| Endowed with abounding natural resources, an extensive domestic market, and a vast territory, the big powers depend less on the outside world and are able to withstand the great losses caused by sanctions. Therefore, sanctions against big powers were always prone to end up with failure, undergoing long duration altogether. However, we encounter with a puzzle that the small states depending highly on the outside world can also survive long the severe sanctions.The duration of sanctions is, at the same time, a matter of efficacy of sanctions. The long duration of sanctions tells the low effectiveness of sanctions. The low effectiveness or the long duration of sanctions has been explained in four perspectives respectively as follow. The first perspective argues that the duration of sanctions depends on the intensity or severity of sanctions. The second argues that the more accurately the sanctionees are targeted, the more effective sanctions will be. The third contends that the efficacy of sanctions has a lot to do with the conflict expectations between the sanctioners and the sanctionees. Besides the aforementioned, there is another perspective arguing that the efficacy of sanctions depends on the perception and misconception of the sanctionees toward the intention, determination, and capability of the sanctioners. Those explanations are reasonable respectively in some way or another, but they are exposed to some problems such as logical inconsistency, low operationalization etc.The author places high importance on the role of domestic politics in understanding the duration of sanctions. All available measures will be taken by the sanctionees to circumvent sanctions when they are threatened by or imposed on sanctions, which will in turn have an impact on the domestic structure of the sanctionees. In detail, the state power of the sanctionees will expand while their social power will be restrained. One of the outcomes of domestic changes in the sanctionees is the increase of the capacity, determination, and confidence of them in resisting sanctions. In this way, a sanction deadlock emerges and the duration of sanctions prolongs.In the end, the United Nations sanctions against South Rhodesia during1966-1979are employed to test the major hypotheses raised in this dissertation. |
