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a growing awareness among the practitioners of each of the leading methods in political
science - - formal modeling, statistics, and case studies - - of the great potential for
complementarity among these methods” (2002, 1). This paper combines formal
modeling techniques with the logic of process tracing in order to analyze sanctions
compliance in a theoretically useful way.
Andrew Bennett and Alexander George characterize process tracing as the
aggregation of two methods, process verification and process induction. Process
verification is testing whether the observed processes match the theoretical predictions
that the researcher has made. Process induction involves the inductive observation of
apparent causal mechanisms and heuristic rendering of these mechanisms as potential
hypotheses for future testing. Here, both goals are important. Bennett and George use the
metaphor that process tracing is like a game of dominoes, where a researcher can
determine which move led to the next one is she just looks close enough. In this area,
though, the number of demands, combined with the complexity of compliance with those
demands, makes the row of dominos less clear. I employ formal modeling techniques to
create a clearer picture of the political processes related to the sanctions regime on Iraq.
This process tracing is performed with the aid of a spatial model. Spatial theory
has been used to analyze bargaining situations in International Re lations in the past, and
even to analyze economic sanctions used as bargaining tools (Morgan and Schwebach
1997; Chan and Drury 2000, 9; Cortright and Lopez 2000). This situation, however, is
clearly not one of bargaining, but one of unconditional demands of the sanctioner on the
sanctioned as a condition of lifting sanctions; Iraq had no leverage to ‘bargain’ or come
to a compromise with the Security Council (Niblock 2001; Hoskins 2000; Cortright and
Convention