Deter, bargain, destabilize: Explaining the initiation, duration and success of economic sanctions

What causes the imposition of economic sanctions? What locks sanctions in? In my dissertation, I argue that military rivalry, more than anything else, contributes to long episodes of sanctions between states. But, counter-intuitively, rivals are not more likely to engage in economic sanctions than other states.; I arrive at these insights by developing a formal model to study the initiation and lifting of sanctions. I represent the process of ending sanctions that are already in place as a game of bargaining. I model the pre-sanctions stage as a game of deterrence. I show that, because the expectation of what will happen once sanctions are in place affects the willingness of state leaders to incur them, factors that predict the end of sanctions need not predict their start. One specific example is that economic sanctions between rivals will be longer, but not more likely to begin.; We learn two new things about rivalry and cooperation. First, the well-known finding of lower levels of trade between adversaries is the product of longer sanctions between rival states. Second, given that rivalry does not cause sanctions to occur, the prospects that cooperation can endure between military rivals are much higher than what we thought.; Another testable implication of the model is that economic sanctions should, on average destabilize the leaders they target. If they do, government leaders have an incentive to avoid them.; I test these arguments on an original dataset of sanction events specifically compiled to assess the main hypotheses of the thesis, which prove to be strongly supported.; In sum, the dissertation (1) explains what accounts for past variation in the length of economic sanctions, (2) argues that political leaders have an incentive to avoid and end sanctions, and, (3) points to why we should be optimistic about the future. Two specific reasons for optimism are that sanctions may be more effective than we thought, and that even military rivals need not pay the costs of economic confrontation.