The effects of economic sanctions

What direct and indirect effects have been produced by economic sanctions imposed on Serbia from 1991 to present day?

This volume examines a major problem of great interest - economic sanctions have been by far the most used international instrument of pressure after the end of the Cold War - and contributes to its discussion by studying a specific case. It also investigates the enforcement of sanctions against Serbia as a sign of adequacy - or inadequacy - of the policy carried out on the former Yugoslavia by Western countries for eight years.

Sanctions on Serbia - and, for most of the period taken into account, also on Montenegro - had important repercussions both at economical and political levels, despite their doubtful enforcement and the lack of a progressive pressure strategy of which sanctions were to be but an element.

Economically speaking, sanctions clearly showed to be among the causes of a devastated economy, although it is difficult to separate their specific effects from concomitant factors present in the economic development of that country during same years - economic mismanagement, warfare, etc. - and precisely locate them within the continuous adjustments operated to sanctions.

On the political side, significant repercussions were reported, but not always proportionate to the clear purposes pursued by sanction-makers. Only in a few cases and on well determined issues can a change in the behaviour of Belgrade management be ascribed to external pressure, whereas the most significant and longer lasting effect seems to have been a consolidation of nationalist and isolationist positions in Serbia. Sanctions have apparently strengthened the management's confidence on those positions for its own political survival.

Among the many issues of the theory of sanctions, this study is focused on the mechanisms that should lead the political class of the sanctioned country to change their behaviour due to an external negative economic pressure. What is particularly clear in the case of Serbia is that the effects of this pressure were subordinated not only to more or less democratic institutional structures and the capacity of the Serbian management to adjust economy and policy to the economic effects of sanctions, but also, and mainly, to the grass-root basis for public support to the political management, especially in historic situations such as the dissolution of a federal state, as it the case for Serbia.

Mario Zucconi is a professor of International Relations at the Department of Political Sciences, University of Urbino, and for many years has held a chair at US institutions. Mainly interested in Atlantic crises and relations, he has been studying the international reactions to the Balkan crisis for years. On this topic, he published several essays in volumes and magazines of international politics.