Sanctions and Civil War : Targeted Measures for Conflict Resolution

Abstract

This study raises the issue of how sanctions affect warring parties in a civil war. How do threatened and imposed targeted sanctions affect the likelihood of bringing such parties to conflict resolution? There has been many studies of whether sanctions accomplish what a sender intends. Remarkably, this is the first to explicitly study whether United Nations targeted sanctions have a positive effect on the chances of ending a war, when controlling for the impact of battlefield outcomes. Of the three types of targeted sanctions that are examined the conclusion is that implemented arms embargos are those that have the highest likelihood of positively influencing the parties to move towards conflict resolution. The study is based on an in-depth analysis of recent civil wars in Liberia and Ivory Coast