What is it about?
This article examines how public criticism and public praise by international actors affect governments’ human rights behavior. It compares the effects of shaming and faming and shows that these practices do not operate symmetrically. While both are intended to influence state behavior, they can produce different and sometimes unintended consequences for human rights outcomes.
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Why is it important?
The study challenges the common assumption that international publicity tools are either uniformly effective or uniformly harmful. By disentangling the effects of shaming and faming, it provides a more nuanced understanding of how reputational pressures work in human rights politics. The findings have implications for international organizations, advocacy groups, and policymakers seeking to design strategies that improve rights protection without exacerbating abuse.
Perspectives
This article is motivated by a puzzle in the existing literature, where praise is often treated as largely inconsequential compared to public criticism. Rather than accepting this assumption, I examine whether and how faming may still matter for human rights outcomes, even if its effects differ from those of shaming. By placing praise at the center of the analysis, the study reflects my interest in questioning taken for granted hierarchies among international influence tools and in exploring the conditions under which seemingly weak signals can nonetheless shape state behavior.
Professor Sara Beth Kahn-Nisser
Open University of Israel
Read the Original
This page is a summary of: For better or worse: Shaming, faming, and human rights abuse, Journal of Peace Research, July 2020, Oxford University Press (OUP),
DOI: 10.1177/0022343320905346.
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