ABSTRACT
States, either unilaterally or collectively through intergovernmental organizations (IGOs), often opt for economic sanctions to achieve a range of foreign policy objectives. Economic sanctions have frequently involved such ambitious goals as promoting human rights, punishing state sponsors of terrorism, ending civil wars, and resolving trade disputes. Sanctions take the form of trade restrictions (embargoes and boycotts), fi nancial asset freezes, investment bans, suspension of economic and military aid, and travel bans on target countries’ offi cials (Hufbauer et al. 2007). 1 Given the popular use of sanctions in foreign affairs, signifi cant scholarly research and policy debate have been devoted to the utility of economic sanctions in international politics. A major strand of the literature has studied the value of multilateral cooperation in economic statecraft. Scholars and policy makers advocate international cooperation among major sanctioning countries with or without the involvement of IGOs for economic and normative reasons (Doxey 1987; Martin 1992; Haass 1998; Drezner 2000). From an economic standpoint, multilateral cooperation can be vital to impose signifi cant economic costs on target countries. Greater economic damage caused by the sanctions through a coalition of sanctioning states would, in turn, increase the possibility of compliance by the target government. From a moral standpoint, the broad international support for a sanctioning effort could legitimize the use of coercive power since multilateral sanctions indicate that the international community does not approve the wrongdoing committed by the targeted regime.
