Coercive Cooperation: Explaining Multilateral Economic Sanctions.

Coercive Cooperation: Explaining Multilateral Economic Sanctions. Lisa Martin's Coercive co��er��cive?adj.Characterized by or inclined to coercion.co��ercive��ly adv. Cooperation: Explaining MultilateralEconomic Sanctions Economic sanctions are economic penalties applied by one country (or group of countries) on another for a variety of reasons. Economic sanctions include, but are not limited to, tariffs, trade barriers, import duties, and import or export quotas. is an ambitious book that will be of great interestto both theorists and practitioners of international relations international relations,study of the relations among states and other political and economic units in the international system. Particular areas of study within the field of international relations include diplomacy and diplomatic history, international law, . Thesubject of economic sanctions, of course, is hardly an understudiedtopic. Within the last decade alone two classic books have beenpublished on the subject: David Baldwin's Economic State-craft andGary Hufbauer and Jeffrey Schott's Economic SanctionsReconsidered.(1) As Martin points out, however, economic sanctions nowmerit even greater study because the end of the Cold War will probablyincrease the relevance of sanctions in world politics. As seen by boththe debate over the utility of sanctions before the Persian Gulf War andthe more recent conflict over how the international community shouldrespond to Serbian aggression, it is clear that the issue of sanctionsremains highly contentious among both scholars and policy makers. Most studies of economic sanctions are concerned with the issue ofwhether the target of the efforts to impose sanctions changes itsbehavior as a result of national or international pressure. Instead ofexploring this question, Coercive Cooperation focuses on the prior butno less important, question of how cooperation is achieved among thenations imposing sanctions. This focus adds greatly to the book'svalue, because Martin's hypotheses and evidence can be extended farbeyond the specific issue area of economic sanctions. Even scholarsuninterested in sanctions will find this book useful in that it addsempirical insights into some of the more enduring theoretical debates inthe field. A good example of how Coercive Cooperation contributes to othertheoretical debates lies in Martin's test of the declining hegemonythesis. Contrary to what one would expect from the arguments ofhegemonic stability theorists, Martin shows that the United States United States,officially United States of America, republic (2005 est. pop. 295,734,000), 3,539,227 sq mi (9,166,598 sq km), North America. The United States is the world's third largest country in population and the fourth largest country in area. hasactually received more international support for its efforts to imposesanctions in recent years than it did in the immediate postwar period.Leaving aside the contentious debates over whether U.S. power hasactually declined, Martin's evidence provides some empiricalsupport for the counterintuitive coun��ter��in��tu��i��tive?adj.Contrary to what intuition or common sense would indicate: "Scientists made clear what may at first seem counterintuitive, that the capacity to be pleasant toward a fellow creature is ... theoretical arguments of scholars whohave suggested that a declining hegemon heg��e��mon?n.One that exercises hegemony.[Greek hgem might actually gain morecooperation from other states than it did during the era when itspreponderance pre��pon��der��ance? also pre��pon��der��an��cyn.Superiority in weight, force, importance, or influence.Noun 1. preponderance of power was unquestioned. Martin advances two major arguments about the utility of economicsanctions. First, she emphasizes the role of credibility andself-inflicted costs in explaining why some efforts to impose sanctionssucceed and others fail. While this conclusion will surely be of littlesurprise to students of security affairs, Martin's findings shouldhelp to bridge the gap that still divides the sub-fields of security andinternational political economy. Second, she provides strong evidence tosupport the claim that international institutions play an important rolein establishing and facilitating cooperation among nations. Martin argues that in explaining the success or failure ofinternational sanctions International sanctions are actions taken by countries against others for political reasons, either unilaterally or multilaterally.There are three types of sanctions. Diplomatic sanctions - the reduction or removal of diplomatic ties, such as embassies. , "considerations of credibility provide themost explanatory leverage." She posits that a state thatdemonstrates a strong willingness to absorb costs to impose sanctionsagainst another state is far more likely to gain the cooperation ofothers. Her evidence on this point is largely derived from the casestudies on the sanctions imposed on the Soviet Union after the invasionof Afghanistan in 1980, and the Western response to Poland'simposition of martial law martial law,temporary government and control by military authorities of a territory or state, when war or overwhelming public disturbance makes the civil authorities of the region unable to enforce its law. in 1982. Martin convincingly argues thatPresident Carter's willingness to impose a grain embargo in 1980was instrumental in encouraging the Europeans to implement sanctions inthe former case; President Reagan's unwillingness to do socontributed to the inadequate response by the Europeans in the lattercase. The only problem with Martin's argument about the importanceof credibility is that it has been made before, most notably by Baldwinin Economic Statecraft state��craft?n.The art of leading a country: "They placed free access to scientific knowledge far above the exigencies of statecraft"Anthony Burgess.Noun 1. . While this does not diminish the importance ofthe argument, readers familiar with the literature on sanctions mightwonder why Martin did not choose to examine the importance ofcredibility in other, less well-known cases. A far more controversial argument concerns the role of institutionsin explaining state cooperation. Coercive Cooperation goes beyond mostof the vast literature on conflict and cooperation in seeking todetermine whether institutions actually help to explain cooperation, orwhether they are simply epiphenomenal. To her credit, Martin isunwilling to rely simply on the positive statistical correlation betweenthe involvement of institutions and the success of efforts to imposesanctions. Furthermore, she readily acknowledges that, despite thestatistical evidence, a skeptic "could make a case that states maketheir decisions on sanctions without regard to any organizationalconstraints and then turn to institutions to ratify ratifyv. to confirm and adopt the act of another even though it was not approved beforehand. Example: An employee for Holsinger's Hardware orders carpentry equipment from Phillips Screws and Nails although the employee was not authorized to buy anything. or justify thesedecisions." Unfortunately, Martin seems to go too far in seeking to establishthat such skepticism about the importance of institutions isunwarranted. In her chapter on European Community sanctions againstArgentina during the Falklands War The Falklands War (Spanish: Guerra de las Malvinas/Guerra del Atl��ntico Sur), also called the Falklands Conflict/Crisis , she attributes a great deal ofimportance to Ireland's decision to support the Community despiteGreat Britain's major role in the conflict. To be sure,Ireland's leaders were indeed wary of jeopardizing the substantialfarm subsidies it received from the European Community by refusing to goalong with the decision to impose sanctions. However, the crucial roleplayed by the existence of the farm subsidies and the negligibleeconomic costs of the sanctions to Ireland cast serious doubt on howimportant purely institutional considerations were in Ireland'sdecision. While Martin considers it very important to demonstrate howinstitutional solidarity played a key role in Ireland's earlydecisions, she glosses over the fact that this solidarity was evidentlynot deep enough to make Ireland go along with the E.C. decision tocontinue sanctions after the original deadline expired. With regard to the book's methodology, Coercive Cooperation isone of the more sophisticated books to be published in recent memory.Martin starts out by developing a game-theoretic model of cooperation,which rightly points out that any model of cooperation must take intoaccount different types of problems related to collective action. Afterpresenting her theoretical model, Martin effectively uses the datacollected by Hufbauer and Schott in order to test some relevanthypotheses. Unlike many scholars who employ statistical models ininternational relations, Martin is well aware of the limitationsinherent in the approach. She goes to great lengths to explain the wayin which her variables are operationalized and measured. In order toassure the reader that she is actually measuring her dependent variable,cooperation, she employs several different measures and models. Byexplicitly testing the relationships from the statistical analysis inher case studies, Martin overcomes the major weakness of purelyquantitative studies; she effectively demonstrates that correlation isnot the same as causation causationRelation that holds between two temporally simultaneous or successive events when the first event (the cause) brings about the other (the effect). According to David Hume, when we say of two types of object or event that “X causes Y” (e.g. . Even readers who are usually skeptical ofstatistical analyses will be impressed by the way in which Martin hasdesigned her analysis. Martin's focus in the case studies on the same variablesemployed in her statistical analysis provides a useful structure for thebook, though some readers might wish that she had deviated from thisstructure in certain chapters. For example, her chapter on the failureof the Carter administration's attempt to gain European support forsanctions against human rights abusers in Latin America Latin America,the Spanish-speaking, Portuguese-speaking, and French-speaking countries (except Canada) of North America, South America, Central America, and the West Indies. during the late1970s raises some very interesting questions and hypotheses about thedomestic politics of economic sanctions. Martin convincingly argues thatCarter's focus on human rights, often portrayed as the height ofidealism, was motivated to a great extent by his need to reconcilecompeting factions within the Democratic party. She speculates thatthere may be a relationship between sanctions attempts that aredomestically motivated and a subsequent failure to obtain internationalsupport. Instead of simply laying out this possibility as a topic forfuture research, Martin might have taken the opportunity to explain thishypothesis throughout her case studies. The problems with Coercive Cooperation, however, are greatlyoutweighed by its substantial virtues. Future researchers would do wellto follow Martin's example and concentrate on empirical tests ofcompeting theories rather than on attacking so-called straw-manarguments about either the primacy of power or the role of institutions.Martin has clearly raised the standards by which future theoretical andempirical work in the area of cooperation and conflict will beevaluated.