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36 Harv. Hum. Rts. J. 1 (2023)

handle is hein.journals/hhrj36 and id is 1 raw text is: Economic Sanctions and Human Rights: Quantifying the Legal Proportionality Principle Armin Steinbach,* Jerg Gutmann,** Matthias Neuenkirch,*** and Florian Neumeier* * * * ABSTRACT The benchmarks of necessity and proportionality are constants across different inter- pretations of the proportionality principle. Both rest on empirical premises-with the necessity test involving a prognostic effectiveness assessment and the proportionality test assessing the actual effects of the sanctions. This Article examines these empirical premises and inquires more generally into the potential, and limitations, of quantita- tive assessments in the application of international law. To that end, we employ econometric techniques to explore the proportionality of U.S. sanction episodes between 1976 and 2012. Our results cast doubt on the effectiveness of sanctions aimed at human rights improvements. Furthermore, the results refine the judgment of sanc- tions' (un)proportionality by distinguishing the impact on specific types of rights; and they inform the debate on unilateral versus multilateral as well as targeted sanc- tions. More generally, our analysis can inform the debate on the application of pro- portionality in the field of international law and we outline challenges in importing quantitative standards into the proportionality assessment. INTRODUCTION Sanctions remain a popular tool of economic leverage to conduct foreign policy, with the United States and the European Union (EU) being the most active users.1 In theory, economic pressure on civilians translates into pressure on the government for policy change.2 However, a growing criti- cism of this theory is that economic sanctions frequently fail to achieve * HEC Paris (steinbacha@hec.fr) ** University of Hamburg, University of Freiburg, and CESifo (jerg.gutmann@uni-hamburg.de) *** University of Trier and CESifo (neuenkirch@uni-trier.de) **** ifo Munich, LMU Munich, and CESifo (neumeier@ifo.de) 1. See Gabriel Felbermayr et al., The Global Sanctions Data Bare, 129 EUR. ECON. REV. 1, 1-2 (2020). 2. See Toke S. Aidt, Facundo Albornoz & Esther Hauk, Foreign Influence and Domestic Policy, 59 J. ECON. LITERATURE 426 (2021); Emilie M. Hafner-Burton, A Social Science of Human Rights, 51 J. PEACE RES. 273 (2014); David Cortright & George A. Lopez, Introduction: Assessing Smart Sanctions: Lessons from

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