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The 1992-96 Bulgarian Trade Data Puzzle: A Case of Sanctions Breaking?
By Casimir Dadak
Introduction
Economic sanctions have been used by various countries to achieve political ends with nonmilitary means. Galtung (1967: 379) characterized sanctions as actions designed to penalize one or more countires "by depriving them of some value" or by forcing them "to comply with certain norms." Pape (1997: 97) offered a set of standards to judge the effectiveness of sanctions. In his view, sanctions should be deemed a success if "(1) the target state conceded to a significant part of the coercer's demands; (2) economic sanctions were threatened or actually applied before the target changed its behavior; and (3) no more-credible explanation exists for the target's change of behavior."
The usefulness of this policy tool has been debated for years. Galtung (1967) and Doxey (1980, 1987) find sanctions to be ineffective. Hufbauer, Schott, and Elliott [HSE] find limited success but acknowledge that "the contribution of sanctions to the policy outcome is often murky" (HSE 1990: 41). Pape (1997, 1998) argues that the HSE study is skewed because many of the cases denoted a success were actually resolved with military force rather than with nonviolent means. In response to Pape's arguments, Elliott (1998) stated that the authors of the HSE study "were interested in finding out ... under what circumstances economic leverage might be useful—not necessarily dominant—in achieving foreign policy goals" (p. 51), and conceded that "economic sanctions used independently of other policy tools typically achieve only relatively modest and limited goals" (p. 58). Similarly, Cortright and Lopez (2000) conclude that sanctions alone cannot radically alter the behavior of the receiving nation. Nevertheless, they support the use of sanctions and deem sanctions a success "if they had a positive, enduring impact on bargaining dynamics or if they helped isolate or weaken the power of an abusive regime" (p. 204). The criteria proposed by Elliott and Cortright and Lopez are very broad and differ considerably from those found in Galtung and Pape.
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