Constraining Compliance? Reconsidering the Effect of Veto Players on Sanctions Success

What effect do domestic political and institutional constraints such as veto players have on the success of international sanctions which their countries have been subjected to? Do they facilitate or constrain compliance with them? Although in the literature on sanctions success the role of domestic factors has received extensive attention, a typically public-policy concept such as veto players has remained largely underexplored. The potential of its application to the literature on sanctions was only recently uncovered by sanction scholars who found empirical support for the hypothesis that the larger the size of veto players in a country under sanctions, the higher the probability of compliance. Contrary to their findings, this article theorises a negative causal mechanism whereby a growing divergence in the relevant policy-area preferences of veto players prevents the targeted country from complying with sanctions-related demands. An empirical reassessment of this relationship with George Tsebelis’ original policy-area-specific veto player data confirms this negative effect.