Forcing the adversary to choose: Targeted economic sanctions in coercive statecraft

The use of economic sanctions has shifted from comprehensive measures toward more targeted restrictions aimed at specific individuals, firms, and sectors. While existing research evaluates sanctions primarily in terms of their ability to induce compliance, we examine their broader strategic consequences. Specifically, we ask whether targeted sanctions affect the military capacity of sanctioned states differently than comprehensive sanctions. We argue that targeted sanctions impose concentrated costs on politically connected actors, forcing governments to reallocate resources to compensate key supporters, often at the expense of military spending. In contrast, comprehensive sanctions distribute costs broadly and enable governments to preserve or increase defense expenditures. Using cross-national data from 1950 to 2022, we find that targeted sanctions are associated with reductions in military spending and arms trade, whereas comprehensive sanctions are not, highlighting an important indirect effect of sanction design on states’ military capacity.