Fostering agreements or hampering compromise: The context-specific effect of sanctions in peace negotiations

Whether sanctions push parties to reach a negotiated settlement and contribute to ending a conflict is disputed in the literature. Discussions on the effect and success of sanctions mainly focus on their costs for the target and proper implementation. Building on individual-level experimental insights from political psychology, we argue that the effectiveness of sanctions as a conflict management tool also depends on the conflict context. In territorial conflicts linked closely to identities and immaterial values, we expect sanctions to cause a negative backlash that makes conflict parties unwilling to compromise. In government conflicts, however, the additional costs of sanctions could lead the parties to make more far-reaching concessions. We study the impact of sanctions on the outcome of peace negotiations in intrastate conflicts between 1990 and 2012, using a novel measure of conflict parties' willingness and ability to make concessions. Our analysis presents evidence for a differential effect of sanctions according to conflict type and provides insight how these effects evolve over time.