Powerful countries like the United States regularly employ economic sanctions as a tool for promoting their foreign policy interests. Yet this foreign policy tool has an uninspiring track record of success, with economic sanctions achieving their goals less than a third of the time they are imposed. The costs of these failed sanctions policies can be significant for the states that impose them, their targets, and the other countries they affect. Explaining economic sanctions' high failure rate therefore constitutes a vital endeavor for academics and policy-makers alike. Busted Sanctions seeks to provide this explanation, and reveals that the primary cause of this failure is third-party spoilers, or sanctions busters, who undercut sanctioning efforts by providing their targets with extensive foreign aid or sanctions-busting trade. In quantitatively and qualitatively analyzing over 60 years of U.S. economic sanctions, Bryan Early reveals that both types of third-party sanctions busters have played a major role in undermining U.S. economic sanctions. Surprisingly, his analysis also reveals that the United States' closest allies are often its sanctions' worst enemies. The book offers the first comprehensive explanation for why different types of sanctions busting occur and reveals the devastating effects it has on economic sanctions' chances of success.

Powerful countries like the United States regularly employ economic sanctions as a tool for promoting their foreign policy interests. Yet this foreign policy tool has an uninspiring track record of success, with economic sanctions achieving their goals less than a third of the time they are imposed. The costs of these failed sanctions policies can be significant for the states that impose them, their targets, and the other countries they affect. Explaining economic sanctions' high failure rate therefore constitutes a vital endeavor for academics and policy-makers alike. Busted Sanctions seeks to provide this explanation, and reveals that the primary cause of this failure is third-party spoilers, or sanctions busters, who undercut sanctioning efforts by providing their targets with extensive foreign aid or sanctions-busting trade. In quantitatively and qualitatively analyzing over 60 years of U.S. economic sanctions, Bryan Early reveals that both types of third-party sanctions busters have played a major role in undermining U.S. economic sanctions. Surprisingly, his analysis also reveals that the United States' closest allies are often its sanctions' worst enemies. The book offers the first comprehensive explanation for why different types of sanctions busting occur and reveals the devastating effects it has on economic sanctions' chances of success.

This volume explores sanctions as instruments of coercive diplomacy, delving into theoretical arguments and combining perspectives from international law and international relations scholars and practitioners. Primary questions include the compatibility and legitimacy of sanctions regimes, enforcement measures, including the role of sanctions committees, the practice of circumventing sanctions, and the relation with the ICC proceedings. Legal and institutional aspects of the practice of the European Union are addressed. The extraterritorial effects of national legislation implementing sanctions imposed by individual States are investigated. A focus is on the impact of sanctions on non-State actors. The connections with the protection of human rights and the adverse impact on individual rights are considered. The implementation of sanctions is addressed in view of their legal limitation and the concept of proportionality, their consequences upon existing treaties and contracts, their effectiveness, and their strategic implications.

"Even before the extensive sanctions imposed on Russia for its 2022 invasion of Ukraine, it was hard to browse the news without seeing reports of yet another set of sanctions. The United States has sanctions against over 30 countries as well as drug traffickers, terrorist organizations and specially designated individuals. China long has been a target of sanctions and in recent years increasingly a wielder against countries and companies even organizations like the National Basketball Association (NBA). Russia also has been sanctions sender as well as target. The European Union has joined some of the American sanctions as well as imposing its own. In some cases the United Nations has authorized fully multilateral sanctions. While being used more frequently in recent years sanctions go back decades, indeed centuries, to such cases as the 432 BC Athens against Sparta and Napoleon's 1808-1814 Continental System. Given such frequency of use, you'd think sanctions were a sure-fire weapon. Yet the record is quite mixed. So some initial puzzles: Why are economic sanctions used so much? What are the key factors affecting their success? These and related questions are well suited for an Oxford University Press What Everyone Needs to Know book. They long have been important among international relations scholars, spanning international security and international political economy subfields. And with sanctions such a recurring foreign policy strategy, they are crucial for policy makers. As someone who has both studied sanctions as a scholar and worked on these issues while serving in key U.S. foreign policy positions, Bruce W. Jentleson is well suited to provide analysis valuable for students, scholars and practitioners"--

Examines the legal statutes, executive orders, and judicial interpretations of US economic and financial sanctions.

Peter van Bergeijk brings together 40 leading experts from all continents to analyze state-of-the-art data covering the sharp increase in (smart) sanctions in the last decade. Original chapters provide detailed analyses on the determinants of sanction success and failure, complemented with research on the impact of sanctions.

The Routledge Handbook of the Political Economy of Sanctions examines the core issues and debates surrounding this controversial topic, introducing readers to essential concepts and terms. It communicates the evolving character of international sanctions from diverse perspectives, with a particular emphasis on questions of efficacy, legality, and legitimacy of sanctions, as well as the mechanisms by which they are applied. This interdisciplinary book explores the international political economy of sanctions in the constantly changing context of geopolitical rivalry. The authors investigate various theoretical and historical approaches to sanctions and apply these to specific case studies, such as the African Union, China, Cuba, India, Russia, Turkey, and the United States. The book gives a voice to sanctioned states and considers the impact of secondary sanctions. It analyses sanctions with reference to wider political debates such as national security, state sovereignty, economic warfare, and sustainability. This handbook will be of immense interest to students, researchers, and scholars in the fields of political economy, international sanctions, political science, international relations, and foreign policy. It will also be useful for all those employed by political institutions, businesses, and nongovernmental organisations when assessing current sanctions regimes.

The past few decades have witnessed a proliferation of economic sanctions, yet there seem to be few examples of sanctions meeting sender states’ goals. Under what conditions do sanctions fail to change the behavior of so-called international “pariah states,” countries who violate various international norms? This book examines the impact of economic sanctions on target states’ trading relationships through social network analysis, a method that has rarely been applied to the study of sanctions. Drawing on UN Comtrade data, Trading with Pariahs: Trade Networks and the Failure of Economic Sanctions shows that the imposition of sanctions can drastically change some states’ trading networks, as states either find new trading partners (in the case of North Korea) or feel the sting of the sanctions from key trading partners (like Iran). Trading networks (such as Myanmar’s) remain relatively stable over time as key trading partners refuse to impose sanctions. Through the theory of weaponized interdependence, Keith A. Preble and Charmaine N. Willis argue that the success or failure of sanctions to change target states’ behavior depends on who imposes the sanctions. Sanctions imposed by the “right” sender states can be successful but also cannot rely solely on policies of isolation to achieve the goals of the sanctions.

Despite their increasing importance, there is little theoretical understanding of why nation-states initiate economic sanctions, or what determines their success. This book argues that both imposers and targets of economic coercion incorporate expectations of future conflict as well as the short-run opportunity costs of coercion into their behaviour. Drezner argues that conflict expectations have a paradoxical effect. Adversaries will impose sanctions frequently, but rarely secure concessions. Allies will be reluctant to use coercion, but once sanctions are used, they can result in significant concessions. Ironically, the most favourable distribution of payoffs is likely to result when the imposer cares the least about its reputation or the distribution of gains. The book's argument is pursued using game theory and statistical analysis, and detailed case studies of Russia's relations with newly-independent states, and US efforts to halt nuclear proliferation on the Korean peninsula.--Publisher description.

Sanctions have enormous consequences. Especially when imposed by a country with the economic influence of the United States, sanctions induce clear shockwaves in both the economy and political culture of the targeted state, and in the everyday lives of citizens. But do economic sanctions induce the behavioral changes intended? Do sanctions work in the way they should? To answer these questions, the authors of How Sanctions Work highlight Iran, the most sanctioned country in the world. Comprehensive sanctions are meant to induce uprisings or pressures to change the behavior of the ruling establishment, or to weaken its hold on power. But, after four decades, the case of Iran shows the opposite to be true: sanctions strengthened the Iranian state, impoverished its population, increased state repression, and escalated Iran's military posture toward the U.S. and its allies in the region. Instead of offering an 'alternative to war,' sanctions have become a cause of war. Consequently, How Sanctions Work reveals how necessary it is to understand how sanctions really work.