Success of economic sanctions threats: coercion, information and commitment

Abstract

This study examines when and why threats of economic sanctions lead to the successful extraction of policy concessions. Scholars identified three (not mutually exclusive) hypotheses that explain the success of sanction threats: (a) the coercive, (b) the informational and (c) the public commitment hypothesis. The underpinning mechanisms for the hypotheses are, respectively, the economic cost of sanctions, uncertainty about the resolve of the sender and domestic audience cost for issuing empty threats. In this study, we offer an empirical test of the three hypotheses on threats effectiveness. In addition, we assess how variation in the three mechanisms affects the effectiveness of threats relative to imposed sanctions. For the expected economic cost, we use the TIES data. To measure uncertainty, we generate a network of diplomatic relations, based on Formal Alliance data, utilizing methods from complex network theory. To assess public commitment, we use the democracy score based on the POLITY IV data. Our results show that the effectiveness of threats strongly increases in an economic cost to the target; however, threats become increasingly effective relative to imposed sanctions for lower uncertainty and higher domestic audience cost.