Costs and Burden-Sharing

Abstract

Willingness to incur costs, according to David Baldwin, is ‘widely regarded as a standard indicator of one’s resolve’.¹ In other words it reflects depth of feeling or degree of concern. There is certainly no doubt that anticipated cost as well as expectations of benefit will play a role in all sanctioning decisions, whether they are made unilaterally or in concert, inside or outside organizational frameworks. In some circumstances sanctions can produce economic gains: withholding of foreign aid, the capture of markets vacated by the target, ‘rewards’ from allies. But costs are generally a more important consideration and Lisa Martin’s careful study supports the proposition that in multilateral sanctioning they ‘have a substantively and statistically significant impact on the level of cooperation’.² Indeed it might not be too far-fetched to include minimization of cost as a secondary objective for senders.