Abstract

Over the last decades, the use of international sanctions as an instrument of inducing target states into the adoption of new norms or patterns of behaviour has acquired an increasing scholarly attention. In the post-Soviet region, the sanctions recently imposed by the European Union (EU) and the Unites States in response to the ongoing crisis in Ukraine are certainly the most prominent case. The present restrictive measures against Russia place the earlier international sanctions against other post-Soviet states, such as Belarus and Uzbekistan, in shadows. However, revisiting these earlier cases may uncover some new facts concerning the implementation of sanctions that may prove relevant to explaining their effects. This article focuses on the EU sanctions against Uzbekistan that were imposed in late 2005 in the wake of a severe human rights breach by Uzbek authorities during demonstrations in the city of Andijan. The case is exemplary in a sense that so far it has been the only precedent of sanctions enforcement by the EU in post-Soviet Central Asia. Moreover, it was the first time in the EU’s history that a Partnership and Cooperation Agreement with a third state was partly suspended. Therefore, the case is crucial for analysing the performance of EU sanctions in post-socialist autocratic environments. Based on a prior evaluation of the effectiveness of the EU sanctions against Uzbekistan, this article aims to answer the question: what made the EU efforts more or less successful in terms of the Uzbek authorities’ compliance with EU demands? The article particularly scrutinises the process-related factors that have so far attracted little attention of sanctions scholars, namely the substance of demands stated by the sender (in this case the EU) and their implications for the target regime. The article conceives sanctions as an instrument of international socialization and draws on a rationalist approach towards understanding this process. This approach suggests that states (or political elites governing the states) are driven by self-interest and strategic calculation of costs and benefits when considering changing policies. According to this argument, the probability of successful socialisation increases, if targets perceive rewards promised by external actors as being greater than the costs of compliance with the socialisers’ demands. The probability also increases, if targets consider sanctions by external actors to be more costly or dangerous for themselves than compliance. By analysing the case of the EU sanctions against Uzbekistan, the article contributes to the debate concerning the application and effectiveness of ‘smart’ or ‘targeted’ sanctions. Unlike comprehensive embargoes, this type of restrictive measures is intended to put pressure on specific actors (individuals or companies) rather than an entire economy, in order to minimise negative effects for the population. For this reason, smart sanctions have been increasingly used by the EU in recent years, including for the purpose of democracy and human rights promotion. 

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