Punishment Among Allies: Public Attitudes Towards Sanctions in the European Union

International organizations need to enforce their rules, but sanctions against their member states can erode public support for cooperation. At the same time, inaction against rule violations risks losing public confidence in the power and authority of the international organizations. This is a common dilemma in international cooperation, but we know little about public preferences for enforcement actions (e.g. sanctions) and the effects of strategic (non)enforcement on public attitudes. In this article, we develop hypotheses about the factors that influence preferences for/against sanctions as an enforcement tool and about the effects of (non)enforcement. We apply these hypotheses to the context of the European Union (EU), and we test them in two survey experiments conducted in Germany and the Netherlands on quota-representative national samples. The preference for sanctions is strongly affected by their expected effectiveness, whether the target is your own country or not, and whether you support the policy defended by the enforcement actions. When the enforcing institutions go against the preference for/against sanctions, their perceived authority declines, especially when sanctions are desired but not imposed. There is no evidence for effects on support for future cooperation. Altogether, we reveal that support for sanctions in the EU, and international relations more generally, is a divisive issue colored by instrumental and self-centered considerations, with important downstream effects on the perceived authority of institutions.