The costs of military ventures and concern for human rights have increased the importance of international sanctions in the twenty-first century, but our knowledge is still limited in this area. The United Nations sanctions on Libya, Al Qaeda and Rwanda, or the European Union restrictive measures on the US, Transnistria and Uzbekistan are sparsely covered by the media and attempts to measure the effectiveness of any of these sanctions comes up against the fundamental (unanswered) question: What can sanctions do and when? This book enhances our understanding of how sanctions work and explains what we can expect from their imposition. Through analysis of the sanctioning experience of the UN and EU after the Cold War, the investigation tests a comprehensive theoretical model and concludes that the context in which sanctions are imposed is crucial in deciding the type of sanctions adopted. Giumelli shakes our preconceptions on sanctions and sets the terms for more constructive debates in the future.

This is a thoughtful study of economic sanctions as instruments of statecraft together with other forms of statecraft in pursuit of a variety of foreign policy goals. To his credit, the author neither dismisses nor ignores signaling as a foreign policy device. -- David A. Baldwin, Princeton University
In his important contribution to the field of UN and EU targeted sanctions, Francesco Giumelli provides an excellent conceptual account of the challenges this strategic tool confronts in today's world. He does so by providing both an excellent theoretical as well as methodological analysis, especially with regard to strategies of coercing, constraining and signalling. What more is that Dr. Giumelli also provides scientific recommendations for how to move the field forward. In short then, this book should be a required reading for anyone interested in the state of the art of sanctions. -- Mikael Eriksson, Researcher, Swedish Defence Research Agency
Francesco Giumelli's analytical distinction between the different purposes of sanctions - to coerce, to constrain, to signal - introduces an innovative way to think about and to evaluate the effectiveness of sanctions. -- Thomas J. Biersteker, Curt Gasteyger Chair in International Security and Conflict Studies, The Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies