Backlash against naming and shaming: The politics of status and emotion

Abstract

The most prominent approach to promoting human rights features the naming and shaming of perpetrators of abuses and those who abet them, including the tactic of ranking non-compliant states relative to their peers to undermine their international status. Neither activists nor the scholars who study them have paid much attention to the emotional dynamics of the targeted group, and in particular to the emotions of shame and shaming, nor to the sociological mechanisms that underpin the politics of status and status competition. This article draws upon relatively ignored, yet mainstream theoretical literatures in psychology, social psychology, and sociology in arguing that naming and shaming tactics often lead to backlash by those who are targeted. Transnational human rights advocacy commonly appeals to the norms of exporting society. On the recipient side, this external outrage plays into the hands of elites in a traditional power structure, drawing energy from outrage at loss of status in a way that motivates widespread popular backlash. The backlash narrative alters public discourse, reinvigorates and reshapes traditional institutions, and in these ways locks in and perpetuates patterns that leave the progressive namers and shamers farther from their goals. Beyond arguing that this is a common pattern, I will also investigate the conditions and tactics that are less likely to spur counterproductive backlash.