State-led Response to Sanctions. The Influence of Russian Political Economy on Adjustment and Adaptation of Russia's Economy to Western Sanctions

The main aim of this paper is to highlight and fill in the gaps in the current scholarship regarding sanctions and target states’ responses. Namely, the lack of attention paid to the influence of the existing political economy on the type of response the policymakers choose to utilise being constrained by the existing political and economic conditions. The essay uses Russia and its response to the 2014 sanctions as a case-study of the limited access order state that utilises state resources to provide differential access to individuals and companies that it deems to be politically important. The considerations that preordained the methods and techniques used in Russia’s response to the 2014 sanctions. The study contributes to the large sanctions scholarship and attempts to encourage cooperation between the economists that specialise in sanctions and area study researchers to produce a more comprehensive analysis of target states and their response to sanctions.