AbstractsEconomics

This project researches about economic sanctions and how successful they are to change a state’s foreign policy. The chosen example, in which the project will be evaluating and analyzing sanctions as a political tool is the on going conflict of the European Union sanctions against Russia. This is a matter of interest to us, due to the fact that sanctions have become a very popular political tool to use in the recent decades, and this study wants to find out if they fulfill their sole purpose of changing a state’s foreign policy, when the targeted state acts in objectionable behavior that is recognizable to other states. In order to enforce in the research, the project uses research strategies such as the deductive theory, and in the data research, data collection and the analyzing of the data, the project uses the quantitative research method. The project also uses method triangulation, in order to be certain that the knowledge the project uses is valid. Due to this project using an example that involves an issue that is yet not resolved, a great deal of the data has been used comes from newspaper articles. Yet the project does use academic books and academic journals. The project uses two theories; Elite Theory and Rally around the Flag theory, in order to determine the effects of the sanctions on Russia In the conclusion we discuss our findings such as that we discovered that Vladamir Putin’s popularity voting rose during these sanctions. A lot of factors speak against sanctions against Russia being effective, with the main one being the fact that Russia has yet, November 2014, not changed their foreign policy goals towards Ukraine, concluding that these sanctions have yet not been successful.