Sanctions as Economic Statecraft: An Overview

Abstract

Economic statecraft has long been an important feature of international relations (Baldwin, 1985). The Megarian decree (432 BC), banning all trade between Megara and the Athenian Empire, offers one of the earliest examples of the resort to economic tools for political ends. Some scholars interpreted this ban as Pericles’s vindictive punishment of Megara for its support of Corinth (an ally of Sparta’s) in the battle of Sybota, while others took it to represent a failed deterrence attempt by him to head off a military conflict with Sparta (Lenway, 1988). All were, however, in general agreement that the Megarian decree was a critical turning point in the events leading to the outbreak of the Peloponnesian War.