Category: Mentorship

This past Thursday, I had the chance to speak with Dr. Jordan Tama for 45 minutes about the evolution of my research project and steps moving forward.[1]

First, we recapped how my understanding of the topic had changed over the semester. Originally, I was interested in broader questions of strategic economics, like ways that states use trade agreements or state investments for political gain. It was then Miles Kahler, with whom I met several times early on and have emailed on-and-off since, who introduced me to the sanctions literature, which I decided to pursue once I discovered its depth and diversity.

We then reviewed the next major development in my understanding, which came largely from my conversations with Dr. Tama. We’d discussed how scholars had explained the success or failure of sanctions, but it seemed like they were frequently talking past each other’s work rather than directly responding to it. Through our conversations, we arrived at the discovery that different scholars in the sanctions debate were seeking to explain different types of success: policy capitulation versus symbolic.[2] Clarifying this definition of success helped me narrow my own focus to only policy-related success, since the other types of success would require different research questions and since a “unified theory” of sanctions would be an enormous endeavor.

He also gave me sound methodological advice in both my eventual choice of method and processes for gathering evidence. During our discussion, Dr. Tama first critiqued the TIES data set for its lack of specificity in some variables.[3] This, combined with the fact that the field had already identified a number of significant variables in explaining sanction success,[4] seemed to suggest that a case study could be useful for both explicating how the variables interact as well as assessing their relative importance. Then, in discussing evidence-gathering, he explained that there was a tradeoff in choosing older versus newer cases: that older cases might yield more declassified documents to search through, while newer cases might lend themselves to interviews with the policymakers themselves.

In terms of next steps, Dr. Tama first recommended I do a few “mini case studies” on the cases I’d selected to make sure that the values of the variables aren’t dramatically different from what I’d anticipated and to ensure that I have adequate diversity in the expression of variables. To do this, he recommended looking up my cases in the TIES data set and then doing additional research from there. He also advised me to begin the IRB process over winter break if I wanted to interview policymakers (which he recommended). He said that because I’d be interviewing policymakers about their work and not their lives, the submission to the IRB would likely be expedited and exempted; however, he said it would still be necessary to make the submission.

In moving forward into 306, I do have several questions/concerns, though none are existential in nature at this point. The first is that as I continue the research process, I am somewhat confident that my case selection will change. There are over 1400 known sanction episodes in the TIES data set, so while the cases I am currently considering would likely be adequate for a research design, I’m sure that better episodes for study will present themselves as I research more.[5] The other question I have is how to go about reaching out to other sanctions scholars to discuss some of their work I intend to build on. Jean-Marc Blanchard, Norrin Ripsman, Adrian Ang, and Dursun Peksen come to mind in particular, since the “stateness” and issue salience variables they invented are components of the typology I am building.[6]

Notes

[1] Though Dr. Tama was not designated as my official mentor, I’ve met with him more and more as the semester has gone on, since he has more specialized knowledge both into my topic area of sanctions as well as into my (now) chosen methodology of case study research. I thus thought it appropriate to use my meetings with him as the basis for this post.

[2] The symbolic success of sanctions can further be divided into international symbolism, designed to impact others’ perceptions of a state, and domestic symbolism, designed to boost public support for the government of a sender country.

[3] The Threat and Imposition of Economic Sanctions (TIES) data set, while it has an impressive number of cases and variables, relies frequently on nominal and ordinal indicators with fewer data on actual costs imposed, for example. The data itself and the codebook can be accessed at http://sanctions.web.unc.edu/. For more information about the data set, see T. Clifton Morgan, Navin Bapat, and Yoshiharu Kobayashi, “Threat and Imposition of Economic Sanctions 1945–2005: Updating the TIES Dataset,” Conflict Management and Peace Science 31, no. 5 (2014): 541–58, https://doi.org/10.1177/0738894213520379.

[4] For a few examples, see Adrian U-Jin Ang and Dursun Peksen, “When Do Economic Sanctions Work?: Asymmetric Perceptions, Issue Salience, and Outcomes,” Political Research Quarterly 60, no. 1 (2007): 135–45, https://doi.org/10.1177/1065912906298632; David Lektzian and Mark Souva, “An Institutional Theory of Sanctions Onset and Success,” The Journal of Conflict Resolution 51, no. 6 (2007): 848–71; Jean-Marc F. Blanchard and Norrin M. Ripsman, “A Political Theory of Economic Statecraft,” Foreign Policy Analysis 4, no. 4 (2008): 371–98, https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1743-8594.2008.00076.x; Navin A. Bapat and T. Clifton Morgan, “Multilateral Versus Unilateral Sanctions Reconsidered: A Test Using New Data,” International Studies Quarterly 53, no. 4 (2009): 1075–94, https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1468-2478.2009.00569.x; Donna Driscoll, Dennis Halcoussis, and Anton D. Lowenberg, “Economic Sanctions and Culture,” Defence and Peace Economics 22, no. 4 (2011): 423–48, https://doi.org/10.1080/10242694.2010.500826; Timothy M. Peterson, “Sending a Message: The Reputation Effect of US Sanction Threat Behavior,” International Studies Quarterly 57, no. 4 (2013): 672–82, https://doi.org/10.1111/isqu.12017.

[5] Morgan, Bapat, and Kobayashi, “Threat and Imposition of Economic Sanctions 1945–2005.”

[6] For stateness, see Blanchard and Ripsman, “A Political Theory of Economic Statecraft.” For issue salience, see Ang and Peksen, “When Do Economic Sanctions Work?”

Bibliography