The Evolution of Databases in the Age of Targeted Sanctions

Databases constitute key research tools in sanctions scholarship. Over the past few years, we have witnessed a proliferation of sanctions databases: while only a single dataset was available until 2009, this number had increased to five by 2020; thus, the choice has more than doubled in less than a decade. This essay assesses the evolution observed. It reviews the five major datasets, comparing some of their basic choices, and evaluates them along two dimensions: the extent to which they capture targeted sanctions and the degree to which they brought innovations to the subfield. We find that targeted sanctions are not adequately reflected in databases, which remain state-centric in their approach. We conclude that the crafting of new databases does not entail an incremental refinement in which each iteration renders its predecessors obsolete. Rather, the evolution observed has resulted in a diverse set of options with different emphases. We nevertheless observe that a trend toward innovation has yielded to one toward consolidation, more focused on enlarging the empirical testing ground than in innovating. We conclude by discussing implications for the development of sanctions scholarship.