Daniel Drezner

Daniel Drezner studies economic statecraft and international political economy. As at 1 November 2026, Tufts University lists him as Academic Dean and Distinguished Professor of International Politics at the Fletcher School. His work addresses both the conditions under which coercion produces concessions and the costs of relying on it too readily. [Tufts faculty profile; Drezner, The Sanctions Paradox, introductory argument; 2022 testimony.]

Conflict expectations and selection

In the publicly available introductory excerpt of The Sanctions Paradox (1999), Drezner argues that expected future conflict affects both willingness to sanction and willingness to concede. Adversaries can be more willing to impose costs while resisting concessions that might weaken their future bargaining position. Allies face different reputational and distributional incentives. His model therefore predicts that sanctions against adversaries can be frequent yet produce limited concessions, whereas coercion between allies can yield more once a sufficiently large difference in costs makes the sender willing to threaten it. These are conditional model predictions, not a claim that every ally concedes or every adversary resists. [Drezner, The Sanctions Paradox, pp. 4-6.]

His article "The Hidden Hand of Economic Coercion" (2003) examines selection effects: successful bargaining may end at the threat stage, leaving imposed-sanctions datasets disproportionately populated by failures. Its tests use US coercion over economic and regulatory objectives and find greater concessions in threatened than imposed cases. The article contrasts strategic interaction with domestic and symbolic explanations; it does not endorse the latter as its own general explanation. Its discussion of conflict expectations combines indivisible demands and anticipated future conflict to explain deadlock. The results do not establish a universal success rate across security, territorial or regime-change demands. [Drezner, "Hidden Hand", pp. 643-647, 649-656.]

The overuse critique

In testimony to the Tom Lantos Human Rights Commission on 4 October 2022, Drezner accepted that targeted financial sanctions could be more potent than earlier trade embargoes, while warning that policymakers overestimated their effectiveness and underestimated collateral damage. He identified overambitious demands, private-sector overcompliance, sanctions layered on existing restrictions, and political and humanitarian spillovers as reasons for greater restraint. He did not reject economic coercion in principle. These are the witness's assessments and recommendations, not independent estimates of each programme's effects or current findings about all sanctioned economies. [Drezner, testimony, printed pp. 53-58.]

Significance and limits

Taken together, these arguments make the sanctions debate depend on the comparison being made: threatened versus imposed measures, attainable versus expansive demands, and concessions versus wider costs. They connect effectiveness to overreach without treating evidence for one proposition as proof of the other. The model and dated testimony do not themselves measure today's reserve shares, payments, evasion or humanitarian outcomes. [Editorial synthesis of Drezner's introductory argument, "Hidden Hand" and testimony.]

See also

Sanctions selection bias · Sanctions effectiveness debate · Economic coercion · Sanctions overreach · Sanctions fatigue (diminishing marginal returns) · Weaponisation backlash · Robert Pape

Sources

• Daniel W. Drezner, The Sanctions Paradox: Economic Statecraft and International Relations (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999). The publisher's substantial excerpt contains the introductory argument, including pp. 4-6; the remaining book chapters were not verified for this account.
• Daniel W. Drezner, "The Hidden Hand of Economic Coercion", International Organization 57, no. 3 (2003): 643-659, doi:10.1017/S0020818303573052. Author-hosted full text.
• Daniel W. Drezner, oral and prepared testimony, Considerations on Economic Sanctions, Tom Lantos Human Rights Commission, US House of Representatives, 4 October 2022, printed pp. 53-58. The testimony supports the overuse discussion here; it is not a substitute for full-text verification of his separate 2021 Foreign Affairs essay.
• Tufts University, Fletcher School, "Daniel Drezner", full faculty profile checked 1 November 2026.