國立臺灣大學政治科學論叢

Targeted sanctions against non-state actors have become a popular coercive tool due to their lower economic costs and humanitarian consequences compared to comprehensive sanctions. Although the international political economy literature has warned of the ineffectiveness of targeted sanctions, the scholarship has yet to examine why the US continues to wield sanctions against Chinese companies. Moreover, the existing arguments fail to explain US decisions to lift bans on firms like ZTE. To solve these puzzles, I conceptualize sanctions as signals and employ the thick data approach to scrutinize policymakers’ memoirs and official statements. Specifically, this research constructs a “two-by-three” typology in which the vertical axis represents the level of audience cost and the horizontal axis denotes policymakers’ law enforcement and politicization preferences. Whereas statements made at the higher levels generate stronger hand-tying effects, policymakers’ politicization preferences undermine the credibility of targeted sanctions. Hence, American policymakers impose targeted sanctions on Chinese companies to signal commitments to international norms. Conversely, those who tend to politicize sanctions are more likely to give the green light to Chinese firms when they are able to get greater economic gains from interstate negotiations. The findings fill the gap in the literature on targeted sanctions during great power competitions, improve the explanatory power of audience cost theory, and demonstrate the analytical advantages of thick data to reveal the motivations of economic statecraft.