The Political Economy of Sanctions: Resilience and Transformation in Russia and Iran / International Political Economy Series (PDF)

"This path breaking book makes an invaluable contribution to our understanding of sanctions in IPE. Developing a novel welfare state regime approach, Ksenia Kirkham shows that sanctions on Iran and Russia have resulted in significant functional and structural commonalities. Whilst the sanctions have had only limited effectiveness on these states' foreign policies, they have led to the transformation and consolidation of self-reliant and centralized Hobbesian-type regimes."

-Alan W. Cafruny, Henry Bristol Professor of International Affairs, Hamilton College, USA

"Russia and Iran are rarely compared by scholars of comparative political economy to any systematic degree. Bringing together a wide array of theoretical tools, Kirkham proposes a new approach to examining politics and social policy in these two states."

-Kevan Harris, author of A Social Revolution: Politics and the Welfare State in Iran (2017)

"Ksenia Kirkham has done scholars of IPE a rare favour. First, this book propels debates about Gramscian and Amsterdam School scholarship forward through careful historical and comparative analysis of Russia and Iran. Second, it also reveals the connections between institutional arrangements, welfare states and the (re)production of capitalist social relations through sanctions regimes. Kirkham's book is a crucial addition to the critical IPE canon."

-Stuart Shields, Senior Lecturer, University of Manchester, UK

This book presents a comparative analysis of Russia and Iran under sanctions. Whilst the growing literature on sanctions has focused primarily on their effectiveness, much less attention has been paid to the ways in which sanctions have transformed target societies and states. Despite, or indeed because of, the relentless enactment of sanctions, Russia and Iran have become increasingly Hobbesian in their governance - more self-reliant, less democratic, and more aggressive towards the West. The author explores these developments through a novel Welfare State Regime framework (WSR) that combines welfare state functionality with institutional, economic, and cultural structural dimensions.

Ksenia Kirkham is Lecturer in the Department of War Studies at King's College London, UK.