Sanctions have long been a part of international politics. They’re a tool that can put pressure on civilian societies and economies without the brutality of war. But they also carry with them the potential to be counterproductive if used in the wrong way, especially when applied against larger countries like Germany and Italy in the 1930s. This was a critical lesson that was largely lost in the postwar world, with its focus on austerity and Keynesian economic growth.
This is one of the reasons why it’s important to look at sanctions through a lens that goes beyond the utilitarian, game-theoretic language they’re typically assessed in. To truly understand how sanctions work, we need to look at them holistically, with the tools of not only political science, but also history and the study of culture and ideas.
The GSI’s methodology looks at four dimensions of sanctions effectiveness: transparency, granularity, consistency and the ability to measure change over time. Of these, the most critical is transparency, which reflects a country’s willingness to make its autonomous sanction lists public. This includes making them easily searchable, allowing for comparison between lists and ensuring that lists are updated regularly. The lowest scorer is China, which only makes its list of designated individuals and entities public through press releases and does not maintain a consolidated autonomous sanctions list. The second lowest scorer is Saudi Arabia, which lacks a publicly accessible information schema and does not maintain its list of designated individuals and entities online for more than short periods of time.