szankciókat. A korlátozó intézkedések egyre szélesebb körű használata ugyan-akkor nem jelentett valódi áttörést a szankciók megítélésében, hiszen a szerzők többsége szerint képtelenek a kívánt eredményt meghozni a világpolitikában. Kulcsszavak: gazdasági szankció korlátozó intézkedés kényszerítő eszköz Kevés olyan téma létezik a politikatudományban, ahol egységes álláspont raj-zolódik ki egy-egy ügy kapcsán. A szankciók politikai hatékonysága sajátos téma, abban az értelemben, hogy a szerzők kompromisszumra jutottak egyik legalapvetőbb kutatási kérdésük kapcsán. A szakirodalmat egy alapvető pesz-szimizmus jellemzi e külpolitikai eszközt tekintve, hiszen a kutatók jelentős része szerint a gazdasági szankciók politikai hatékonysága elenyésző (Adler-Karlsson
... For this reason, the alternative is to focus on a process that considers a series of variables and allows for the formation of as complete a judgment as possible. Building upon both my previous work (Giumelli, 2013a;Giumelli and Ivan 2013) and the contributions to this Special Issue, I have designed an approach to assess success in six phases -starting from defining the role of sanctions within a broader foreign policy strategy to hypothetical alternatives to them, passing through the logic, effects, costs, and benefits of sanctions -that would provide a comprehensive overview of what to consider when thinking about the utility of sanctions in a given crisis (Giumelli, 2018a). Thinking of a process instead of a clear-cut definition on which to measure the success of sanctions disconnects their impact from the overall outcome of a crisis and, secondly, provides a common conceptual platform for discussing effectiveness and making political evaluations more visible and, therefore, the evaluation more objective. ...
Over two years after Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, the impact and efficacy of sanctions against Russia remain highly uncertain and contested. This uncertainty largely stems from two critical fallacies: a lack of clear terminology in addressing sanction effectiveness and the continued reliance on behavioral change as the primary measure of assessment. The Special Issue “Impact, Effectiveness and Success of Economic Sanctions: the case of Russia and Belarus” shed light on these fallacies and it contributes to introduce a novel method in six phases designed to enhance the complexity and depth of evaluations on the effectiveness of sanctions, applying this innovative approach to the case of sanctions against Russia. This Editorial introduction presents the Special Issue by offering terminological clarifications for key terms in sanction policy evaluation, such as impact, effectiveness, efficiency, utility, and success. It reviews current evidence on the impact and effectiveness of sanctions against Russia, and it outlines the analytical framework that the contributions in this special issue employ in analysing sanctions against Russia. The goal is to provide an analytical framework useful for analyzing current and future sanction policies, reflecting an increasing trend among states to use sanctions as a means to manage and respond to international crises.
... AB, Kasım 1993'te Maastricht Antlaşması'nın yürürlüğe girmesinden bu yana farklı koşullar çerçevesinde ve farklı aktörlere yaptırımlar uygulamaktadır (Portela 2010, Giumelli 2013, Erickson 2019. Maastricht Antlaşması ile ortaklık artık Avrupa Birliği'ne dönüşürken, üç sütunlu yapı geliştirilerek ortak bir güvenlik ve dış politika mekanizması oluşturulmuştur. ...
Rusya'nın Ukrayna'ya askeri müdahalesi (2022) Avrupa Birliği (AB) açısından sınırlarında bir tehdit ve dolaysıyla kararlı bir tepkiyi gündeminin odağına taşımıştır. Birliğin harekete geçme hızı, ortak hareket etme kararlığı ve söylemleri eyleme dökme kapasitesi alışılagelmişin dışında seyretmiştir. Bu durum, bir taraftan, AB dış politikasındaki çok sesli ve dağınık görünüme vurgu yapanlar açısından beklenmedik bir gelişme olarak görülmekle birlikte, diğer taraftan, AB’nin 2014’ten beri Rusya’ya uyguladığı yaptırımları ve genel yaklaşımını yakından takip edenler için çok şaşırtıcı bulunmamıştır. Ukrayna’ya askeri müdahalesi sonrası Rusya dünyada en çok yaptırım uygulanan devlet konumuna gelmiş, bu süreçte AB Rusya’ya karşı en hızlı, en kapsamlı ve sayıca en fazla yaptırım kararı alan aktörlerden biri olmuştur. 2014 Kırım’ın ilhakı sonrası olumsuz seyreden AB-Rusya ilişkileri ve halihazırda uygulanan kısıtlayıcı önlemler yerini eşi benzeri görülmemiş yaptırımlara bırakmıştır. AB Şubat 2022’den itibaren bir yıl içinde Rusya’ya yönelik on farklı yaptırım paketi açıklamış, bu yaptırımlara Rusya’nın dezenformasyon aktörlerini de eklemiştir. Bu çalışmanın amacı AB’nin yaptırım rejimini incelemek, yaptırımların hukuki ve kurumsal yapısını ortaya koymak ve motivasyonlarını değerlendirmektir. Çalışmada yaptırımlar Avrupa Birliği’nin dış politika aracı olarak ele alınmaktadır. Çalışmanın odağında dezenformasyon enstrümanları olarak tanımlanan Rusya medya kuruluşlarına yönelik yaptırımlar bulunmakta ve AB’nin bu aktörleri güvenliğine, demokrasiye ve düzenine tehdit olarak algıladığı ve Birlik içinde ve yakın çevresinde istikrarı sağlamanın yöntemlerinden birini Rusya kaynaklı bilgi akışını kısıtlamakta gördüğü iddia edilmektedir.
... The number of studies on the effect of economic and political sanctions has risen since 2010 (Ghasseminejad & Jahan-Parvar, 2021). Hakimdavar (2013) believes that this surge of interest is because of the increase in the number of sanctions imposed by world powers, international organizations (Yoshimura, 2020), and regional unions (Giumelli, 2013) after the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991. Seyfi and Hall (2019b) also suggests that the growing interest in studying the impact of sanctions can be attributed to the international community's sensitivity to widespread human rights violations by sanctioned governments and sanctioning countries. ...
... The number of studies on the effect of economic and political sanctions has risen since 2010 (Ghasseminejad & Jahan-Parvar, 2021). Hakimdavar (2013) believes that this surge of interest is because of the increase in the number of sanctions imposed by world powers, international organizations (Yoshimura, 2020), and regional unions (Giumelli, 2013) after the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991. Seyfi and Hall (2019b) also suggests that the growing interest in studying the impact of sanctions can be attributed to the international community's sensitivity to widespread human rights violations by sanctioned governments and sanctioning countries. ...
This study explores the impact of sanctions on the development of second home tourism in the context of a rentier state. The subject was examined with special reference to rural regions of Shemiranat County in Tehran, Iran, where second homes have developed over the past four decades. The results indicating that devaluation of the national currency, caused by the sanctions, led to turmoil in the second home market of Shemiranat. This, in turn, resulted in the development of unique and complicated relationships. Sanctions, coupled with the institutional inefficiency of the rentier state, including heavy dependence on oil-based revenues, legal loopholes, and the absence of efficient executive and supervisory institutions, have exacerbated speculation and expanded informal economies and corruption in the second home market.
... The emphasis on positive cases is also evident in case-study research (Eriksson, 2011;Giumelli, 2013;Portela, 2010). While this literature has provided important insights into the effectiveness of sanctions, senders' motivating factors, and implications and effects on target states and their population, it has paid scant attention to negative cases. ...
This article aims to enrich the literature on EU sanctions in two ways. First, it argues that the absence of material sanctions does not imply a non-response. When faced with human rights violations, policymakers enjoy a third option besides exerting material pressure or refraining from intervening. They may instead employ what constructivist scholars call social sanctions. This option consists of verbally calling out the violators, either publicly, through a naming-and-shaming strategy , or diplomatically via political dialogue and demarches. Social sanctions can be a credible alternative or complement to material sanctions. Second, we argue for the importance of disaggregating the EU as a sender of sanctions. A non-response by executive institutions does not mean that the EU as a whole is standing idly by. Looking at social sanctions alongside material ones more accurately describes the choices policymakers face when designing their response to human rights violations. We demonstrate the value of our arguments by examining the EU's various responses to LGBTI rights violations in Lithuania and Uganda.
... Например, Д. Болдуин считает, что любая попытка влияния есть политический акт, а значит, любые подходящие под это определение цели рассматриваются как политические (Baldwin, Pape 1998). Ф. Джумелли подразделяет политические цели на три блока: принуждение, сдерживание, сигнализирование (Giumelli 2016). Принуждение нацелено на непосредственное решение об изменении или прекращении политической деятельности целевой страной. ...
Even though IR literature has accumulated a large amount of empirical data and knowledge in sanctions policy effectiveness, this problem remains contested: IR has failed yet to reach a consensus and elaborate the sanctions theory. The article reviews the variety of approaches to evaluating the effectiveness of the sanctions policy and explains why researchers have come to conflicting and mutually exclusive conclusions about the impact of various factors and conditions on the outcome of sanctions pressure. It argues that the disagreement is primarily rooted in different approaches to conceptualizing basic concepts – “sanctions” and “effectiveness”. This disagreement results in coding the same cases as successful and unsuccessful and presents an obstacle to obtaining similar results using statistical analysis. The main demarcation line goes between the realist and liberal understandings of sanctions as a foreign policy tool. This is reflected in the ongoing disputes between those who adhere to the idea of inflicting severe economic damage on the target country and supporters of targeted sanctions; between those who promote multilateral sanctions as capable of causing economic effects, or try to identify weaknesses of ad hoc coalitions, or see the only way to get the effect of sanctions in support from international organizations; between those who focus their research on the target country and those who are interested in pressure on the allies.
... The evolution of the EU's policy on sanctions, as a diplomatic instrument, has been analysed elsewhere in full. 33 Suffice to say here that the EU has positioned itself as a global normative power with a comprehensive human rights regime and regards sanctions as one of the organisation's foreign policy instruments to achieve the objectives of the EU Common Foreign and Security Policy. These objectives include the promotion of international peace and security, conflict prevention, the defence of democratic principles and human rights, the prevention of the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction and fighting terrorism. ...
... The main idea is to impose personal costs that coerce listed decisionmakers, terrorists, or regime supporters into changing their behavior, to constrain their room for maneuver, or simply to send signals of disapproval to them -as well as to an international and domestic audience (Giumelli 2013). However, the use of these individual sanctions varies con siderably: while in the Central African Republic, for instance, grave human rights violations and atroc ities resulted in only 13 individuals being put on blacklists, the US and the EU designated more than 200 highlevel Zimbabwean decisionmakers -in cluding former president Robert Mugabe and almost all government ministers -to protest electoral manipulation in that country. ...
Individual sanctions are an important category of economic sanctions, and an inextricable part of the global security and human rights regime that has informed international and national politics since the end of the Cold War. Shaping the international trend of individualizing accountability (Sikkink 2009), the United Nations, the United States, and the European Union, as the main global sanction senders, blacklist individuals to hold them accountable for the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction (WMDs), the instigation of armed conflict, the trafficking of narcotics, or the violation of human rights.
... The issue of the effectiveness of international sanctions is widely discussed in the literature (Barber 1979;Drezner 2000a;Giumelli 2003;Pape 1997). In this paper, the goal-driven criterion is adopted: it is assumed that the aim of the "sanctioners" or senders (the US, the EU) has been to achieve specific foreign policy goals. ...
In the article, we explore the factors which brought about the transatlantic coordination of the policy of imposing sanctions on Iran. We will mainly focus on the events in the 21 st century when the new incentives for cooperation appeared due to the growing concern over the development of Iran's nuclear programme. Considering the capabilities of using the tools of economic statecraft and diplomacy, we claim that the EU-US cooperation can be termed a co-leadership. The assessment and the reasons for the transatlantic break-up on this matter during the presidency of Donald Trump was examined using the concept of relative gains. We evaluate to what extent the initial goals were achieved in practice, and we also try to predict the possible consequences of the US withdrawal from the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA). As to whether the effectiveness of the sanctions through the cooperation has been enhanced, the answer is ambivalent. On the one hand, the cooperating transatlantic partners managed to coerce Iran through isolating the country from international economic contacts and negotiated the JCPOA. On the other hand, Trump's renouncement of this agreement brought many negative consequences and undermined the earlier joint effort.
... The issue of the effectiveness of international sanctions is widely discussed in the literature (Barber 1979;Drezner 2000a;Giumelli 2003;Pape 1997). In this paper, the goal-driven criterion is adopted: it is assumed that the aim of the "sanctioners" or senders (the US, the EU) has been to achieve specific foreign policy goals. ...
In the article, we explore the factors which brought about the transatlantic coordination of the policy of imposing sanctions on Iran. We will mainly focus on the events in the 21 st century when the new incentives for cooperation appeared due to the growing concern over the development of Iran’s nuclear programme. Considering the capabilities of using the tools of economic statecraft and diplomacy, we claim that the EU-US cooperation can be termed a co-leadership. The assessment and the reasons for the transatlantic break-up on this matter during the presidency of Donald Trump was examined using the concept of relative gains. We evaluate to what extent the initial goals were achieved in practice, and we also try to predict the possible consequences of the US withdrawal from the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA).
As to whether the effectiveness of the sanctions through the cooperation has been enhanced, the answer is ambivalent. On the one hand, the cooperating transatlantic partners managed to coerce Iran through isolating the country from international economic contacts and negotiated the JCPOA. On the other hand, Trump’s renouncement of this agreement brought many negative consequences and undermined the earlier joint effort.
... 40 Subsequent to the 2010 election, Gbagbo, the incumbent, refused to accept the election results that proved Ouattara to be the victorious candidate. 41 International reaction to Gbagbo's position included EU sanctions to resolve the impasse. As the EU's call for all leaders to accept the newly elected president failed, the organisation imposed restrictive measures against individuals who were considered to be obstructing national reconciliation and peace in the country. ...
This contribution concerns itself with two diplomatic instruments, namely summitry, or summit diplomacy, and sanctions or, in EU terminology, ‘restrictive measures’, in the context of EU–Africa relations. Successive EU–Africa summits have been criticised for the attendance of African leaders such as Omar al Bashir (Sudan) and Robert Mugabe (Zimbabwe). Despite criticism against the EU for inviting and hosting some of Africa's most notorious (ie corrupt or human rights-abusing) leaders, the EU seems to have taken a pragmatic approach to the matter by including, rather than sanctioning and excluding, these leaders from EU–Africa summits. The article attempts to determine why this has occurred, and the consequences and implications thereof. The case of Robert Mugabe, president of Zimbabwe (1981–2017), is presented as an illustrative case demonstrating the role of sanctions as a diplomatic instrument in relation to summitry.
... This implied an acknowledgement of possible alternative arguments, something that we endeavour by looking at Russia as a relevant regional player, which represents an especially interesting case in the light of our aspiration to provide a different reading of conditionality in epistemological terms. Furthermore, as mentioned, literature on conditionality has so far mainly focused on the nature of conditionality by distinguishing between positive and negative conditionality, the former understood as rewarding partner countries in exchange for the implementation of reforms, while the latter is thought as the withdrawal of benefits or advantages in the case of breaching or disrespecting commonly agreed arrangements (cf Guimelli, 2013;Sasse, 2008;Schimmelfennig & Sedelmeier, 2005;Tulmets, 2007). While agreeing with this literature, we also consider it important to account for the evolution of conditionality through a combination of various policy instruments, as elaborated below. ...
Against the backdrop of recent and growing ‘conditionality assertiveness’ by both the EU and Russia vis-à-vis their neighbouring states, the present contribution critically reviews the existing state of the art on EU conditionality as well as on Russia's emerging conditional approaches within and beyond the Eurasian Economic Union. It proposes an alternative reading of conditionality, accounting for its perception and translation by the individual Eastern Partnership countries and applies it to individual case studies. Finally, it presents avenues for further research, arguing for the need to pay closer attention to different foreign policy means and their specific combinations, which constitute conditionality in its individual dimensions.
... For at least a decade, scholars have acknowledged the importance of public opinion for formulating the European Union's Common Security and Defense Policy (Faust & Garcia 2014;Irondelle et al. 2015;Oppermann & Höse 2007;Oppermann & Viehrig 2009). Scholars have also noted a growing tendency in the EU (and elsewhere) to use sanctions as a default tool to respond to any kind of adverse development (Giumelli 2013b). By one account, 57 per cent of all post-Second World War sanctions were imposed since the 1990s (Morgan et al. 2014). ...
Scholarship has increasingly acknowledged the importance of public attitudes for shaping the European Union's Common Foreign and Security Policy. Economic sanctions emerged as one of CFSP's central tools. Yet despite the emergence of sanctions as a popular instrument in the EU foreign policy toolbox, public attitudes towards sanctions are yet to be studied in depth. This article explains public support for EU sanctions, using the empirical example of sanctions against Russia. It looks at geopolitical attitudes, economic motivations and ideational factors to explain the variation in public support for sanctions. The conclusion suggests that geopolitical factors are the most important, and that economic factors matter very little. Euroscepticism and anti-Americanism play an important role in explaining the support for sanctions at the individual level.
The United Nations (UN) can impose sanctions by means of regional and other arrangements. History has demonstrated that during the Cold War era in Europe, the UN has imposed fewer sanctions than in the post-Cold War era. Although the UN Charter originally did not provide for the use of sanctions to protect democracy, it did protect international peace and security. However, the UN Security Council (UNSC) and other regional arrangements and communities like the EU and the AU are currently imposing sanctions even on undemocratic regime change, which should be an internal matter of a state. This development shows increased international commitment in favour of democracy. Further, the UNSC and the EU use different approaches than the AU, when removing sanctions. The AU’s approach in removing sanctions is more realistic and pragmatic. A case study of the Central African Republic shows that the UNSC and the EU approaches on sanctions towards African states could be counter-productive. It is advisable that the UNSC should consider African perspectives, by taking AU opinion into account, when imposing, modifying, or removing sanctions on the African continent. It would further increase local acceptance of sanctions, rendering them more effective. It is necessary to understand that problems in African states could have had local origins, but external factors such as international business interests could have aggravated these problems. Therefore, the targeted and smart sanctions will be more effective if international business interests, that help rebels, are also included in sanctions.
This article contributes to the understanding of why states resort to targeted, or smart, sanctions to meet the threat of cyber intrusions and whether this type of response is a forced measure or an effective tool to halt, prevent and punish attacking states. The tools of analysis used in the article are legal positivism and political theories, including Mancur Olson's theory of groups and Francesco Giumelli's analytical framework for assessment of sanctions. The authors address the effectiveness of sanctions as a reaction to cyber-enabled activities through the lens of regulation introduced in the United States, the European Union and the United Kingdom, which are the most developed counter-cyber sanction regimes, analysing publicly known cases of cyber-related sanctions.
Coup attempts, as the recent ones in Turkey (2016), Sudan (2019) or Mali (2020) constitute one of the biggest risks to democracy and regional stability. In the past decades, many ROs including the EU, AU or OAS have taken a strong position against coups, establishing a global anti-coup norm in ROs. Yet the responses of ROs to coups are diverse and apparently contradictory. The thesis examines which role ROs play after coups. For doing so, it is analysed when and how ROs respond to coups (research question 1), which factors influence the strength of their responses (research question 2) and under which conditions ROs strive for different post-coup solutions, e.g. the reinstatement of the ousted government or new elections (research question 3). Coups violate basic democratic standards in ROs, but they also constitute a risk to regional stability. It is argued that when confronted with a coup, ROs take both aspects into account and adjust their responses accordingly. Using a mixed-methods approach, which combines quantitative and qualitative techniques, the plausibility of the argument is tested. The results confirm the initial expectation: The more detrimental a coup is for the state of democracy in a country and the higher its risk of destabilizing the region, the more decisively ROs will respond to the event.
The transformation of our societies due to technological progress and worldwide spread of information technologies has established a new domain where states must establish a “normal” way of relating to each other. National legislation has been adapted in order to reach this domain; however, in an international context there are still different manners to interpret what behaviour is normal and acceptable. The European Union has established a framework regarding its own cybersecurity and aims to establish the rule-of-law to progress towards a secure digital world; it has also created sanction rules to punish behaviours which oppose its own view. This paper tries to look at what effects it has had on other major actors in the realm of cybersecurity: The United States, Russia, and China. By looking at the development of the frameworks of these countries and their actions and comparing it to the objectives of the European Union in this matter, it shows that effects have been different in each case and that they are not coercing the actions of the other states, not because of a failed implementation, but due to their own nature.
Artykuł ma na celu ocenę skuteczności sankcji stosowanych przez państwa Zachodu wobec Iranu w okresie 40 lat (1979–2019). We wstępie postawiono hipotezę, że skoordynowane sankcje Stanów Zjednoczonych i państw europejskich mogą doprowadzić do osiągnięcia głównego celu wobec Iranu: ograniczenia programu nuklearnego rozwijanego przez to państwo. Program ten był postrzegany przez Zachód jako poważne zagrożenie bezpieczeństwa międzynarodowego. Przedstawiono powody nałożenia sankcji na Iran przez USA, ewolucję stanowiska europejskiego wobec ich stosowania oraz mechanizmy i skutki współpracy państw Zachodu w wywieraniu presji gospodarczej na Iran. Oceniono realizację amerykańskich i europejskich celów sankcji, tak, by zrozumieć powody wycofania się w 2018 r. Stanów Zjednoczonych z podpisanego w 2015 r. porozumienia z Iranem.
This book explores, through the lens of the conflict in Syria, why international law and the United Nations have failed to halt conflict and massive human rights violations in many places around the world which has allowed tens of millions of people to be killed and hundreds of millions more to be harmed.
The work presents a critical socio-legal analysis of the failures of international law and the United Nations (UN) to deal with mass atrocities and conflict. It argues that international law, in the way it is set up and operates, falls short in dealing with these issues in many respects. The argument is that international law is state-centred rather than victim-friendly, is, to some extent, outdated, is
vague and often difficult to understand and, therefore, at times, hard to apply. While various accountability processes have come to the fore recently, processes do not exist to assist individual victims while the conflict occurs or the abuses are being perpetrated. The book focuses on the problems of international law and the UN and, in the context of the many enforced disappearances and arbitrary detentions in Syria, why nothing has been done to deal with a rogue state that has regularly violated international law. It examines why the responsibility to protect (R2P) has not been applied and why it ought to be used, generally, and in Syria. It uses the Syrian context to evaluate the weaknesses of the system and why reform is needed. It examines the UN institutional mechanisms, the role they play and why a civilian protection system is needed. It examines what
mechanism ought to be set up to deal with the possible one million people who have been disappeared and detained in Syria.
Recent US measures directed against Iran, Cuba and Russia (North Stream 2) have become indirectly a critical challenge for the European Union as well. As they purport to deter economic actors under EU jurisdiction from engaging with target countries, they have an important extraterritorial dimension, which affects EU business and individuals and ultimately the sovereignty of the EU and its Member States. A review of the existing sanction regimes and of the geopolitical context reveals that other international players and the PR China in particular may follow suit in using such measures. The study shows that extraterritorial sanctions have important economic implications, particularly for the EU and its vulnerabilities. Extraterritorial sanctions also raise critical questions as to their legality under general international law, WTO law and other specific international rules. The EU is especially affected by these measures and has taken some measures already in response. These could be improved and additional measures could be taken, as the policy recommendations set out.
This chapter discusses whether the EU’s use of sanctions is consistent with its effort to strengthen the resilience of states and societies in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA). To this end, it provides an in-depth examination of EU restrictive measures enacted towards Tunisia, Libya, Egypt, and Syria between 2010 and 2018. Although not effective to their fullest extent, the sanctions designed to support regime consolidation in Tunisia and Egypt were appropriately tailored around the needs of local actors, and can ultimately be seen as successful in increasing state resilience. Sanctions aimed at fostering regime change by impairing the ability of authoritarian regimes to tackle the uprisings, on the other hand, had nearly no noticeable effects on societal resilience, ultimately departing from the principled pragmatism enshrined in the EU resilience promotion agenda.
This article questions whether the European Union (EU) strategy of using free trade agreements (FTAs) as tools of democracy promotion is, currently, normatively coherent and legitimate. It focuses on FTAs with proximate autocracies and makes four main claims. First, FTAs raise significant legitimacy concerns in that they can ordinarily be expected to generate both economic ‘winners’ and ‘losers’ in the target country without democratic processes in place to legitimate these costs. Second, the EU risks empowering autocrats (rather than catalysing democratic transition) in the way it negotiates FTAs. Third, ‘leverage’ strategies of withholding or suspending cooperation as a result of violations of democratic and human rights norms are applied inconsistently by the EU, undermining leverage credibility. Fourth, the best-case impact of regulatory convergence with the EU acquis communautaire on the democratic character of sector-level policymaking is mixed: increased transparency and accountability can improve democratic credentials, while, paradoxically, increased stakeholder participation is normatively suspect in the absence of a democratic framework.
As the largest economic bloc and the largest trading power in the world, the European Union uses restrictive measures as a foreign policy tool. More than 30 States and thousands of individuals and legal persons are subject to EU sanctions. This massive use of sanctions by the EU has raised several legal issues. Some of these problems were caused by flaws in the sanctions framework of the United Nations in the field of counter-terrorism. Autonomous sanctions, the restrictive measures adopted by the European Union without previous UN action, proved to be problematic too. The extensive case law of the EU Courts has demonstrated the deficiencies of the sanctions system but has also indirectly improved the quality of the procedures at UN and EU level. The withdrawal of the United Kingdom from the European Union could determine some changes in the policy of the European Union.
This article advances knowledge on the old but still relevant question of what explains the effectiveness of sanctions imposed by the UN Security Council. Building on the Targeted Sanctions Consortium data-set, it uses a Qualitative Comparative Analysis to analyse why these sanctions are (not) effective in coercing, constraining, and signalling targets in the Middle East and North Africa between 1991 and 2014. Confirming that sanctions’ effectiveness is causally complex, this article has three main findings. First, trade diversion and EU sanctions play a crucial role in explaining (in)effective coercion. Second, while the combination of aviation sanctions and EU sanctions results in effective constraining, the UN Security Council seems to struggle with constraining non-governmental actors. Third, there are multiple routes to (in)effective signalling yet targeting key supporters and avoiding abstentions at the UN Security Council seem key to success.
EU sanctions invoked in response to the Iranian nuclear crisis (2006–2016) were long considered to be of limited effectiveness in halting Iran’s nuclear ambitions. Recently, however, sanctions seem to have contributed to a breakthrough in the negotiations over Iran’s nuclear programme. This article aims at explaining this evolution. It, therefore, designs a framework that explains why sanctions (fail to) change targets’ behaviour. Since the sanctions effectiveness literature lacks an integrated framework to explain evolutions in effective coercion, this article merges sanctions effectiveness variables and Bretherton and Vogler’s actorness criteria. Applying the resulting framework to two broad episodes of the Iranian case (2006–2013 and 2013–2016), this article provides a first test of the framework’s added value. It concludes that a full understanding of sanctions effectiveness requires consideration of external, internal, and in-between factors.
When the Tunisian (2011), Egyptian (2011), and Ukrainian (2014) regimes were ousted, the EU answered the calls of new leaders to freeze the dethroned leaders’ assets. These assets were widely thought to have been accumulated by the leaders’ strategic misappropriation of state funds during their time in office. This article analyses why the EU struggles to make a long-term success out of misappropriation sanctions. It does so by conceptualising ‘effectiveness’ as the attainment of signalling objectives. Even though misappropriation sanctions successfully sent a quick signal of support to new authorities and local populations, the EU and its member states fail to sustain this signal of support because they struggle to return frozen assets to the new authorities. Here, a framework of both micro- and macro-factors explains why little progress has been made towards repatriating recovered assets. Building on 33 expert interviews, the article concludes that, to improve the effectiveness of misappropriation sanctions, the EU should act quickly when freezing assets and assist new authorities in investigating corruption cases. Swift action deters sanctions evasion and softens the harmful effects of individuals targeted for sanctions protesting against their listing.
The conflation of UN sanctions, unilateral sanctions, and tools of national economic warfare is an unfortunate but perhaps inevitable side effect of the versatility of these mechanisms and their potential for abuse. These composites both strengthen but also weaken the integrity of the UN sanction system. They are the latest iteration of centuries of experiments with coercive policies, embargoes in support of national, international, or religious coalitions’ objectives; and the United States’ unilateral economic warfare system is its most direct progenitor. Clumsily applied first by the rebels in their fight for independence, sanctions were refined and tested during the American Civil War until during WW1 the rather obscure law, the Trading with the Enemy Act (TWEA) was created and effectively applied against the US’s WW1 enemies. During the preparations for WW2, when President Franklin D. Roosevelt needed an invisible form of warfare against Imperial Japan, the Act became the vehicle for blocking commodities. This period was also the genesis of the Office of Foreign Funds Control (FFC) within the US Treasury that delivered the tools for blocking the assets of individuals and companies, the forerunners of the UN’s targeted sanctions. The US’s aggressive application of the commodity boycott against Japan also serves as the modern day example of how sanctions, when misused, can lead straight to war.
By tracing the reform process of the penal code in Vietnam, this paper tests the impact of the European human rights policy on a non-democratic state. Despite the lack of government recognition of an independent civil society in Vietnam, the EU has affected domestic debate on death penalty and indirectly steered a reform process that has led to the reduction of the number of capital crimes. This case study identifies the conditions that facilitate the effectiveness of the EU as a promoter of human rights in non-democratic states. On the target side, political elites responsive to public criticism, and, at the same time, interested in enhancing the country’s international status are more likely to endorse EU sponsored norms. On the EU side, the use of conditionality measures in support of softer measures proves instrumental to make European human rights policies visible for the public and able to shape government’s policy.
This paper explores and explains the EU’s use of sanctions in response to the Arab Spring in 13 Middle East and North Africa (MENA) states. A Qualitative Comparative Analysis (QCA) shows that a combination of historical factors and human rights violations contributed to the EU’s decision to impose sanctions in Libya and Syria, while transitional void seems to have been the most important trigger for sanctions in Egypt and Tunisia. The absence of both transitional void and historical economic coercion explains why the EU has refrained from imposing sanctions in negative cases such as Saudi Arabia and Bahrain. Exposing the complex causality of the EU’s Arab Spring sanctions, this paper nuances the EU’s self-proclaimed normative foreign policy approach and demonstrates that combinations of factors matter for explaining the EU’s decision to invoke sanctions in the MENA region.
What do democracies do by refusing to trade with dictatorships? The conventional view assumes that: (1) a democratic refusal to trade with dictators is an exception that requires special justification; (2) following customary international law, dictators should normally be recognized as legitimate in selling their peoples' resources; (3) a refusal to trade is one policy option which democratic governments may choose; and (4) a refusal to trade succeeds only when contributing to change in the “target” country. Focusing on natural resource trade, I develop an alternative view which holds that: (1) democracies owe no special justification for refusing to trade; (2) dictators have no right to sell their peoples' natural resources; and (3) democratic refusal to purchase natural resources from dictators should be the norm. It follows that (4) such refusal achieves an important moral goal simply by preventing corporations based in democratic countries from partaking in crime.
The essay examines the qualitative changes in EU–Russian relations which resulted from the 2014 sanctions. Thematic, structural and institutional aspects of the issue are analysed through the ‘level of analysis’ approach. Thematically, policy-specific and implementation measures reinforced an EU–Russian ‘divorce’ both in energy and trade. Structurally, the scope of EU–Russian dialogue narrowed in favour of relations between Moscow and member states, and in multilateral fora; this dialogue also became dependent on Russia–US relations. Institutionally sanctions have led to the growing poverty of transgovernmental and transnational relations. As a result, achievements of previous years have been derailed, and reversal of the negative trends will prove difficult.
The functioning of the European Union (EU) has been explored extensively in recent years. The dominant prism through which to look at the EU is still one of locus: i.e. whether decisions are made in the capitals of its member states or in Brussels. This debate is contained in the dualism between intergovernmentalism and supranationalism, but drawing the boundaries between the two concepts is still undone. This article attempts to contribute to solving this problem by investigating the restrictive measures policy of the EU in order to identify three conditions under which intergovernmentalism should be used. First, when EU institutions are dependent on EU member states for information and expertise; second, when decision-making powers rest mainly in EU capitals; and three, when there are no exclusive fora for decision-making in Brussels. The study of the restrictive measures of the European Union does not meet any of these three conditions; therefore the article argues that the concept of supranational intergovernmentalism offers useful insights to understand the EU security governance of CFSP sanctions. The article is divided into four parts. The first introduces the debate on security governance and justifies the selection of this specific approach to the study of sanctions. The second part presents the restrictive measures policy of the European Union and justifies its pertinence to the field of security. The third part of the article investigates the emerging patterns in security governance by testing the three conditions on the decision-making process for EU restrictive measures. Finally, the conclusion summarises the main argument and indicates ways forward in the study of EU sanctions from a governance perspective.
The article examines the European Union’s (EU) normative position regarding the Israeli-Palestinian conflict to advance three interrelated claims. First, that EU member states subscribe to a unified normative position because the normative sphere is cut off from the economic sphere. Second, that this separation facilitates the uniformity of the normative position but hinders the possibility of asserting some form of conditionality which might encourage the diffusion of Ian Manners’ five core norms. Finally, that normative power Europe is a practice of discursive representation deployed not so much to exert influence on the Other, but rather to help consolidate the European Union as a united actor.
This study focuses on the United Nations' use of sanctions that target particular individuals. This practice is one of the smart sanctions that are standard UN strategy since the mid-1990s. It has given rise to a debate on human rights of those listed. This study is one of the first to analyze the ability of such sanctions to achieve compliance. The theory behind this strategy is identified, based on social and behavioral science insights. More than 400 individuals from eight nonterrorist cases since year 2000 are studied, based on publicly available information. They are studied with respect to their closeness to decisionmaking, demonstrating some flaws in the present application of such sanctions. Suggestions are made for a more focused UN targeting strategy.
When Cuban MiGs blasted two civilian planes out of the sky over the Straits of Florida on February 24 1996, they also destroyed any chance of improved relations between Cuba and the United States as long as Fidel Castro remains in power. In Washington, outrage over the shoot-down resurrected the Helms-Burton bill, the most punitive legislation on Cuba since the early 1960s. On 12 March, President Bill Clinton signed the bill into law as the Cuban Liberty and Democratic Solidarity Act of 1996. In addition to assorted sanctions aimed at foreigners doing business in Cuba, the most consequential provision incorporates the US economic embargo into law. Heretofore, the embargo was based on presidential executive orders; it could be tightened or loosened at the president's discretion as conditions warranted. Under Helms-Burton, no president can lift or even relax the embargo until Fidel Castro and the existing Cuban regime fall from power. At a time when Cuba's domestic social and economic system is changing at break-neck speed, Washington's 35-year-old policy of hostility has just been chiselled in stone.
This article argues that a holistic approach is important when studying the European Union’s (EU) role as an international security actor, but at the same time it identifies problems in adopting such a comprehensive research agenda. The holistic approach entails that the research must include ‘new’ security problems, such as climate change, but also relevant policies and instruments outside the framework of the Common Security and Defence Policy (CSDP). However, owing to conceptual, legal and political obstacles, this has been difficult to achieve; as a consequence, existing research on the EU as an international security actor tends to narrow down the focus to just one framework: the CSDP and its operations. This may lead to a distorted image, because the EU’s role in international security surpasses any single policy framework. The contribution of this article is twofold. First, it sets the framework for the comprehensive research agenda concerning the EU as an international security actor. Second, it identifies key obstacles that are making this holistic approach methodologically and conceptually difficult. In this context, the Lisbon Treaty, formally abandoning the pillar structure of the EU, provides an opportunity to mitigate at least some of these roadblocks.
This article uses Gramscian perspectives on hegemony and intellectuals to trace the contradictory formation of the contemporary Zimbabwean ruling class. It argues, contrary to views claiming that there is no hegemonic discourse (or, presumably, class) in Zimbabwe, that the present ruling group has consolidated and is maintaining its hegemony. To be sure, such a process is unstable and subject to much contestation, but the historical evidence indicates that the nascent state class has handled such contradictions —many of which were internal to it —with a judicious balance of persuasion and force. The main ideological contradictions experienced by the intellectuals on the road to power —an early form of ‘populism versus elitism’ and a later one of ‘Marxism versus capitalism’ —were resolved in favour of the latter tendencies through a process of physical sidelining and discursive absorption. There is little reason to believe that the contemporary ruling class will not continue to maintain its position in such a manner.
This article assesses the problem of extending social, political and land rights to farm workers in Zimbabwe's commercial farming sector in the context of current debates and protests about land redistribution there. It contrasts traditional indifference to such workers with more recent attempts to address their needs and explores the difficulties which land redistribution could present for farm workers if their interests were not made part of the agenda of change. It argues for a holistic, transformative approach to redistribution and reform, an approach which contrasts markedly with ‐and goes well beyond ‐ nationalist, workerist and welfare strategies that have been put forward.
China's growing presence in Africa introduces a new dynamic in the continent's relations with the outside world. Motivated by vital resources and new markets to fuel its economy, coupled to a commitment to multilateralism, Beijing has embarked on a comprehensive trade and diplomatic offensive that is challenging Western pre-eminence in the region. African governments have responded enthusiastically to this new source of investment and aid as well as China's professed willingness to ignore political conditionalities. Chinese–African cooperation, however, remains constrained by the asymmetric nature of relations and Africa's changing attitude towards issues such as humanitarian intervention.
Security (in a broad sense, see infra, II.B) in Europe is the realm of several regional international organisations, mainly the European Union (“EU”), Western European Union (“WEU”), North Atlantic Treaty Organization (“NATO”), the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (“OSCE”) and, to a lesser extent, the Council of Europe, creating a patchwork of regional security institutions that is unique in the world. These organisations interact in many ways and claim to be mutually reinforcing. Is that the case? Is there room for improvement?
The objective of this article is to evaluate the effectiveness of the travel ban of the European Union (EU) on the leaders of Transnistria. This case study is revealing, as multiple actions were undertaken by Brussels to settle the conflict. In a strategy of divide et adduc (divide and influence), the travel ban seems to serve the purpose of limiting the capabilities of the targets to undermine their claim for independence and of weakening their power position in the Transnistrian society. This article argues that the travel ban contributes positively to the resolution of the conflict and that sanctions are meeting their primary purpose within a larger strategic context. The method used to achieve this conclusion is based on three different criteria and departs substantially from the behavioural change approach that is widely used in the literature. First, sanctions function according to different logics that may, or may not, aim at the behavioural change of targets. Second, sanctions can only contribute to policy goals that are pursued through complex strategies, and therefore, they are to be evaluated alongside other employed foreign policy tools. Finally, any foreign policy actions can be evaluated as negative or positive (i.e., as a failure or as a success) when compared to other policies that present better results.
The European Union and China have emerged as new international actors. They have an increasingly diverse relationship covering the economy, politics, technology, culture and education; but beyond these two-way linkages EU-China development is also changing the international political environment. One noted US scholar, David Shambaugh, has pointed to a 'Strategic Triangle' between the US, the EU, and China. Several other major actors such as Japan, India and Russia are also interested in the 'EU factor' in their relations with China; or the 'China factor' in their EU relations. This volume presents contributions from scholars from Europe and China, which debate the nature, problems and potential of the emerging strategic relationship between the EU and China. Several papers develop theoretical approaches to regionalism and inter-regionalism. This book provides an overview of EU-China relations and the wider international context, and it will be of interest to anyone interested in international relations.
Authentic Chinese internal documents matter greatly as historical records that illuminate our understanding of Chinese politics. Yet careful scrutiny shows that the Chinese book version of the Tiananmen Papers is part fiction and part documentary history based on open and semi-open sources and document collections. The alleged transcripts of top-level meetings are basically stitched together ex
post
facto (even by the admission of the editors) and then presented as secret documents. Furthermore, the English translation is a heavily retouched version of the Chinese with differences in claims of authenticity, translation, citation and style. There is little evidence that any real secret documents are in the hands of the Chinese author, and even if they were, the two books under consideration are really secondary sources steps removed from the originals. The editors strongly vouch for the authenticity of these two books, but their efforts are inadequate and unconvincing.
The European Union (EU) imposed sanctions on Zimbabwe in 2002 and this article aims at evaluating the success of that decision. Applying a broader definition of success, this article assumes that sanctions can coerce, constrain and signal. Contrary to most of the literature holding that sanctions are imposed to change the behaviour of targets, this article argues that the sanctions on Zimbabwe appear to have been motivated by a constraining logic and, thus, what to expect from them and how to assess their success should be measured accordingly. The article holds that the restrictive measures of the EU fulfilled their expectations in making life harder for the members of Zimbabwe African National Union-Patriotic Front (ZANU-PF) and contributed to creating the conditions for the positive evolution of the situation in Zimbabwe with the power sharing agreement reached in 2009. The constraint on ZANU-PF benefits the MDC-T and MDC-M. The assessment of EU restrictive measures should take place under this light. The recent reduction of the individuals and entities targeted by EU sanctions is an interesting development that confirms how Brussels is interested in the stabilisation of the institutional framework wherein ZANU-PF would respect the newly formed institutional framework. The coercive aspect, allowing ZANU-PF to comply with the demands of the EU, is a further important improvement of the situation in the country that can be captured by the theoretical framework adopted in this article and that should help to lead the future analysis on sanctions.
Multilateral economic sanctions can be expected to impose greater terms-of-trade effects on a target nation than unilateral sanctions. Yet despite their potential for greater economic damage, multilateral sanctions often are less effective in bringing about desired political results in the target. An interest-group model of endogenous policy suggests that multilateral sanctions can undermine the political effectiveness of opposition groups in the target country, or strengthen those groups supporting the objectionable policy of the ruling regime. Such perverse effects are due in part to the inability of multilateral coalitions to enforce cooperation among members, and to the appropriation of sanctions rents in the target country. Unilateral sanctions, however, imposed by a country with close ties to the target, are often effective in achieving their intended political objectives.
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Most studies of trade sanctions examine the success of sanctions at forcing the target country to change its policies. This article analyzes the success of sanctions in terms of a broader set of goals: compliance, subversion, deterrence, international symbolism, and domestic symbolism. I examine 19 sanctions cases using different evaluatory criteria for each goal. Three results emerge from the analysis. First, sanctions generally fail when the goal is compliance, subversion, or deterrence, but they have a great appeal as international and domestic symbols. Second, sanctions often reinforce the target's behavior and forfeit the initiator's future economic leverage over the target. Third, the goals of international and domestic symbolism usually undermine the goals of compliance and subversion.
A fractious UN Security Council has contributed to the decline in effectiveness of a number of UN sanctions adopted in recent years. Yet they remain a tool of the Council, for example with regard to Libya in 2011. The challenge is to understand how UN, country (US) and regional sanctions (EU, AU, Arab League) can be meaningful in such a climate. The four books reviewed make various suggestions, from clarity of mandate to better evaluating impact. Mikael Eriksson's Targeting peace seeks to evaluate the complexity of the sanctions policy process. He argues that effectiveness comes partly from understanding politics (episodes of sanctions), but also from institutional reform—‘black box’ processes, as he calls them. Sanctions are more successful as part of a wider package. Clara Portela in European Union sanctions and foreign policy examines the use of sanctions as a political tool, including the suspension of development aid and the withdrawal of trade privileges. She shows how the EU plays an important role in signalling and constraining when UN sanctions are weak. For example, informal measures like the 2003 EU decision to invite only dissidents to national day receptions in Havanna resulted in the release of detainees that it had aimed for. The high rate of success of development aid cut‐off stands in sharp contrast with EU Common Foreign and Security Policy sanctions. The unintended consequence of good intentions is also highlighted by both Portela and Eriksson—Zimbabwe in particular but also Côte d'Ivoire and Iran pose similar challenges. The imposition of EU or UN sanctions is easier than reaching consensus to lift them, although events in Burma (Myanmar) in 2012 have resulted in smooth suspensions of most US and EU sanctions. All four books show that targeted sanctions cannot be seen as stand‐alone measures, nor assessed in isolation. Sanctions are multi‐faceted and require detailed assessment of political context, episode and institutional process.
Robert A. Pape is Assistant Professor of Government at Dartmouth College.
I thank Randall Clark, Chaim Kaufmann, Michael Mastanduno, John Mearsheimer, Bradley Thayer, and Dennis Zacharopoulos for their thoughtful comments, and Patsy Carter and Stelios Zachariou for their timely research assistance. I would also like to thank the Earhart Foundation and the Smith Richardson Foundation for supporting this research.
1. Robert A. Pape, "Why Economic Sanctions Do Not Work," International Security, Vol. 22, No. 2 (Fall 1997), pp. 90-136.
2. Gary Clyde Hufbauer, Jeffrey J. Schott, and Kimberly Ann Elliott, Economic Sanctions Reconsidered, 2d rev. ed., 2 vols. (Washington, D.C.: Institute for International Economics, 1990).
3. Kimberly Ann Elliott, "The Sanctions Glass: Half Full or Completely Empty," International Security, Vol. 23, No. 1 (Summer 1998), pp. 50-65.
4. Pape, "Why Economic Sanctions Do Not Work," p. 91.
5. Kimberly Elliott, Gary Hufbauer, and Jeffrey Schott, "The Big Squeeze: Why the Sanctions on Iraq Will Work," Washington Post, December 9, 1990, section K, p. 1; Gary Clyde Hufbauer and Kimberly Ann Elliott, "Sanctions Will Bite-and Soon," New York Times, January 14, 1991, section A, p. 17. Gary Hufbauer offered the same advice in testimony before Congress. Statement of Gary Clyde Hufbauer, U.S. Policy in the Persian Gulf, Hearing before the Committee on Foreign Relations, United States Senate, 101st Congress, 2d session, December 4, 1990.
6. Kimberly Elliott and Gary Hufbauer, "Sanctions Might Work," Washington Post, February 20, 1994. In 1992 Elliott and Hufbauer argued that the failure of the United Nations embargo against Iraq was the result of impatience, rather than the inherent weakness of economic sanctions as a coercive instrument. Kimberly Elliott and Gary Hufbauer, "Sanctions Can Work, But They Require Luck, Patience, and Planning," Atlanta Constitution, June 7, 1992.
7. HSE, Economic Sanctions Reconsidered, vol. 1, pp. 1, 13, emphasis added.
8. Ibid., p. 41. Actually, Elliott's position in her response is inconsistent, because at one point she repeats her commitment to a competitive standard: "We explicitly take into account the presence of these other policies and call an episode a sanctions success only if sanctions-relative to these other tools-contributed at least modestly to the outcome." Elliott, "The Sanctions Glass," p. 52.
9. Statement of Gary Clyde Hufbauer, "Economic Sanctions against Iraq," Hearings before the Subcommittee on Education and Health of the Joint Economic Committee, U.S. Senate, 101st Congress, 2d session, December 19, 1990, p. 20.
10. Ibid.
11. Pape, "Why Economic Sanctions Do Not Work," p. 97.
12. Ibid., pp. 111-112.
13. James Shoch, "Party Politics and International Economic Activism: The Reagan-Bush Years," Political Science Quarterly, Vol. 113, No. 1 (Spring 1998), pp. 113-132; Bruce Stokes, "Trade: Running on Nationalism," National Journal, March 3, 1990, pp. 513-517; and Peter Gourevitch, Politics in Hard Times: Comparative Responses to International Economic Crises (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1986).
14. Kenneth A. Rodman, Sanctity versus Sovereignty: The United States and the Nationalization of Natural Resource Investments (New York: Columbia University Press, 1988), p. 328. The cases are: Bolivia 1938-40, Honduras 1962, Argentina 1963-65, Iraq 1961, Peru 1971, Bolivia 1969, Libya 1973, Guyana 1970-71, Ghana 1972-74, Bolivia 1971, Ecuador 1971-74, Venezuela 1971-74, Algeria 1971, Iraq 1972, Jamaica 1974, Guyana 1974, South Yemen 1975, Somalia 1975, P.R. Congo 1976, and Ethiopia 1979. Rodman covers 1938 to 1980, compared to 1914 to 1990 in HSE.
15. Pape, "Why Economic Sanctions Do Not Work," pp. 133-135. Thus, while only 5 of 115 cases in the HSE database are clear successes that support their claim that economic sanctions could be effective in some circumstances, if we also count these indeterminate cases, then the maximum number that could be counted as supporting HSE's sanctions optimism would rise to 7 cases of 115. (There is a third indeterminate case, Canada-EC/Japan 1977, but in that case the uncertainty is over whether the target states made meaningful concessions.)
16. Ibid., pp. 111-136.
17. As British Prime Minister Anthony Eden explained to U.S. President Dwight Eisenhower: "If the Soviets intend to seize this opportunity of intervening by giving substantial support...
The European Union’s (EU) normative roles in global politics have in recent years been a hotly debated topic. The EU promotes its political values outside of the Union, especially with regard to prospective accession countries and small developing countries. However, a normative foreign policy approach encounters considerable challenges when confronted with major powers, such as China and Russia that do not share the political values promoted by the EU. Attempts at pursuing a normative policy towards these countries often come across as halfhearted. This article discusses EU normative policy towards China. It identifies loss of the moral high ground, conflicting positions of EU members and lack of leverage as the three main factors hampering it. It needs to be recognised that these problems are fundamental and stem from the very nature of the EU itself. The article argues that instead of a halfhearted offensive normative approach towards China or ubiquitous dialogues with partners, the EU may be better off with a more determined policy of defensive normativity. This would entail being more insistent in upholding European values within our own community rather than seeking to export them outside of the Union, and favouring demand-driven cooperation. The choice stands between altering the self-image of the EU to make it better correspond to reality, or making reality live up to the self-image.
The European Union (EU) has alternately been described as a civilian, normative and ethical power. Even though these conceptualizations differ among themselves, they share a positive view of the EU as a foreign policy actor guided by the common good and disinclined to use military power. This article argues that these conceptualizations do not accurately capture the foreign policy behaviour of the EU. Similarly to other powers, the EU is a self-interested actor seeking to maximize its own security. To this end, it mixes the use of military and non-military means as necessary. Hence, the EU is a normal power, no different from other polities striving to minimize external threats to their security. Its ‘non-proliferation of weapons of mass destruction (WMD)’ policy will serve as case study to show that the EU is a normal power.
The article reviews the current study of the European Union (EU), where a new agenda is emerging under the umbrella of ‘new governance’. Despite its eclecticism, this agenda argues that the EU is not a state, but is a unique system of non-hierarchical, regulatory and deliberative governance. This agenda also conceptualizes the EU as sui generis, explains its development primarily by (new) institutional theory, and suggests that legitimacy is guaranteed through transparent, pareto-efficient and consensual outputs. Nevertheless, this agenda is open to criticism on empirical, methodological, theoretical and normative levels. Such a dialectic suggests a new duality in the study of the EU: between the new governance approach, and a less developed rival agenda, which treats EU politics and government as not inherently unique, compares the EU to other political systems, explains outcomes through rational strategic action, and suggests that legitimacy can be guaranteed through classic democratic competition over inputs.
Many have claimed that the alleged terrorist group Akromiya incited the violence in the city of Andijon, Uzbekistan, in May 2005. This article contends that the portrayal of Akromiya as a violent organization is highly suspect and may have been created by members of the Uzbek government and propagated by mem- bers of the international scholarly community.
The European Union's policies towards autocratic regimes have come under renewed scrutiny following the popular uprisings in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) in the spring of 2011, and the pressure on the EU to revise its approach towards the region has been growing. Over decades, the EU had pursued a policy of pragmatic engagement with autocratic regimes for stability in the region, to the detriment of democracy promotion. This article examines the EU's policy towards Belarus, often labelled the ‘last dictatorship’ in Europe, and demonstrates that the EU has not just pursued pragmatic politics in the MENA – it has also gradually moved from democracy promotion towards interest‐based functional co‐operation in its relations with the most ‘reluctant democratizer’ in eastern Europe. It is argued here that the case of Belarus and other states with autocratic leanings in eastern Europe are examples of an increasingly institutionalized pragmatic approach of the EU towards autocratic regimes, which is likely to dominate its policies in years to come – notwithstanding the recent events in the MENA.
Most studies of economic sanctions have concluded that they are ineffective as instruments of foreign policy. In a previous effort, we applied the spatial model of bargaining to the question of sanctions effectiveness to identify the‐conditions under which sanctions can be expected to “work.” In this paper, we refine that analysis by examining the impact of domestic politics in the state that is the target of the sanctions. Sanction episodes may be examples of two‐level games in which the domestic game within both parties affects the international game and vice‐versa. Here, we take a first cut of applying this approach to the analysis of sanctions effectiveness. We extend the spatial model to focus on how sanctions affect the internal political bargaining within the target state. From this, we determine how state policy should change (or not) as a result of the sanctions. We use the basic model to identify general hypotheses regarding the nature of sanctions and their effectiveness and we evaluate some of these hypotheses using cases in which the United States imposed sanctions on Latin American countries for human rights violations.
David A. Baldwin is Ira D. Wallach Professor of World Order Studies in the Institute of War and Peace Studies at Columbia University.
The author would like to thank the following for helpful comments on earlier versions of this article: Richard Betts, Alexander George, Robert Jervis, Benjamin Judkins, and Helen Milner.
1. Robert A. Pape, "Why Economic Sanctions Do Not Work," International Security, Vol. 22, No. 2 (Fall 1997), pp. 90-136.
2. Elizabeth S. Rogers, "Using Economic Sanctions to Control Regional Conflicts," Security Studies, Vol. 5, No. 4 (Summer 1996), pp. 43-72.
3. Joseph Lepgold, "Is Anyone Listening? International Relations Theory and the Problem of Policy Relevance," Political Science Quarterly, Vol. 113, No. 1 (Spring 1998), p. 46.
4. Of 170 post-World War I cases in the Institute of International Economics updated database, 50 were initiated in the 1990s. Yet the following recent studies all question the wisdom of using such measures: Ernest H. Preeg, Feeling Good or Doing Good with Sanctions: Unilateral Economic Sanctions and the U.S. National Interest (Washington, D.C.: CSIS Press, 1999); Diane B. Kunz, Butter and Guns: America's Cold War Economic Diplomacy (New York: Free Press, 1997); T. Clifton Morgan and Valerie L. Schwebach, "Fools Suffer Gladly: The Use of Economic Sanctions in International Crises," International Studies Quarterly, Vol. 41, No. 1 (March 1997), pp. 27-50; George Tsebelis, "Are Sanctions Effective? A Game-Theoretic Analysis," Journal of Conflict Resolution, Vol. 34, No. 1 (March 1990), pp. 3-28; and Pape, "Why Economic Sanctions Do Not Work."
5. See, for example, Morgan and Schwebach, "Fools Suffer Gladly."
6. See, for example, Tsebelis, "Are Sanctions Effective?"
7. James M. Lindsay, "Trade Sanctions as Policy Instruments: A Re-examination," International Studies Quarterly, Vol. 30, No. 2 (June 1986), p. 153. See also Jonathan Kirshner, "The Microfoundations of Economic Sanctions," Security Studies, Vol. 6, No. 3 (Spring 1997), pp. 32-64; and David A. Baldwin, Economic Statecraft (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1985).
8. Alexander L. George and William E. Simons, eds., The Limits of Coercive Diplomacy, 2d ed. (Boulder, Colo.: Westview, 1994), p. 268.
9. Ibid.
10. Some of these topics were discussed with reference to an earlier body of literature in Baldwin, Economic Statecraft.
11. Herbert A. Simon, Administrative Behavior: A Study of Decision-Making Processes in Administrative Organizations, 3d ed. (New York: Free Press, 1976), p. 65. Cf. Benjamin A. Most and Harvey Starr, "International Relations Theory, Foreign Policy Substitutabilify, and 'Nice' Laws," World Politics, Vol. 36, No. 3 (April 1984), pp. 383-406.
12. For an example, see Pape, "Why Economic Sanctions Do Not Work."
13. Carl von Clausewitz, On War, ed. and trans. Michael Howard and Peter Paret (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1976), p. 87. For purposes of this discussion, the term "economic sanctions" refers to the use of trade or financial policy to influence other countries. Although sanctions can be positive or negative, the discussion here is confined to negative sanctions.
14. See, for example, Stephanie Ann Lenway, "Between War and Commerce: Economic Sanctions as a Tool of Statecraft," International Organization, Vol. 42, No. 2 (Spring 1988), pp. 400, 426; Arnold Wolfers, Discord and Collaboration: Essays on International Politics (Baltimore, Md.: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1962), pp. 107, 109; Klaus Knorr, On the Uses of Military Power in the Nuclear Age (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1966), p. 14; and Lindsay, "Trade Sanctions as Policy Instruments."
15. See, for example, Pape, "Why Economic Sanctions Do Not Work"; and Morgan and Schwebach, "Fools Suffer Gladly."
16. Morgan and Schwebach, "Fools Suffer Gladly," p. 29.
17. Kim Richard Nossal, Rain Dancing: Sanctions in Canadian and Australian Foreign Policy (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1994), p. xv.
18. See, for example, Gary Clyde Hufbauer, Jeffrey J. Schott, and Kimberly Ann Elliott, Economic Sanctions Reconsidered, 2 vols., 2d ed. (Washington, D.C.: Institute for International Economics, 1990); Pape, "Why Economic Sanctions Do Not Work"; Tsebelis, "Are Sanctions Effective?"; Alastair Smith, "The Success and Use of Economic Sanctions," International Interactions, Vol. 21, No. 3 (1995), pp. 229-245; Peter A.G. Bergeijk, Economic Diplomacy, Trade, and Commercial Policy: Positive and Negative Sanctions in a...
The headlines spawned by the Belarusian presidential election of 19 December 2010 bore a remarkable similarity to those seen after the last such contest in March 2006. Yet the Belarus of today is not at all the Belarus of five years ago. If the 2006 election showcased the regime's strength and popularity at that time, the events following the 2010 contest have exposed that same regime's vulnerability and precarious support today. In order to explain why some authoritarian regimes are more stable, Steven Levitsky and Lucan Way identify three key factors: linkage to the West, internal organizational power, and the leverage of the West. It seems to be only a matter of time before the supporters of change in Belarus form a critical mass.
The 2008 presidential and parliamentary elections in Zimbabwe and their attendant violence and disorder fitted the image some governments and groups have had about that country as one whose politics has resisted change. There was another side to the elections that observers failed to recognize, however, and it was about the important issues for which voters were seeking answers. As flawed as the electoral process in Zimbabwe seemed, it was not different from elections which governments in other parts of Africa have organized. It was also perplexing that observers of Zimbabwe's politics barely acknowledged that the equitable allotment of land between blacks and whites was at the core of the electoral debate. This study shows that elections in Zimbabwe are more nuanced than the graphic images of violence that television cameras portrayed. Zimbabwe's political history is unique among African countries because of the biracial makeup of its society and repressive laws have helped to create a horrendous gap in wealth between whites and blacks. It is also a country where blacks won independence through war. It has been customary for observers and aid donors to blame President Mugabe for the missteps in his decisions, but have had little sympathy trying to understand the protracted issues of wealth, power, and privilege.
This article examines recent EU–Moldova relations under the European Neighbourhood Policy (ENP) and the Eastern Partnership (EaP) in order to assess the EU's policies and their (limited) effectiveness over the past decade. I draw on the ‘external governance approach’ and develop the ‘partnership as cooperation perspective’ to examine which approach prevails in the theory and in the political practice of EU–Moldova relations. Whereas the external governance approach focuses on the expansion of EU rules to assess the effectiveness of the EU's external relations, the partnership perspective draws attention to effective cooperation based on mutual concessions in areas of converging preferences.
The history of clashes over extraterritorial jurisdiction between the United States of America and other States in the Americas, Europe and elsewhere is a long one. That history is commonly traced back to the antitrust claims arising from the
Alcoa
case in 1945, in which the “effects” doctrine was advanced in the peculiar and objectionable form in which it is applied, not simply to acts which constitute elements of a single offence but which occur in different jurisdictions but, rather, to the economic repercussions of acts in one State which are felt in another. The conflict persisted into the 1950s, with the clashes over US regulation of the international shipping and paper industries. In the 1960s and 1970s there were further clashes in relation to the extraterritorial application of US competition laws, notably in disputes over shipping regulation and the notorious
Uranium Antitrust
litigation, in which US laws were applied to penalise the extraterritorial conduct of non-US companies, conducted with the approval of their national governments, at a time when those companies were barred by US law from trading in the United States. It was that litigation which was in large measure responsible for the adoption in the United Kingdom of the Protection of Trading Interests Act 1980, which significantly extended the powers which the British government had asserted in the 1952 Shipping Contracts and Commercial Documents Act to defend British interests against US extraterritorial claims.
The divergence of opinion between EU and international lawyers as to the consequences of the Kadi/Al Barakaat judgment is likely to remain for the foreseeable future. While international lawyers focus their analysis on the constitutional role of the UN Charter in international law, EU lawyers seek to assert the autonomy and primacy of the EU treaties. The aim of this article is to analyse where the divergence between the two perspectives can be found. The judgment of the European Court of Justice cannot be interpreted as questioning the authority of the Security Council in discharging its duties for the maintenance of international peace and security. The consequences of the General Court's case-law as regards the EU autonomous list of terrorists should be borne in mind when faced with the implications of Kadi/Al Barakaat. It is not justified that the level of protection to the individuals or entities affected by targeted sanctions should depend on the legal framework in which the restrictive measures have been adopted (UN or EU), or on the margin of discretion left to the EU Member States by the Security Council.
This article takes stock of the emerging scholarship on the European Court of Justice's 2008 Kadi decision and seeks to make sense of the court's apparent evasiveness towards international law. The article argues that Kadi is best understood as an act of civil disobedience prompted by the UN Security Council's misapplication of foundational principles of the international order. In turn, the court's forceful articulation of the stakes in this case signals a prioritisation of basic rights within the supranational constitutional architectonic. In this respect, the ‘domestic’ constitutional implications of Kadi are just as far reaching as its consequences for the EU's status as an actor under international law.
Since the rise of the “Middle Kingdom” in recent years most European leaders consider this major Asian power as the most important
opportunity and challenge in the years to come, not only economically and commercially but also politically and strategically.
The EU's China policy is promising, and EU–China ties have been smooth and comprehensive despite bilateral trade and human
rights disputes. Concerning Cross Strait relations the domestic political development in Taiwan has a strong impact on the
peace and stability in the region because Beijing has never renounced the use of force against the island in case of its formal
independence. Given its large bilateral trade deficit, the EU's potential arms exports to China remain significant to the
European countries. But this prospect aroused great concern from the US, Russia and Japan. Nonetheless, the Anti-Secession
Law from Beijing against Taiwan in mid March 2005 and the likely change of government in the German elections in autumn 2005
on top of the failures of the constitutional referenda in France and the Netherlands in June 2005 will affect the EU decision
on the embargo.
The Helms-Burton law has attracted the attention of international law scholars, political scientists and experts in international relations. The expectations of long and hard legal procedures reaching up to the U.S. Supreme Court have not been confirmed, in part due to the temporary suspension of some of the law’s most controversial aspects. Title III would allow the former owners of properties confiscated by the Cuban government to sue the individual or companies who would "traffick" with them by buying, selling or investing. The transitory agreement signed by Washington and Brussels in fact froze the process of an inter-Atlantic confrontation. However, additional measures by the U.S. Congress have maintained the tension and the possibilities of future legal procedures.
As a legacy of the origin, development and consequences of the law, two dimensions are still solid candidates for analysis. In the field of international relations, there stands the impact exerted by the domestic political motivation of the law on the overall network of the international links of the U.S. with the rest of the world, especially regarding free trade agreements and commerce organizations such as the OMC. Second, the nature of the Helms-Burton law will continue to attract jurists because of the complexity of its different measures, differing interpretations of its constitutionality, and the alleged violation of international law. This paper combines both dimensions.
The paper begins with an ethical case for land redistribution in Zimbabwe, based on principles of social justice and equity, drawing from a brief history of land in Zimbabwe from the first European expulsions up to independence. Both the moral and economic arguments for land redistribution are widely and fiercely contested. The paper considers and rejects two specific criticisms of the economic arguments: that farming in the commercial sector is more efficient than in the peasant sector; and that land redistribution will not benefit the land-poor, but rather transfer land to an alternative privileged group. These arguments are explored through an examination of previous land resettlement programmes in Zimbabwe in these two respects. The paper also evaluates the objections to land reform related to issues of compensation and legality. It is concluded that radical redistribution is desirable and feasible, and urges the British government to finance land development and, if necessary, compensate commercial farmers.