International Economic Sanctions: A Public Choice Perspective

The United States has recently imposed or threatened economic sanctions of varying kinds against many nations, including South Africa, Poland, Nicaragua, Panama, Brazil, Japan, and China. In fact, the incidence of sanctioning behavior is generally on the increase in the international community. In this incisive study, William H. Kaempfer and Anton D. Lowenberg introduce, analyze, and clarify issues that are key to understanding sanctioning behavior. The authors review several models for evaluating the economic effectiveness of sanctions, but they argue that only a public choice analysis, with its emphasis upon politics, can answer three crucial questions about sanctions: (l) Why, in the light of their notoriously weak economic impacts, are they being used more and more frequently? (2) Why is it that they take the particular forms they do? and (3) Why are they often successful even when their economic impact is slight? Kaempfer and Lowenberg provide detailed answers to these questions, contending that it is political and economic interests within the sanctioning country that determine not only when sanctions will be adopted but also the particular form such sanctions will take. And despite the rhetoric of economic pain, it is the political impact of sanctioning that accounts for whatever success economic sanctions have enjoyed. A model of clear analytic exposition, International Economic Sanctions provides a definitive account of economic sanctions from the perspective of public choice theory. It is essential reading for any scholar of international political economy.