The evasion of institutional complexes. A study of UN sanctions evasion

The international trade regime is made of the combination of local, national and international legal frameworks that often overlap either de jure, de facto, or both. Different legal systems can offer opportunities to select preferential fiscal regimes. International organizations have successfully created binding treaties in certain trading sectors, which do not apply to all states in the world, but would be applicable to trade involving one actor with an headquarter in a signatory country. States exercise extraterritorial monitoring and/or application of domestic laws. This is just to name a few examples. This research aims to analyze how state and non-state actors take advantage of the complexity of the international trade regime. This is done by looking at the case study of international sanctions. Sanctions imposed by international organizations or states are temporary suspension of trade rights for specific actors justified on security grounds. Thus, we plan to draw from the literature on international political economy to explore how state and non-state actors navigate through the institutional complex of international sanctions. By looking at the empirical evidence provided by the Panels of Experts of the United Nations, this research engages with a unique analysis of a crucial, yet under investigated topic. The Panels of Experts are created by the Security Council’s Sanctions Committees with the objective to monitor and assess the implementation of sanctions imposed by the UN. This is, possibly, the main source of data collection on sanctions evasion. In total, we have analyzed 252 reports for sanctions imposed on targets in 16 different countries across 20 years. The objective of the analysis is twofold. First, we would like to develop a classificatory typology that would allow to compare all cases of sanctions evasion across time and space. Second, we intend to identify main patterns and trends in sanctions evasions to contribute to the wider debate on ”the link between features of institutional complexes and actors’ strategies to maneuver within them”. The finding of this study will contribute the debate on institutional complex and on sanctions effectiveness. First, it will provide fresh empirical material that could lead to further theoretical developments on institutional complexes. Second, it will shed light on how the impact of sanctions is not only linked to the political will of member states, but it is also determined by the behavior of non-state actors and, indirectly, it will show how the qualities of the international trade regime facilitate sanctions evasion practices.