Designing Smart Sanctions
The principles of effective sanctions design: targeting, calibration, coalition-building, and clear objectives.
Principles of Effective Sanctions
Decades of sanctions research, particularly by scholars like Gary Hufbauer, Kimberly Ann Elliott, and Daniel Drezner, have identified conditions under which sanctions are most likely to succeed. First, objectives must be clear and achievable. Sanctions that aim to change a specific policy are far more effective than those seeking regime change or fundamental behavioral transformation. Second, the target must have something to lose and a viable path to compliance. Sanctions against isolated autocracies with nothing at stake in the international system rarely work.
Third, coalitions matter. Unilateral sanctions leak. Multilateral sanctions, especially those backed by the target's major trading partners, are significantly more effective. The Iran nuclear deal succeeded in part because sanctions involved the US, EU, and crucially, China's cooperation in reducing oil purchases. Fourth, sanctions must be calibrated to impose costs on decision-makers rather than ordinary citizens -- the lesson of Iraq in the 1990s.
