A Story of Institutional Misfit: Congress and US Economic Sanctions

Parting from conventional studies on economic sanctions that look at the properties of the targeted state, this study focuses on the institutional origins of economic sanctions. I observe that most US sanctions either originate from the legislative or the executive branch. Building on this observation, I argue and present evidence that the institutional origin of a US sanction has a discernible effect on that sanction’s duration. An institutional approach underpins the theory I develop to explain this difference. The veto-point approach focuses on the institutional inertia bestowed upon foreign policy actions executed through law and suggests that sanctions imposed as law should last longer than those carried out by executive order. Semi-parametric duration analysis conducted on the recently released Threat and Imposition of Economic Sanctions data confirms this expectation.

Emre Hatipoglu

Research Fellow Emre Hatipoglu is a fellow in the Oil and Gas program and leads the research project Energy Markets and Geopolitics.… Emre Hatipoglu is a fellow in the Oil and Gas program and leads the research project Energy Markets and Geopolitics. In this project, Dr. Hatipoglu and his colleagues assess how political events (e.g., international conflict, economic sanctions, international treaties) and global energy markets interact. Prior to KAPSARC, Dr. Hatipoglu was associate professor at the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences at Sabanci University in Istanbul and a a visiting Fulbrighter during the 2017-2018 academic year at Columbia University. He also served on the advisory board of Sakip Sabanci Center for Turkish Studies at Columbia University between 2016-2018. Dr. Hatipoglu’s work has been published in various scientific journals, such as the Journal of Politics, Energy Research and Social Science, Energy Reports, Foreign Policy Analysis, the Journal of Commodity Markets, and Defence and Peace Economics, among others. He is the editor-in-chief of the journal Energy Transitions, and serves on the editorial board of the International Studies Review.

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