This study of economic sanctions examines the contribution of the target country to sanction outcomes. The theoretical foundation of this research is predicated on the role that target country political attributes play in fashioning a response to the imposition of economic sanctions. Accordingly, these attributes are instrumental in creating the countermeasures that target countries employ in resisting sanction effects. Therefore, the success of sanction episodes is influenced by target country political characteristics. The developed hypotheses are tested in two ways. First, an aggregate analysis on one hundred fifteen cases is conducted. This is complimented by a series of in-depth case study analyses on select sanction episodes. Both results indicate that some political attributes of the target country play an important role in determining the disposition of sanction episodes.