The previous research on economic sanctions has been conducted focusing on both sanction outcomes and sanction onsets (the former much more frequently than the latter). First, regarding the study of sanction outcomes, Hufbauer, Schott, and Elliott (hereafter HSE, 1990) find that, among their 18 hypothesized determinants of sanction success, only 5 were empirically supported based on the results from their analysis—which includes variables for World Wars I and II, “international assistance to target,” “target conditions,” “time trend” and “pre-sanction relations between sender and target.” Bergeijk (1989) reanalyzes their data and finds that three of the HSE variables (“pre-sanction relations between sender and target,” “sanction length,” and “target conditions”) and his “sender reputation” variable reached statistical significance. Dashti-Gibson, Davis, and Radcliff (1997) argue that the factors affecting the success of economic sanctions are dependent on the goals of the sender country. Running different logit models with the sender’s different goals, they find the following: that when the sender’s goal is simply destabilization, the main determinant of success is the target conditions; and that for all other goals, the use of financial sanctions are most effective, and that there is a modest downward trend over time in the effectiveness of sanctions in this category.
Bonetti (1998) finds that third-party assistance to the target and relatively small pre-sanction trade between target and sender makes sanctions less successful, but that “modest” objectives and a
cordial/neutral pre-sanction relationship between sender and target make sanctions more successful. Reanalyzing the HSE data using the ordered logit estimation, Drury (1998) finds that most of their bivariate variables are insignificant; the exceptions are the positive effect of target gross national product (GNP) cost, the negative effect of international cooperation with the sender, and the positive effect of institutional cooperation. Using the ordered probit analysis, Hart (2000) finds that sanctions by
a positive effect of pre-sanction trade level and a negative effect of international cooperation with the sender on sanction success. Using only U.S. sanctions in a censored probit analysis, Nooruddin (2002) finds that sanctions are less likely to be successful if there was cooperation with the sender, the two had a militarized interstate dispute (MID), or the two are aligned; and more likely to be successful if the target is a democracy and has a high sanction cost. Martin’s (1992) sanction study approaches a limited form of network thinking in the sense that it considers how a multilateral organization sanction has different effects than simple bilateral interventions. He argues that “the leading sender has to demonstrate a credible commitment to the threats [for the success of its sanction]” and that one of the important mechanisms that accompanies the credible commitments is the use of international institutions (413). By making the cooperation among other possible sanctioners easier and the free ride among those countries more difficult, sanctions by international institutions have the higher probability of success.
Unlike the rather voluminous empirical research on sanction outcomes, there has been little research on sanction initiation. Drezner (1998) rightly points out that “most of the (sanction) literature has focused on the outcome of coercive attempts; there has been little research explaining when senders (the sanctioning county) will initiate threats or act on economic sanction” (710). Studying the U.S. use of economic sanctions, Drury (2000) finds that a U.S. president considers both domestic factors (such as job approval rating, election proximity, inflation rate, and unemployment levels) and the relationship with the target county (tension level, increase/decrease of that tension level, and provocative statements/actions by target) before making a decision to initiate sanctions. When presidents decide to maintain or alter
sanctions after they are in place, they only consider the factors relating to the relationship with the target. Drury’s later work (2003) finds that democracies more frequently and autocracies less frequently use economic sanctions, and that sanctions between democracies are rare (the joint democratic peace in terms of economic sanctions). Nooruddin (2002) finds that sanctions are (1) more likely to be imposed on targets in the Western hemisphere by a major power with high pre-sanction trade, and (2) less likely on those with the MID onset. Lektzian and Souva (2003) argue and find with their statistical analysis that democracies (compared to non-democracies) are more likely to initiate economic sanctions since they encompass a greater variety of interest groups, and that democracies prefer sanctioning non-democracies
rather than democracies. Applying the liberal peace theory, mostly argued in the militarized conflicts study, to the economic relations among states, Goenner (forthcoming) finds that democratic states are less likely to engage in the onset of economic sanctions compared to non-democratic ones, but that economic interdependence between states does not have any effect on the sanction onset.
I argue that my analyses of economic sanctions will provide a better understanding of sanction onsets and outcomes in the following three ways. First, the previous research on the success of economic sanctions does not take into account the selection effects that take place; states involved in economic sanctions select or are selected into the sanction phase by a strategic process. Ignoring the selection bias (in the previous empirical studies of economic sanctions) might yield the erroneous findings regarding the sanction outcomes and onset; I use instead the censored probit estimation, controlling for statistical linkages of the two dependent variables of sanction outcomes and sanction onset. Second, to test balance of power theory and power preponderance theory on sanction outcomes, Hufbauer et al (1999) use the measure on the GNP ratio of sender to target. As I pointed out earlier in the above section of dyadic conflict studies, the use of material capabilities to test the two theories is limited since they are unable to utilize the extra-dyadic information where we all know that each dyad is embedded in a network of other international relations.
Third, my analyses of sanction outcomes also posit that even though many different attributes of the sender or target state (as well as the relationship between the two) have been hypothesized to affect the success of economic sanctions, one important factor has been neglected or tested inadequately: the target’s national power. As Lam (1990) points out, the sender usually is less likely to put much importance on foreign policy goals (of economic sanctions) toward a less powerful target (245), and this low resolve or low commitment of the sender toward a less powerful target eventually leads to sanction failure. As I will present in detail in the next chapter, the structural network power of each state also represents how well it is globalized (communication globalization from the first dimension of communication patterns; economic globalization from the second dimension of resource flows) in the international system. In other words, structural network power also represents each state’s level of globalization in the system; how centrally each state is positioned in the network of relations shows how well each state is globalized in the web of
network relations. Based on this conceptualization, the additional hypothesis on a target’s power will test the argument that a highly globalized target (i.e., a target with relatively high structural network power) will be more severely hurt by the economic sanction, and therefore more likely to concede to the sender’s demands, because the sender usually makes its best effort to disconnect the target’s globalization web (i.e., isolate the target from its interactive relations with other states), especially in the economic arena (e.g., target’s access to international trade or investment market). The well-globalized target will be more
seriously hurt by the sanction, and the high price that is paid by the target ultimately leads to concessions.