1 – Targeting the Political Elite: Dissecting the Decision-Making behind Individual Targeted Sanctions by the EU and US
Christian von Soest
German Institute for Global and Area Studies (GIGA)
Abstract: The response to the invasion of Ukraine by Russian forces underscores the increasing reliance on sanctions as a pivotal instrument wielded by Western powers in addressing threats to international peace and security. The main public and scholarly attention lies on comprehensive sanctions that target a whole country, but an encompassing regime has emerged of directly sanctioning individuals, organizations, and companies. Shaping the trend of individualizing accountability, the USA and the EU as the main bilateral global sanction senders increasingly blacklist political elites to hold them accountable for the instigation of armed conflict, the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, or the violation of human rights. Existing research implies that senders’ decisions to impose restrictive measures on members of the political elite are highly selective and not only dependent on norm violations. However, we lack systematic knowledge about the determinants of new listings of political elites. Accordingly, the paper tackles the research question: Which factors make it more likely that Western sanction senders target top-level policymakers and put them on their sanctions lists? As a core contribution, the paper presents a new dataset on US and EU sanctions listings that aggregates new entries at the monthly level. The paper will differentiate the listed individuals’ closeness to ultimate political decision-making in the target society (“position”) and will provide new insights into the factors under which policy makers are directly held responsible for their wrongdoings.
2 – Fostering agreements or hampering compromise: The context-specific effect of sanctions in peace negotiations
Constantin Ruhe
Goethe University of Frankfurt
Abstract: Whether sanctions push parties to reach a negotiated settlement and contribute to ending a conflict is disputed in the literature. Discussions on the effect and success of sanctions mainly focus on their costs for the target and proper implementation. Building on individual-level experimental insights from political psychology, we argue that the effectiveness of sanctions as a conflict management tool also depends on the conflict context. In territorial conflicts linked closely to identities and immaterial values, we expect sanctions to cause a negative backlash that makes conflict parties unwilling to compromise. In government conflicts, however, the additional costs of sanctions could lead the parties to make more far-reaching concessions. We study the impact of sanctions on the outcome of peace negotiations in intrastate conflicts between 1990 and 2012, using a novel measure of conflict parties’ willingness and ability to make concessions. Our analysis presents evidence for a differential effect of sanctions according to conflict type and provides insight how these effects evolve over time.
3 – Mortality of Iraqi children under UN sanctions (1990-2003): Synthetic control evidence
Matteo Pinna Pintor
Luxembourg Institute of Socio-Economic Research (LISER)
Abstract: BACKGROUND: last year marked the twentieth anniversary of the US-led invasion of Iraq, which started two decades of recurrent armed conflict, persistent institutional crisis and stalled socio-economic development. Arguably, the poly-crisis precipitated by the invasion reflected vulnerabilities incubated in two previous decades, during which Iraqis witnessed widespread internal repression and two wars of aggression, culminating in a 13-year long UN embargo. However, the role of sanctions has been heavily disputed in terms of both data and interpretation. This paper attempts to clarify part of the record.
METHODS: After reviewing the controversy on under-5 mortality under sanctions, I propose a characterization of the event in terms of design-relevant features: a population-level outcome known to display both secular trends and sensitivity to societal disruptions (under-5 mortality); an aggregate intervention unaffected ex ante by individuals in the examined population and hence akin to a ‘natural experiment’ (sanctions); a single exposed unit (Iraq) with few plausible comparators. Combining insights from ongoing theoretical synthesis of quasi-experimental methods with background knowledge of sanctions, I show the advantages of the Synthetic Control method over alternative estimators in this setting.
RESULTS: Using UN-IGME source data and literature from previous systematic review work, I select plausible control countries in the region, compare historical trends, appraise synthetic control weights, present baseline estimates and selected robustness checks. Excess deaths estimates are compared to previous studies and interpreted through a causal model of sanction impacts that includes moderation by pre-existing conditions and mediation by policy and behavioral responses.
CONCLUSIONS: Findings suggest that sanctions, likely in combination with the First Gulf War, halted a rapid decline in under-5 mortality for more than a decade.