Economic Sanctions, International Institutions, and Sanctions Busters: When Does Institutionalized Cooperation Help Sanctioning Efforts?

Abstract

When international institutions obligate their members to impose economic sanctions against a target state, how much do those sanctions obligations actually impact their members' behavior? To date, the consensus view has treated all international institutions as if they are equally capable of making multilateral sanctioning efforts more effective. Building upon the enforcement theory of sanctions cooperation, we instead theorize that the ability of international institutions to constrain their members from engaging in spoiler behaviors degrades the larger they are. We hypothesize that sanctions obligations imposed by smaller‐sized institutions are more effective at preventing their members from becoming extensive trade‐based sanctions busters than those imposed by larger ones. We test our hypothesis via a quantitative analysis of how the involvement of five different international institutions in sanctioning efforts influenced their members' likelihoods of sanctions‐busting. We find that only the smaller‐sized institutions we examine appear capable of constraining their members from undercutting sanctioning efforts. Notably, we find no evidence that the United Nations' sanctions actually prevent its members from sanctions‐busting.

Sanctions-Busting, Material Power, and Institutional Support for Economic Sanctions

“…More specifically, international institutions can require their member states to submit self-reports on their compliance with the sanctions regime or directly monitor targets’ borders to detect economic exchanges violating the sanctions regime. Rent-seeking private sector entities of member states tend to limit the size of their trade with targets to avoid detection (Early and Spice 2015; Hastings and Wang 2018; Wertz 2020).…”

“…Institutional support can promise primary senders substantial benefits, especially when they are concerned that sanctions-busting by third party states might ruin their foreign policy initiatives. When senders implement sanctions through the international institutions to which potential spoiler states belong, a multitude of institutional restrictions may place tangible constraints on their sanctions-busting behaviors (Early and Spice 2015; Hastings and Wang 2018; Wertz 2020). Even if third-party states indeed violate sanctions regimes, institutional support can still play a key role in countering sanctions-busting.…”

How to sanction international wrongdoing? The design of EU restrictive measures

“…Iran and Syria are covered by the pathway, too, however, not uniquely. From a theoretical perspective, the pathway is plausible as we know from scholarly research on sanctions that multilateral coalitions of restrictive measures make the latter more likely prone to success (Bapat & Morgan, 2009;Early & Spice, 2015;Weber & Schneider, 2020). Hence, the EU may take the potential support by further actors like the US into account when making design decisions on economic sanctions regimes.…”

Fighting the Hydra

“… 6 A series of in-depth case studies have concluded that some of these UN sanctions were effective: Angola, Liberia, Sierra Leone, and Côte d’Ivoire (Cortright & Lopez, 2000, 2002a,b; Hufbauer & Oegg, 2000; Koddenbrock, 2008; Strandow, 2006). In contrast, some have questioned sanctions successes and point to cases such as Rwanda, Sudan, and Somalia to suggest the UN sanction regimes’ ineptness (Early & Spice, 2014; Elliott, 2005; Tierney, 2005; Vines, 2012). Biersteker, Eckert & Turinho (2016) put the overall UN sanction regime effectiveness near 23%, which is lower than the already meager 30–35% success rate for sanctions overall (Hufbauer et al, 2007).…”

“… 9 See Early & Spice (2014) for sanction-busting on multilateral efforts. …”