Sanctions as revelation regimes

Sanctioning in the face of uncertainty has been investigated from the perspective of signaling models, in which an informed target sends a signal and the sanctioner decides to sanction or not. As the more powerful power, however, the sanctioner could take the lead rather than react to the action of the target. Borrowing from contract theory, I present a new approach to the sanctioning of a target of unknown type in which the sanctioner explicitly structures the target’s options before the target moves. The theory shows that in a situation in which a sanctioning state is ignorant of the target’s willingness to comply, it may be able to elicit the revelation of that information through a careful mix of incentives. I derive the comparative statics and provide historical illustrations.