Does Supranational Coercion Work? Onset, Impact and Effectiveness of EU Sanctions
Final Report Abstract
While the leading role of the US in the usage of sanctions was not surprising, skeptics of the European integration project might have been surprised that the supranational organization has established itself as the second most important sender of sanctions. Institutional reforms have enabled the EU to use economic sanctions as a foreign policy tool and to compensate for its lack of military power. Although driven by selection effects, imposed EU sanctions are even more effective than economic coercion by the United States. The success rate of economic sanctions that we reported is similar to the effectiveness of related foreign policy instruments. Mediation efforts in countries suffering under political instability were for instance successful in 53.8% of all cases examined, and another examination shows that roughly 50% of the US military interventions from 1990 to 2016 fully reached their objectives. We acknowledge that the liberal sanction regime that we described in this project has never been a perfect one. The occasional misusage of economic power to coerce allies and other nations into a submissive foreign policy and the surprisingly frequent targeting of relatively innocent actors certainly contributed to the impression in the developing world and elsewhere that economic sanction often do not aim at the betterment of international affairs. As we have shown, the sanction regime is considerably biased and no concessions or minuscule ones are demanded if a country is politically or economically important. In addition, adjustment strategies by companies, which serve as instruments to achieve the political goals, can further mitigate sanctioning efforts. On the other hand, a smart combination of incentives and coercion can make sanctions more effective. In sum, we have shown that the liberal sanction regime was overall working quite well from 1989 to 2015. The higher effectiveness of multilateral measures bodes badly for the unilateral course that the 45th US President pursues. If the EU and the US, after the election of a new President, want to restore their fairly effective sanction regime, they should neither employ economic coercion routinely nor indiscriminately. They should rather reconsider the main insight of Schelling’s conjecture that sanctions need to be credible and that sanction threats and impositions should be designed carefully.
Publications
- 2016. “Challenges in evaluating impact of sanctions – political vs economic perspective”. Przegląd Politologiczny 4, 155–168
Stępień, Beata, Paulina Pospieszna, and Joanna Skrzypczyńska
(See online at https://doi.org/10.14746/pp.2016.21.4.12) - 2018. “Wirtschaftskriege”. In Handbuch Staat, ed. Rüdiger Voigt. Berlin: Springer VS, 1971–1980
Schneider, Gerald, and Patrick M. Weber
(See online at https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-658-20744-1_179) - 2019. “Biased, But Surprisingly Effective: Economic Coercion after the End of the Cold War”. CESifo Forum 20 (4): 9–13
Schneider, Gerald, and Patrick M. Weber
- 2019. “Hitting Two Birds with One Stone: How Russian Countersanctions Intertwined Political and Economic Goals”. PS: Political Science & Politics: 1–5
Pospieszna, Paulina, Joanna Skrzypczyńska, and Beata Stępień
(See online at https://doi.org/10.1017/S1049096519001781) - 2019. “Passive, Aggressive or Creative? Adjustment Strategies of Companies Affected by Sanctions”. In International Business in a VUCA World: The Changing Role of States and Firms (Progress in International Business Research, Vol. 14), eds. Rob van Tulder, Alain Verbeke, and Barbara Jankowska. Bingley: Emerald Publishing Limited, 131–156
Stępień, Beata, and Patrick M. Weber
(See online at https://doi.org/10.1108/S1745-886220190000014009) - 2019. “The Imposition and Effectiveness of Sanctions: ‘It’s the Economy, Stupid!’”. Dissertation. University of Konstanz
Weber, Patrick M.
