The Decision to Modify an Economic Sanction Policy

Abstract

In this chapter, I continue the empirical investigation by turning to the question of what conditions lead the president to modify an economic sanction against another country. The analysis in chapter 5 only assessed the decision to initiate an economic sanction. The next stage of analysis focuses on what the president does once sanctions have been levied. Once economic sanctions have been imposed, the president has a series of choices. He can lift, decrease, or increase the sanctions against the target.¹ Clearly, this decision cannot be modeled with a binary variable because of the multiple choices available to the president. The decisions are not interval data, however, they are ordinal. The president must decide on one of the three increasingly hostile options: completely lift, decrease, or increase the economic pressure on the target.