The United Nations Security Council's effectiveness as a sanctions regime : An intrinsic and extrinsic analysis of targeted sanctions

Thesis (M.A.) from the year 2011 in the subject Politics - International Politics - Topic: International Organisations, grade: 1,5, University of Heidelberg (Politische Wissenschaft), language: English, abstract: The United Nations Security Council's newly adapted "smart sanction" practice aims to be more accurate, thereby seeking not only to increase political effectiveness, but also to reduce unintended humanitarian suffering. So far, scholars have predominately accentuated questions about the compliance rate of targeted states in order to measure the effectiveness of sanctions. They have ignored, however, a potentially poor commitment by states to enforce sanctions in the first place. I argue that the Security Council might suffer from a putative disconnect between the ratification and enforcement of smart sanctions. The concept of input/output legitimacy thereby serves as a model in order to analyze member state's commitment and will to impose smart sanctions, thus developing an alternative understanding about the term "effectiveness". As the Iran and North-Korea cases reveal, ratification and enforcement of smart sanctions suffer legitimacy, thus smart sanctions do not necessarily contribute to a higher effectiveness of the Council. This has ramifications both theoretically and empirically as it makes the concept of legitimacy a valuable tool for policy makers and reformists while simultaneously exposes substantial weaknesses of the new sanction practice.