Research note: the normalisation of sanctions
Economic sanctions were once an exceptional instrument short of war; today they are a routine option in great-power toolboxes. As frequency rises, forms evolve: from comprehensive embargoes to targeted sanctions, from financial sanctions to export controls, from unilateral measures to coalition coordination. The normalisation of sanctions is itself a governance phenomenon worth studying.
Three mechanisms of diffusion
- Effectiveness contest: every sanction provokes evasion and counter-measures, and the interaction drives continuous tool upgrading.
- Demonstration effect: successful cases encourage imitation, creating self-reinforcing diffusion.
- Domestic politics: sanctions cost less politically than military options and serve as low-cost signals of resolve, further lowering the threshold for use.
Measurement challenges
Assessing sanctions faces fundamental measurement difficulties: no counterfactual (what would have happened without sanctions); long and complex causal lags; and evasion that is hard to observe systematically. Scholarly disagreement about whether sanctions “work” partly reflects differing measurement choices. Researchers must distinguish declared goals from actual effects and avoid substituting goal-achievement rates for systematic evaluation.
Governance implications
Diffusion has deep implications for global governance. First, rule spillover: extraterritorial application expands unilateral rules and squeezes multilateral space. Second, system fragmentation: fears over the “weaponisation” of payments, settlement and technology drive alternative systems, deepening economic fragmentation. Third, norm dilution: when sanctions are frequently used for goals without Security Council authorisation, their legitimacy as an instrument of international law erodes. These trends mean sanctions research cannot stop at the debate over effectiveness; it must ask about long-term effects on the structure of global order.
Next steps
This note is a working paper of the global governance research line. Next we will build an open database of sanction and counter-sanction events, compile a typology of instruments and trace selected cases, providing reusable data for systematic assessment.
Sources and version: v1.0 (2026-09).