Economic Sanctions as Revenge: Evidence from the 2022–23 Russia Sanctions

• In Event: Economic Sanctions and Retaliation

Abstract

Are economic sanctions seen and supported by the public as a strategic policy tool, or simply as punishment, regardless of their ultimate effectiveness? We examine this question with original, pre-registered survey experimental data from three key sanctioning countries: the UK, Germany, and the US, from December 2020 to January 2022. We then examine whether the Russian invasion of Ukraine – a major foreign policy shock, followed by ‘unprecedented’ Western economic sanctions – changed the drivers of individual-level support for sanctions in this regard. We present three-wave panel data from the US from shortly before the invasion (January 2022), at the height of the invasion (March 2022), and one year later (February–June 2023). This timing and our survey design allow us to isolate the short- and medium-term effects of dramatic external shocks on utilitarianism and revenge as micro-level drivers of foreign policy. As expected, in ‘ordinary times’ and across countries, we find that a retrospective assessment of sanctions having been effective increases support, while an assessment of ineffectiveness strongly decreases support. In the ‘times of crisis’ of early March 2022, contrary to our pre-registered expectations, the effect sizes of these effectiveness treatments remain essentially unchanged. We interpret this as evidence for the US public having highly utilitarian and consistent foreign policy preferences, even in extreme circumstances, in which we had expected revenge to drive preferences to a greater extent than in ‘ordinary times.’

Author

• Anton Peez, Goethe University Frankfurt