Francesco Giumelli

Trade Agreements and Labour Standards' Clauses: Explaining labour standards developments through a qualitative comparative analysis of US Free Trade Agreements

Whereas a number of studies have been conducted to investigate causal relations between individual conditions (e.g. trade relations and labour standards), there is a lack of consensus among practitioners and scholars about the conditions that favour or cause labour standards improvements and, specifically, it is still unclear whether the increasing pervasiveness of Free Trade Agreements (FTAs) is conducive to enhancing labour conditions. The aim of this study is to shed light on whether labour clauses in FTAs are conducive to better labour standard practices, whether the content of a clause makes a difference, and whether changes have anything to do with other (external) pressures that play a role in changing labour standards. The main argument of the article is that FTAs do not play a determinant role in improving labour standards in signatory states. The analysis is done by looking at 13 FTAs signed by the United States with 19 countries. The United States is chosen because of its relatively extensive collection of FTAs including different conditions on labour standards. The empirical dataset is analysed with Qualitative Comparative Analysis (QCA) method, which permits to trace the combined effect of independent variables rather than to focus on the direct and individual causality with each of them.

Understanding United Nations targeted sanctions: an empirical analysis

United Nations sanctions have undergone profound transformations in the past two decades. In 1990, the UN Security Council imposed a general, comprehensive embargo on Iraq after its invasion of Kuwait. In 2015, there are 16 Sanctions Committees managing regimes that have little in common with the one imposed against Iraq in 1990. The measures imposed against Iraq were comprehensive, covering all goods coming in and out of the country, while sanctions imposed today are mostly against individuals, non-state entities and are more limited in scope. This article aims to provide empirical and systematic evidence of some of the distinctive qualities of UN targeted sanctions. The analysis identifies three distinctive characteristics of targeted sanctions. First, targeting individuals and non-state actors has permitted the use of sanctions in a wider range of crisis types. Second, the targets of sanctions are substantially different from comprehensive sanctions. Third, the form taken by sanctions is substantially different today from the trade embargoes imposed in the past. The author concludes that the Security Council should devote special attention to the designing and implementation phases of sanctions. The article makes use of the new database prepared by the Targeted Sanctions Consortium (TSC), which includes all cases of UN targeted sanctions.

New Analytical Categories for Assessing EU Sanctions

There is considerable debate on why are sanctions imposed, but little agreement so far. While the only consensus is that sanctions are aimed at changing the behaviour of a target, in fact, international sanctions can also be imposed to constrain actors or send signals. Since the creation of the Union in 1992, the EU has imposed 21 autonomous restrictive measures that are difficult to understand and compare without the proper analytical tools. The application of a tripartite taxonomy of the purpose of sanctions to the cases of the EU sanctions on Belarus, Zimbabwe and Uzbekistan is used to illustrate the differences and to set guidelines for a better understanding of international sanctions.

The Redistributive Impact of Restrictive Measures on EU Members: Winners and Losers from Imposing Sanctions on Russia

EU sanctions on Russia created concerns among its members. It is well known that sanctions impose a cost on their targets as well as on the senders, as lamented by European governments, but the costs of EU sanctions on its members have not been fully explored. This article intends to fill this gap by looking at the cost of EU sanctions on Russia. Who is bearing the cost among EU countries? This article argues that sanctions had a redistributive impact across the EU. Whereas exports fell for all countries, with Germany, Italy and Finland in the leading positions, the article shows that there are economic sectors that increased their exports to Russia after the imposition of sanctions, which occurred particularly in countries as Greece, Sweden, Luxembourg and Bulgaria. This conclusion is reached by looking at the export flows from individual EU member states divided by SITC sectors to Russia.

The Role of For-Profit Actors in Implementing Targeted Sanctions: The Case of the European Union

The evolution of sanctions from comprehensive to targeted has favored the inclusion of for-profit actors in the policy process. Sanctions are used to deal with security challenges and while the role of for-profit actors in the provision of public goods has been investigated, less has been said about their role in the provision of security. This chapter investigates the role of for-profit actors in the implementation of sanctions. More specifically, this chapter suggests a typology of regulatory environments that facilitates explaining and understanding the behavior of for-profit actors in implementing targeted sanctions. By looking at the quality of instructions provided by state authorities and their capacity to monitor the implementation of such decisions, the chapter argues that overcompliance, uneven and lack of compliance are more likely in certain regulatory environments rather than in others. The theoretical framework is tested on the case study of the restrictive measures of the EU. The data for this research was collected through semi-opened interviews and focus groups held in Brussels from 2013 to 2015.

From Strategic Communication to Sanctions: The European Union’s Approach to Hybrid Threats

As epitomised by the 2016 Communication outlining a ‘Joint Framework on Countering Hybrid Threats’, the European Union (EU) is increasingly involved in tackling destabilisation challenges ranging from disinformation to energy disruptions and cyberattacks. This chapter examines EU response to hybrid threats by looking at two types of policy instruments. The first one, the fight against disinformation, is a ‘soft’ type of response that the EU has increasingly adopted since 2015 as an answer to misinformation campaigns that have targeted it by a variety of actors, including Russia and the self-proclaimed Islamic State. The second one is a more traditional, ‘hard’ form of action, namely, the planning and implementation of sanctions and restrictive measures. Not only are strategic communication and sanctions key to countering hybrid threats. As this chapter illustrates, both policy instruments require especially close cooperation across military and civilian public actors and between the public and the private sector. Hence, strategic communications and sanctions are crucial cases in the study of EU responses to hybrid threats and the importance of a comprehensive approach in effectively countering them.

Winning Without Killing: The Case for Targeted Sanctions

Sanctions are a frequently employed diplomatic instrument to exert influence. However, it is also a relatively poorly understood instrument that, while seductive because it seems easy to employ and relatively risk-free, is also criticized for lack of effectiveness. In particular in the past decade UN sanctions have undergone a significant development. The chapter presents how sanctions changed from their classical and comprehensive form to a more recent targeted version. Whereas comprehensive sanctions aimed at whole states, today the targets of sanctions are mostly individuals, entities and specific economic sectors. The situations in which sanctions have been used and adapted to achieve foreign policy objectives with the simultaneous objective to reduce their humanitarian impact has grown overtime, for instance by including the utilization of sanctions in post-conflict contexts. Especially, the objective of this chapter is to review the opportunities and challenges that characterize targeted sanctions in order to provide recommendations on how to enhance their effectiveness. The argument of the chapter is that targeted sanctions are more demanding in terms of knowledge and maintenance compared to comprehensive sanctions. If the international community, or individual states, wish to rely effectively on this foreign policy instrument, then ways to acquire more information about targeted societies and threats that are to be countered as well as the creation of institutional capacity to monitor and enforce sanctions is key to making sanctions useful.