Backlash: Defiance, Human Rights and the Politics of Shame University of California, Berkeley
Rochelle Terman  |  December 13, 2018

This dissertation examines the causes and consequences of international “naming and shaming”: a ubiquitous tactic used by states and civil society to improve international human rights. When does international shaming lead to the improvement in human rights conditions, and when does it backfire, resulting in the worsening of human rights practices or a backlash against international norms? Instead of understanding transnational norms as emanating from some monolithic “international community,” I propose that we gain better analytic insight by considering the ways in which norms are embodied in particular actors and identities, promoted and contested between specific states in relational terms.