Collaborative Research: The Threat and Imposition of Economic Sanctions

该奖项是根据2009年美国复苏和再投资法案（公法111-5）资助的。近年来，关于经济制裁的研究取得了很大进展，理论与证据之间存在着令人印象深刻的关系。最近的实证工作导致了现有数据无法回答的理论问题的发展。该项目提供必要的数据，以检验这些新的理论发展，特别是有关制裁威胁和持续时间的问题。这使人们对制裁事件从最初的威胁到最终结束的过程中的动态有了更深入的了解。这有助于我们能够确定制裁何时可以成为外交政策的有用工具，也有助于我们能够有效地执行制裁。这项工作以以前的研究为基础，这些研究产生了一个包含1971-2000年期间888个制裁案例的数据集，并在一系列出版物中使用了这些数据。虽然这个数据集比以前的制裁数据有许多优点，但时间域太短，无法对几个理论上重要的问题进行充分的测试。例如，时间跨度太短，无法调查制裁使用情况在一段时间内的变化，而许多重大制裁案例持续了30多年，这一事实说明研究制裁持续时间的数据存在缺陷。在这个项目中，我们将数据追溯到1945年，并向前延伸到2010年。然后，这些数据将用于检验有关以下方面的假设：制裁的持续时间、制裁的使用模式如何随时间变化以及影响这些变化的因素，以及特定国家使用制裁的能力如何随时间变化。这个项目的一个主要的更广泛的影响将是建立一个关于经济制裁的大型数据库，包括威胁和实施，跨越很长一段时间，比其他广泛使用的数据集更少受到偏见的影响。大量对制裁进行实证研究的学者会发现这些数据非常有用。此外，该项目为大量本科生和研究生提供了研究经验，有助于培养下一代学者。此外，数据分析的结果有助于我们对制裁过程的理论理解，这反过来又可以为政策辩论提供信息，特别是因为它们将确定影响制裁成功的条件，并突出更有可能成功的威胁战略。预测制裁持续时间的能力将特别有用，因为它将使决策者能够更好地预测其制裁战略的成本。由于许多人认为，与使用武力相比，制裁是一种更容易接受的强制性外交手段，因此这项研究可以指导制定更有效、杀伤力更小的外交政策。

This award is funded under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (Public Law 111-5).Research on economic sanctions has advanced a great deal in recent years and there has been an impressive relationship between theory and evidence. Recent empirical work has led to the development of theoretical questions that cannot be answered with existing data. This project produces the data necessary to test these new theoretical developments, particularly with respect to questions surrounding sanction threats and duration. This leads to a far greater understanding of the dynamics of sanctions episodes as they unfold from initial threat to the ultimate conclusion. This contributes to our ability to identify when sanctions can be a useful tool of foreign policy as well as to our ability to implement sanctions efficiently.This work builds on previous research that resulted in the creation of a data set containing 888 cases of sanctions in the 1971-2000 period and in the use of these data in a series of publications. While this data set has a number of advantages over previous sanctions data, the temporal domain is too short to permit adequate tests of several, theoretically important, questions. For example, the time span is too short to investigate the changes in sanctions usage over time, and the fact that many major cases of sanctions last well over thirty years illustrates a shortcoming in the data for studying sanctions duration. In this project, we extend the data back to 1945 and forward to 2010. The data will then be used to test hypotheses regarding: the duration of sanctions, how the pattern of sanctions usage has changed over time and what has influenced these changes, and how the ability of specific states to use sanctions has changed over time.One major broader impact of this project will be the development of a large data base on economic sanctions that includes threats as well as impositions, that spans a long time period, and that suffers from fewer biases than other widely used data sets. The large number of scholars conducting empirical work on sanctions will find these data quite useful. In addition, the project provides research experience to a large number of undergraduate and graduate students, helping to train the next generation of scholars. Moreover, the findings from analyzing the data contribute to our theoretical understanding of sanctions processes which can in turn inform policy debates, particularly in that they will identify the conditions that affect sanctions success as well as highlight the threat strategies that are more likely to meet with success. The ability to anticipate the duration of sanctions will be particularly useful in that it will allow policy makers to better anticipate the costs of their sanction strategies. Since many believe that sanctions are a more palatable means of coercive diplomacy than is the use of military force, this research can guide the development of more effective, and less lethal, foreign policies.