Content area
Full Text
Busted Sanctions: Explaining Why Economic Sanctions Fail. By Early Bryan R. . Stanford : Stanford University Press , 2015. 288p. $29.95.
Book Reviews: International Relations
Economic coercion often fails to deliver desired policy concessions. Bryan Early's book starts with this well-established empirical finding in sanctions research, and then focuses on one factor that contributes to sanctions' high failure rate: third-party states' behavior during sanctions. When a sender government imposes sanctions against a target state, third-party states can choose to engage in sanctions busting, that is, exploit trade opportunities created by the sender's restricted exchanges with the target, or provide the target with foreign aid to compensate for some of the losses resulting from trade restrictions. The puzzle is why third-party states may seek to undermine the sender's sanctioning effort, and why they opt for trade-based sanctions busting in some cases and disburse foreign aid in others. The key contribution of Busted Sanctions is threefold: The book offers a comprehensive examination of sanctions busting, identifies conditions when third-party states will use trade-based and aid-based sanctions-busting strategies, and gauges the detrimental effect of sanctions busting on outcomes of economic coercion.
The author's argument highlights the nexus between domestic and international politics in third-party states' decision to engage in sanctions busting. Building on previous research, which shows that sender-imposed trade restrictions can generate lucrative commercial opportunities for third-party firms, Early points out that such domestic economic benefits of sanctions busting combine with third-party governments' political interest in supporting or undercutting economic sanctions. For instance, a rivalry with the sender state or ideological affinity with the target state may incentivize third-party states to offer assistance to the target, even when economic benefits are absent. In addition, the interest in assisting the target can be tempered by third-party governments'...