examined their study, he found that only 5 of their reported 40 successes were actually effective, reducing the success rate to 4 percent. In either case, the difficulty and unexpected nuances of measuring the actual success of sanctions in relation to their goals are both increasingly apparent and still under debate. In other words, it is difficult to determine why a regime or country changes (i.e., whether it was the sanction or inherent instability) and doubly so to measure the full political effect of a given action.

Offering an explanation