Regional Sanctions Against Member States: A Comparative and Relational Approach

As regional organizations increasingly adopt sanctions against their members, it is important to shed some light on the specifi c features of this practice, with respect to their specifi c content as well as the protected common values. What emerges from a comparative analysis is that regional sanctions are imposed in situations of democratic crisis, even though it is not possible to fi nd a shared defi nition of the notions of both democracy and rule of law. Th e signifi cant growth of the sanction episodes across the