Modeling Peaceful Coercion: An Analysis of Globalization, Democracy, and Alliances on US Trade Sanctions Effectiveness

Abstract

In this paper, I develop a model of trade sanctions effectiveness based on leverage. I hypothesize that when target countries of US trade sanctions have more leverage over the US, they are more likely to ignore US sanctions demands, and when they have less leverage, they are more likely to fully concede to US sanctions demands. I also hypothesize that countries will only attempt negotiated settlements or partial concessions when they have leverage over the US which increases their confidence that the US is incentivized to accept such responses. To test this model, I conduct an empirical analysis of 68 cases of US trade sanctions from 1974-2018. I test sanctions effectiveness against globalization, regime-type, NATO membership, and other variables in multinomial logit regressions. As these macro-characteristics are known to affect countries’ leverage with the US in specific ways, I argue that if they affect sanctions responses in line with my model’s predictions, they support my model. My empirics show that these characteristics do support my model of leverage. I also conduct case studies on Iran, Turkey, and France. These cases also support my model while providing a more nuanced contextual analysis of specific sanctions events. While a target country’s leverage with the US as determined by macro-characteristics is certainly not the sole predictor of sanctions effectiveness, this paper finds that it has some effect. Such a finding is novel in the sanctions effectiveness literature, and aids in our understanding of what makes US trade sanctions, a vastly consequential foreign policy tool, effective.