Selective norm promotion in international development assistance: the drivers of naming and shaming advocacy among European non-governmental development organisations
| Author | Balázs Szent-Iványi,Pēteris F Timofejevs |
| Published date | 01 March 2021 |
| Date | 01 March 2021 |
| DOI | 10.1177/0047117820954234 |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
https://doi.org/10.1177/0047117820954234
International Relations
2021, Vol. 35(1) 23 –46
© The Author(s) 2020
Article reuse guidelines:
sagepub.com/journals-permissions
DOI: 10.1177/0047117820954234
journals.sagepub.com/home/ire
Selective norm promotion in
international development
assistance: the drivers of
naming and shaming advocacy
among European non-
governmental development
organisations
Balázs Szent-Iványi
Aston University; Corvinus University Budapest
Pēteris F Timofejevs
Umea University
Abstract
European non-governmental development organisations (NGDOs) have used naming and shaming
extensively in their advocacy to push the EU and member state governments to implement
international norms on foreign aid. The paper analyses the contents of NGDO advocacy
publications, with the goal of gaining insight into how and why these organisations engage in
naming and shaming. The exercise reveals that NGDOs are highly selective in the norms they
promote through naming and shaming: they shame governments heavily for not implementing
norms on aid quantity, but are less vocal on norms related to aid effectiveness. The paper shows
that NGDOs strategically select norms in their naming shaming activities which have higher
resonance with the public and are less costly to monitor, criteria which aid quantity norms fulfil.
There is also some evidence that NGDOs promote increasing the quantity of aid because it
would enhance their own access to donor funding.
Keywords
development, foreign aid, naming and shaming, NGOs, norm advocacy
Corresponding author:
Balázs Szent-Iványi, School of Languages and Social Sciences, Aston University, Aston Triangle, Birmingham,
B4 7ET, UK.
Email: b.szent-ivanyi@aston.ac.uk
954234IRE0010.1177/0047117820954234International RelationsSzent-Iványi and Timofejevs
research-article2020
Article
24 International Relations 35(1)
Introduction
‘Naming and shaming’ has become a highly visible tool in the advocacy arsenal of non-
governmental organisations (NGOs) in recent years, involving the use of reports, analy-
ses and press releases to bring negative publicity for governments not complying with
their commitments. A substantial literature examining such naming and shaming strate-
gies has emerged in the past decade, focusing primarily on the area of human rights,
where organisations like Amnesty International or Human Rights Watch have been
instrumental in highlighting government abuses.1 Naming and shaming strategies of
NGOs in other areas however have received rather limited attention, and so have the
motivations which determine how exactly NGOs engage in naming and shaming. The
usage of these strategies in international development by non-governmental develop-
ment organisations (NGDOs), for example, has received almost no scholarly interest.
Aid donor governments and multilateral organisations have made commitments follow-
ing the turn of the Millennium in terms of increasing the volume and effectiveness of
their aid, and these commitments have had a substantial impact on the norms of the
international development system.2 Adherence to these norms however has been mixed
at best,3 and European NGDOs have done significant efforts to promote change by iden-
tifying and publicising non-compliance.
This paper represents one of the first efforts to investigate the usage of naming and
shaming strategies by the European NGDO community. Specifically, it analyses the driv-
ers and interests behind the naming and shaming practices of these NGDOs, both towards
the European Commission (EC), and member state governments. By using a novel
framework to make sense of NGDO interests and identifying the international develop-
ment norms the NGDO community promotes and the ones it places less emphasis on, the
paper offers a glimpse into the motivations and strategic decisions driving the advocacy
work of these organisations. NGDOs face a conflict of interest in their advocacy work:
on the one hand, they have strong moral motivations, and drive for more and better aid
which can in turn lead to the reduction of global poverty. On the other hand, many of
them are participants in the global aid business, and greater volumes of aid benefit them
directly, while certain measures aimed at improving the effectiveness of aid can harm
their access to funding. How this conflict, and others, influences the naming and shaming
actions and norm advocacy of NGDOs is unclear.
The paper uses two qualitative sources of data. First, it analyses the AidWatch Reports
published between 2006 and 2015 by the European NGO Confederation for Relief and
Development (CONCORD), the main pan-European NGDO advocacy umbrella group.
The AidWatch Reports4 provide an in-depth scrutiny of the international development
policies of each European Union (EU) member state and the EC, calling attention to
weak performance and formulating demands and recommendations. These reports
receive significant attention in the international development profession, including EU
member state governments and a wide range of other stakeholders, and can be seen as
tools used to name and shame the donors who do not meet their commitments. Second,
a number of qualitative semi-structured interviews were carried out with officials work-
ing at CONCORD’s secretariat in Brussels, as well as experts at CONCORD’s members
who have been involved with the reports.
To continue reading
Request your trial