Issues of the effectiveness of economic sanctions are one of the priority areas in the studies devoted to foreign policy instruments. Among the authors of such studies, there is still no consensus on the effectiveness of sanctions. The range of their opinions is very broad - from extremely pessimistic to extremely optimistic. Meanwhile particular interest is caused by factors or conditions of political effectiveness of sanctions actively used by modern states and international organizations. In this article continuing these traditions individual conditions are considered that increase the effectiveness of sanctions. First, effectiveness, according to the author, increases if sanctions affect the material interests of influential groups of the target state, which include big businessmen, the politicians and the elected government officials. Secondly, the effectiveness of sanctions will be higher if they can lead to large-scale political costs, that is, the loss of political support by leaders and the reduction of their power. Thirdly, the effectiveness of sanctions increases if they are used against personalistic regimes that, unlike military and one-party regimes, rely on a personal clique that serves as a kind of social base for them. As a result, the author formulates the concept of maximum effectiveness of sanctions, which is achieved when all the above conditions are met.
