1988/06/01 by Roy Licklider · 59 citations
Social Sciences · Economics, Econometrics and Finance · Energy · #Middle East and Rwanda Conflicts #Natural Resources and Economic Development #Global Energy Security and Policy #Kingdom #Political science #Power (physics) #Economic history #Library science #History #Geology
paper · doi:10.2307/2600627
published in International Studies Quarterly 32(2), 205 (Oxford University Press)
openalex publication_date 1988/06/01 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/29
An extensive literature argues that economic sanctions by themselves do not usually force governments to alter important policies, but the literature does not make it clear why this is true. According to its initiators, the purpose of the 1973–74 Arab oil weapon was to force changes in the policies of states toward the Arab-Israeli conflict. This article examines the responses of the Netherlands, Canada, the United Kingdom, Japan, and the United States to this attempted coercion. The analysis shows that these countries did not significantly alter their policies, apparently because the sanctions were unable to coerce top-level decision-makers and did not create much political pressure on them, a problem shared by most attempts at limited external coercion.