Revista CIDOB d'Afers Internacionals No. 125

Call for papers

"International Sanctions: The other effects"

Barcelona, May–July 2019

Timetable of the call:

5 July 2019: Submission deadline for abstracts (300 words) and a short biographical note (100 words).
6 September 2019: Authors are notified of the results of the selection process.
29 November 2019: Submission deadline for completed articles (see: instructions for authors).

All written correspondence should be sent to the CIDOB publications email address: publicaciones@cidob.org

Scientific coordinators:
Clara Portela (Department of Constitutional Law and Political Science, University of Valencia)
Martijn C. Vlaskamp (Beatriu de Pinós Fellow, Institut Barcelona d'Estudis Internacionals [IBEI]).

Since the 1990s, the importance of sanctions as political instruments in international relations has grown. Recent examples are the European Union’s sanctions on Russia, the United States’ sanctions against Venezuela and Iran, and the United Nations’ sanctions against North Korea. In the field of academic research, a great deal of work has been done on the effectiveness and impact of sanctions from the point of view of those that impose them. Less is known about their other possible effects on countries that are subject to sanctions and countries that are not involved in the disputes, in other words, those that neither receive nor impose sanctions.

Issue 125 of Revista CIDOB d’Afers Internacionals aims to contribute to filling this gap in the academic literature. It will examine the influence of international sanctions on relations between states other than the sender and target – an influence that may be unintended or undesired by the sender. Hence, original contributions are requested that answer the following questions:

 How do international sanctions influence relations between the country imposing the sanctions and third countries?
 How do international sanctions affect relations between countries under sanctions and their partners? When do they promote greater cooperation, and when, on the contrary, do they cause greater discord?
 What is the effect of international sanctions on the relations between various countries that are subject to sanctions? Are alliances created or strengthened as a result of sanctions, or does the opposite occur?

Beyond altering relations between states, sanctions also have an impact on non-state actors, a category that is of equal interest here:

 How do sanctions promote the illicit trade in certain goods, and how do they create social tensions and alter power structures within the country under sanctions?

The practice of sanctioning members of elites – governmental or otherwise –is under-researched:

 What are the effects of individualising or personalising sanctions? Are these types of sanctions more or less suitable for encouraging policy changes in governments subjected to sanctions? Are the effects of targeted – or smart – sanctions as damaging as those of full sanctions?

This special issue of Revista CIDOB d'Afers Internacionals aims to put forward new research and attract alternative approaches that open up new research paths and perspectives. While contributions from around the world will be accepted, we especially encourage the participation of authors from countries under sanctions and from third countries. Both rationalist and constructivist analyses will be considered; interdisciplinary contributions are of particular interest.

Submissions in Spanish, English and French will be considered.

The issue will be published in Spanish, but articles originally written in English may be published simultaneously in that language.

The Editorial Board of the magazine, coordinated for this issue by Dr Clara Portela and Dr Martijn Vlaskamp, will be responsible for the final selection of articles to be published in the second issue of 2020 (September 2020).

Created in 1982, CIDOB Journal of Afers Internacionals is a scientific publication on international relations that publishes original work. Each issue is a monograph, coordinated by experts, that provides in-depth analysis from a multi- and transdisciplinary perspective of an aspect of the international state of affairs. The articles undergo an external double-blind peer review process and are indexed and summarised in the main academic social sciences databases, such as Scopus and Web of Science. The publication is aimed at the academic community and the interested public in general. It is published in print and digital versions.