Reconsidering economic leverage and vulnerability: Trade ties, sanction threats, and the success of economic coercion

Abstract

I contend that a state’s position in the global trade network affects the initiation and outcome of sanction threats. A state is vulnerable, and thus more likely to acquiesce, when its trade has low value to trade partners that are well connected to the global trade network. Conversely, a state has leverage that could motivate the use of sanction threats when its trade has high value to trade partners that are otherwise not well connected. Capturing leverage/vulnerability with an interaction between two network centrality measures, results indicate that vulnerability is associated with acquiescence to sanctions, while leverage is associated with threat initiation.