Why have financial institutions played an increasingly critical role in determining the effectiveness of U.S. economic sanctions over the past two decades, and what can we draw from the recent history of U.S. sanctions enforcement to better understand this development?

Building on approaches developed by Giumelli (2011) and Biersteker et al. (2016), the presentation will be based on a paper that proposes a framework for understanding the ‘intermediary’ role of private multinational financial institutions (MFIs) responsible for implementing senders’ economic restrictions. It asks how the evolution of rules and norms in cross-border sanctions enforcement by the U.S., and its principal vehicle for this task, the Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC), from 1998 to 2018 can help to explain MFIs’ general shift from risk-indifferent to risk-averse behavior towards sanctioned targets.

Through discourse analysis, interviews, and quantitative sources, the project approaches the U.S. enforcement regime through a tripartite framework of power logics: coercion, constraint, and signaling. The analysis thus contributes a historical reflection on the power, practices, and discourse of U.S. sanctions enforcement, challenging conventional interpretations that U.S. power derives solely from extending American coercive economic influence worldwide.

This event is part of the Geneva International Sanctions Network (GISN) events

Please note that the presentation is based upon academic research conducted at the University of Oxford, and does not represent employer views.