UN Sanctions as Regulation

This article offers an account of the Security Council's use of sanctions to prospectively regulate situational and systemic threats to international peace and security. It distinguishes between resolutions and specific measures within those resolutions, and assesses the Council's regulatory strategies with regards to internal armed conflicts, the management of natural resources, and peace agreements. Drawing on insights from national (domestic) regulatory experiments, the article argues that the concept of temporality is a central feature of UN sanctions in civil conflict regimes. Using case studies on the Central African Republic and Liberia, the article explores the Council's use of public and private regulatory strategies, the invocation of formal and informal norms, the choice of targeting state and non-state actors, and the integration of responsive regulation into contemporary sanctions practice. The article concludes by arguing that the UN Security Council has played an under-examined role in norm diffusion, and is a significant regulator of conflict and post-conflict situations.