Publikations

Project homepage GIGA

von Soest, Christian. 2024. Sanktionen: Mächtige Waffe oder hilfloses Manöver? Frankfurt: Frankfurter Allgemeine Buch.

von Soest, Christian. 2024. International Actors and Autocratization. In The Routledge Handbook of Autocratiztion, Hrsg. Aurel Croissant und Luca Tomini, 253-266, London: Routledge.

von Soest, Christian. 2024. Pressure Proofing: How Authoritarian Regimes Respond to Sanctions. In Research Handbook on Authoritarianism, Hrsg. Natasha Lindstaedt und Jeroen J.J. den Bosch, 300-315, Cheltenham: Edward Elgar Publishing.

von Soest, Christian. 2024. Die Zukunft der Sanktionen. In: Internationale Politik, 79/01. Link.

Abstract

Individual sanctions have become a go-to instrument with which Western powers confront challenges to international peace and security. Shaping the trend of individualizing accountability, the United States (USA) and the European Union (EU) as the main bilateral global sanction senders list individuals and entities to hold them accountable for the instigation of armed conflict, the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, or the violation of human rights. INSA seeks to systematically analyze and compare the listing decisions of the USA and the EU. The project’s principal research questions are: (1) Which individuals and entities are selected as targets and put on sanctions lists? (2) How are these individuals and entities selected? And (3) Why are specific individuals and entities selected as sanction targets by the USA and EU?

The US and EU sanctions lists are now hundreds of pages long. However, the use of individual sanctions varies considerably: For instance, the US and the EU swiftly imposed repeated sanctions packages on Russian nationals and entities to counter the country’s February 2022 military invasion of Ukraine. Yet major discrepancies between senders remain, namely when it comes to the number of listed individuals and entities as well as of listed so-called oligarchs with close links to the Kremlin. We are currently unable to systematically account for this variance in the selection of individual sanctions targets either in this case or beyond.

To help overcome these shortcomings, INSA will use and further develop an original theoretical model that incorporates (1) trigger events, (2) issue areas, (3) sender traits, and (4) target characteristics within one unified framework. Empirically, the project will apply a multimethod research design that combines the advantages of broad statistical comparisons with in-depth investigation of decision-makers’ considerations. In its first analytical step, INSA will use computational text analysis of US and EU sanctions lists to construct a database on the number and position of listed individuals and entities. This will allow for the tracking of the dynamic listing patterns and for multivariate analysis of the factors that shape the listings. In the complementary second analytical step, qualitative analysis will help reconstruct the decision-making processes that drive the listings in four sanctions regimes. Qualitative interviews will focus on how listing decisions are made. In addition, the project will investigate whether listings are mandated by the United Nations as well as the relationship between individual and entity listings.