The elephant in the room: legitimacy and (de)legitimation of international sanctions

The chapter advocates for placing the politics of legitimation and delegitimization at the center of the study of international sanctions. It argues that the politics of (de)legitimation flow from three distinct and constitutive legitimacy problems of contemporary international sanctions: what is the status of the international norm that has been violated? (The legitimacy of the norm); who has the right to impose a material deprivation against a state? (The legitimacy of the enforcer); is the measure adopted the right action? (The legitimacy of the measure). By drawing examples from two dissimilar sanction episodes–against Venezuela between 2014 and 2019, and against Russia after the invasion of Ukraine in 2022–, the chapter shows intra-case and inter-case variation in the politics of (de)legitimation. Whereas the legitimacy of enforcers was the most contested issue in the case of Venezuela, the legitimacy of the measures has been, hitherto, the most salient object of contestation in the case of Russia. The chapter concludes by shedding light on the connections between the legitimacy and the effectiveness of sanctions.