Suchergebnisse

In recent years, sanctions – or restrictive measures within the framework of the Common Foreign and Security Policy – have become one of the European Union (EU)'s instruments of choice for dealing with external crises. Given EU foreign policymakers so often resort to sanctions, they should be aware of the limits, pitfalls, and benefits associated with this instrument. After all, a well-designed and well-managed sanctions policy requires a profound knowledge of the contextual conditions under which sanctions work – or fail to work. This policy-focused article, therefore, compares dominant views held by EU policy practitioners with the sanctions effectiveness literature. Building on thirty-six expert interviews conducted with members of the EU sanctions community, it examines whether there is a basis for evidence-based policy making inside the EU's sanctions machinery. The article finds that while such basis exists, there is also room for mutual learning between academic experts and EU policy practitioners.

This paper explores and explains the EU's use of sanctions in response to the Arab Spring in 13 Middle East and North Africa (MENA) states. A Qualitative Comparative Analysis (QCA) shows that a combination of historical factors and human rights violations contributed to the EU's decision to impose sanctions in Libya and Syria, while transitional void seems to have been the most important trigger for sanctions in Egypt and Tunisia. The absence of both transitional void and historical economic coercion explains why the EU has refrained from imposing sanctions in negative cases such as Saudi Arabia and Bahrain. Exposing the complex causality of the EU's Arab Spring sanctions, this paper nuances the EU's self-proclaimed normative foreign policy approach and demonstrates that combinations of factors matter for explaining the EU's decision to invoke sanctions in the MENA region.