What Makes Sanctions Threats Threatening?

Sanctions are a prominent tool of foreign policy. Recently, scholars have begun to move from a debate about ‘do sanctions work’ to a more nuanced discussion of how and when sanctions may be effective. For example, it has been argued convincingly that if sanctions are able to change the behavior of a targeted state, they should do so at the threat-stage before sanctions are imposed. If that is the case, an important question arises: What makes sanctions threats threatening? When will sanctions credibly convey the sender’s willingness to impose sanctions and, if necessary, consider military force? This paper develops and tests hypotheses regarding the efficacy of sanctions threats. Different types of sanctions vary in the economic costs they impose on the target state as well as on the sender state itself. At the same time, political regimes differ in how the economic costs of sanctions are translated into political costs for the state leader. I argue that the regime type of the sender state and the type of sanction threatened jointly determine whether sanctions threats are signals of resolve or signs of weakness. I expect targeted states to be more likely to either acquiesce outright or seek a negotiated settlement when faced with a sanctions threat that imposes significant political costs on the leader of the sender state. Conversely, targeted states should be more likely to stand firm in the face of threats that do not impose such costs, ceteris paribus. Using data from the new Threats and Imposition of Economic Sanctions (TIES) dataset (Morgan and Bapat 2006), I evaluate the theoretical argument against rival explanations for the time period 1971 to 2000. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]