This memo examines how targeted sanctions can operate in a political marketplace system. It argues that we should analyse the sanctions toolkit in the context of the transactional politics of elites in sanctioned countries, and specifically the logic of the political marketplace, which emerges as a powerful metric for understanding what sanctions actually do. On this basis, we can assess what are the likely impacts of sanctions (or their removal).
Targeted sanctions are one of the most attractive and promising policy tools available to address
identifiable threats to peace and security. Since 1994, sanctions regimes have largely morphed from
deploying the heavy artillery of comprehensive national sanctions to using a range of what are ostensibly precision instruments. However, two problems plague their application, which inhibit actionable knowledge: (1) asking whether they “work” is not the right question; and (2) the dominant assumptions underlying their imposition are wrong. This is particularly pronounced where sanctions are most often used—political marketplace systems and active and complex conflicts in Africa and the Middle East.
