Sanction Regimes as Global Governance Complexes: the Case of Post-2022 EU Energy Sanctions Against Russian Federation

Why has the EU introduced an embargo against some Russian energy industries after the full-scale invasion of Ukraine (such as coal and crude oil with petroleum products) while others remained outside the scope of the sanctions for a longer time and were partially sanctioned only later (LNG ) or still remain outside the scope of formal sanctions (civil nuclear industry)? In theoretical terms, the analysis will be focused on evolving complexity of sanctions regime as a joint outcome of sectoral structural conditions, window of political opportunities opened by Russian aggression and calculation of targeting effectiveness of specific sectoral restrictions. These factors defined the sequencing in layering sanctions regime and extent of adopted measures against four Russian energy industries: coal, oil and petroleum products, natural gas and liquid natural gas LNG, and civil nuclear industry. The main novelty of this study will be in analyzing the sanctions regimes as the Global Governance Complexes (GGCs) (Eilstrup-Sangiovanni 2022, Eilstrup-Sangiovanni and Westerwinter 2022) by bridging literatures on regime complexity (Raustiala and Victor 2004, Alter and Meunier 2009, Alter and Raustiala 2018, Alter 2022, Henning and Prat 2023) and on economic statecraft (Drezner 1999, Mastanduno 1999, Chan and Drury 2000, Blanchard and Ripsman 2013, Kirkham 2023 ). The study will propose f descriptive analytical framework build upon Henning and Prat’s (2023) conceptual map with adding of additional theories. It will explore four main dimensions: comprising sources of GGC, dynamic processes of its creation, relatively stable patterns of its stabilization and policy outcomes. Descriptive analysis of EU energy sanctions regime will lead to the formulation for causal mechanism of multi-sectoral sanctions regime formation. Explanation of economic sanctions not in the terms of country’s agency (as it was done before in the economic statecraft literature), but rather in structuralist terms as more stable entities (via conceptual lenses of regime complexity theories) could be justified by three main arguments: • sanction regimes are stable in cases of their limited effectiveness in delivering the goals of changing behavior of target country; • emerging of independent systemic effect – sanctions enforcement leads to the institutionalization of new rules – their effective functions and enforcement is causing problems which could be resolved by the incremental adjustments of existing rules – existence of sanction packages as causally independent factor able to evolve under their separate logic; • insufficiency of alternative reductionist resource-base or agency-based explanations calls for utilization of more complex explanations –  the ability of countries to arrange substituting supplies from alternative destinations could not fully account for the difference in outcomes;  explanatory reduction towards the agency of resistance of some countries in the Council still does not explain why some countries are changing their positions while other not, or same countries providing different stances towards different economic sectors.