Are Tougher Political Sanctions Better? Statistical Model Compares Political and Economic Relations to Success

Before Russia launched an aggressive war against Ukraine in 2022, it had already carried out an airstrike against Georgia in 2008 and invaded Crimea and Donbas in 2014. This left politicians and researchers in the grips of the question: could the current war in Ukraine have been prevented if countries had implemented a more decisive and intensive sanctions policy at the time?

In a new study, Gerald Schneider, professor of international politics at the University of Konstanz, and Thies Niemeier, a doctoral student at the Konstanz Graduate School of the Social and Behavioral Sciences (GSBS), forecast how effective tougher sanctions could be. The work was published in the journal Research and Policy.

Their assessment is based on a statistical model that compares political and economic relations between countries to the success of sanctions. This allows them to identify factors that are likely to make sanctions more effective. These variables include greater sanctions intensity, closer economic ties to the sanctioned country, and the country’s history as a colony of a European country.

Learning from the past

“It is extremely important that policymakers are able to fully assess the likely consequences of different policy measures. Ideally, they should be able to assess these effects in advance and make decisions accordingly,” says lead author Niemeier.

Even later, however, it is useful to draw conclusions about the relationship between the strength of sanctions and their impact. Researchers use “counterfactuals” to analyze what would have happened differently if certain policy measures had been taken earlier, were more forceful, or implemented differently.

Niemeier and Schneider studied sanctions imposed on Egypt, Burundi, Mali, and Russia by the European Union and the United States. They classify sanctions into different degrees of intensity. According to their model, examples of “soft measures” include restrictions on the freedom of movement of specific Russian oligarchs introduced after 2014, as well as barriers to investment by individual Russian companies.

Further categories of sanctions include measures such as arms trade bans and development aid freezes or trade restrictions in certain industrial sectors. The most severe category includes broad economic embargoes, such as those once imposed against South Africa and now imposed on Russia.

The higher the intensity, the greater the effectiveness

The researchers found that — at least for the EU — decisive action in response to Russia’s annexation of Crimea and invasion of Donbas would have a greater impact than the moderate approach taken so far.

“When they are more credible and costly for the target country, economic sanctions are more likely to induce the country to make concessions,” Schneider says. In Africa in particular, the EU or the US, together with the African Union or the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS), have repeatedly succeeded in responding quickly and decisively.

And what about Russia? “Our models suggest that intensive sanctions in 2014 would have likely increased the costs of future aggression and made President Putin more willing to negotiate,” Schneider explains. “Even if they were probably not enough to persuade Russia to withdraw from Crimea.”

Political scientists base this forecast on the close economic and political ties between the EU and Russia, as well as the negotiating power of Brussels resulting from them.

Schneider concludes: “The 2014 sanctions, which were eased following lobbying by the financial and energy sectors, reinforced President Putin’s mistaken belief that increasing the level of aggression against Ukraine would only lead to a few costly sanctions.”

According to the study, while tougher EU sanctions would make Russia more willing to make concessions, similar measures by the US would have little success. The model predicts that stronger sanctions by a Western superpower do not necessarily have a greater impact.

US-America Sanctions Strategies

According to the study, the intensity of economic ties with a sanctioned country has an impact on how effective sanctions will be. As a Western superpower, the United States may pursue a different strategy when imposing sanctions on countries.

“When a world power like the United States threatens sanctions, the countries threatened with sanctions tend to make concessions so that sanctions do not have to be imposed on them,” Niemeier explains. “Another factor is that the United States sometimes imposes strong economic sanctions on countries that are only slightly dependent on the US economy. These sanctions cannot be effective if they do not create economic pressure.”