US Economic Sanctions Against China: A Cultural Explanation of Sanction Effectiveness

Recent patterns suggest that states are using economic sanctions more frequently. However, sanctions fail to achieve intended political or economic goals most of the time. To account for this anomaly, I introduce a culture-based explanation. The rationale is that sanction effectiveness cannot be solely judged by norms and standards of sender countries. Target countries' cultural norms play an important role in explaining sanction effectiveness. Using cases of US economic sanctions against China, I show that the norms and beliefs of target countries play an important role in defining sanction effectiveness. The implication of the study is that senders of economic sanctions must take cultural responses and sensitivity of targets into serious consideration in order to deploy credible and successful economic sanctions as a foreign policy tool.