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34 J. Conflict Resol. 3 (1900)

handle is hein.journals/jcfltr34 and id is 1 raw text is: Are Sanctions Effective? A GAME-THEORETIC ANALYSIS GEORGE TSEBELIS University of California at Los Angeles Although economic sanctions have been quite frequent in the twentieth century, a close examination of the low success rate (33 out of 83 cases) indicates that sender countries are not able to select the appropriate cases. Moreover, analysts sometimes offer contradictory advice for such selection. This article provides a game-theoretic explanation of these phenomena. Six different game-theoretic scenarios lead to the same equilibrium outcome. This is a mixed strategy equilibrium. The success ratio is the outcome of the selection of mixed strategies by both sender and receiver countries. Under a wide range of (specified) circumstances, the size of the sanction has no impact upon the behavior of the target country. Finally, some empirical implications of the game-theoretic analysis are compared to existing empirical generalizations, and further implications for empirical research are discussed. Dating as far back as 432 B.C., when Pericles enacted his Megarian decree prohibiting Megarians to trade or travel on Athenian land, economic sanc- tions have been an important ingredient of foreign policy making. In recent history, sanctions have been applied for military purposes, to destabilize foreign governments, protect human rights, and retaliate against terrorist activities. They have been applied collectively by actors such as the League of Nations and the OPEC countries, and unilaterally by individual nation states such as the United States, Soviet Union, United Kingdom, and Canada. In the post-1960 period, sanctions were used as frequently as two or three times per year. One would expect that such a long and dense experience would provide accurate answers to the questions of whether sanctions work, and if so, under AUTHOR'S NOTE: Financial support for this project was provided by UCLA's Academic Senate. I would like to thank R. Bates, J. Frieden, J. Grieco, D. Lake, L. Martin, E. Rogers, and S. Telhami for many useful ideas, comments, and bibliographical references. JOURNAL OF CONFLICT RESOLUTION, Vol. 34 No. 1, March 1990 3-28 ( 1990 Sage Publications, Inc. 3 from the SAGE Social Science Collections. All Rights Reserved.

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