Backlash against naming and shaming: The politics of status and emotion
| DOI | 10.1177/1369148120948361 |
| Date | 01 November 2020 |
| Published date | 01 November 2020 |
| Author | Jack Snyder |
| Subject Matter | Symposium on Backlash Politics in Comparison |
https://doi.org/10.1177/1369148120948361
The British Journal of Politics and
International Relations
2020, Vol. 22(4) 644 –653
© The Author(s) 2020
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DOI: 10.1177/1369148120948361
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Backlash against naming and
shaming: The politics of status
and emotion
Jack Snyder
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.
Keywords
backlash, emotion, human rights, shaming, social identity theory, status
In the present era of widespread backlash against liberal assertiveness, resentment of
human rights advocates’ ‘naming and shaming’ plays a prominent role. Calling out viola-
tors of the rights of refugees, minorities, women, and gays has become a predictable trig-
ger of countermobilisation. Even the founder of Human Rights Watch, Aryeh Neier
(2018), acknowledges that shaming rights-abusing states has become a decreasingly
effective tactic when so many leaders are utterly shameless. And yet the rhetoric of recent
Human Rights Watch (2019) reports continues to shame not only leaders but also wide-
spread cultural practices and attitudes of average citizens (Snyder, 2020).
Political Science Department, Columbia University, New York, NY, USA
Corresponding author:
Jack Snyder, Columbia University, 1327 International Affairs Building, 420 W. 118 St., New York, NY 10027, USA.
Email: jls6@columbia.edu
948361BPI0010.1177/1369148120948361The British Journal of Politics and International RelationsSnyder
research-article2020
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