Economic Statecraft: from Negative Sanctions to Positive Sanctions

This paper presents some insights on economic statecraft with a special focus on economic sanctions. Taking some evidence on negative economic sanctions as point of departure the paper is an attempt to throw light on aspects and factors which could be considered relevant while designing ‘positive’ economic sanctions. Two aspects have been highlighted as being crucial. First, a proper consideration of interest and social groups has been proven to explain the failure of comprehensive negative sanctions, the success of smart sanctions and – more interestingly – the potential success of positive sanctions. Secondly, the existence (or the lack) of some institutional arrangement between sender states also explains the failure of negative sanctions as well as the potential success of positive sanctions.