Targeted sanctions are a key element of multilateral diplomacy and a good illustration of contemporary security governance. They are used to counter terrorism, prevent conflict, consolidate implementation of peace agreements, defend human rights, protect civilians, pursue investigations, and prevent proliferation of weapons of mass destruction. They are deliberately designed to be different from comprehensive sanctions; they are intended to have less of a negative humanitarian impact on a general population by targeting leaders, decision-makers, and their principal supporters, rather than entire populations of a country. They are more focused, more adaptable, and are intended to influence or change behaviour with a logic that differs from that associated with comprehensive sanctions.

Despite this, much of the scholarly and popular discourse continues to treat targeted and comprehensive sanctions as if they were the same. Although the UN has nearly twenty years’ experience with targeted sanctions, there has until now been no comprehensive study of their impacts and effectiveness.

This project co-directed by Thomas Biersteker and Sue E. Eckert, Senior Fellow at Brown University’s Watson Institute for International Studies, is intended as a systematic, comprehensive, multi-year, multi-national study of UN targeted sanctions. It has two distinctive features: (1) the unit of analysis is the country case episode (defined by the combination of targeted sanctions in place and/or the principal purpose of the sanctions), rather than the country sanctions regime (some of which have been in existence for nearly 20 years and contain multiple episodes); and (2) effectiveness is evaluated in terms of the ability of targeted sanctions to coerce, constrain, and/or signal potential targets.

Read the rest of this article by Professor Thomas Biersteker in Globe N09, the spring 2012 issue.