Rewarding Resistance: Theorizing Defiance of International Norms

• In Event: The Politics of International Norm Adoption, Evolution, and (non)Compliance

Abstract

In the last three decades, scholars and activists have argued that transnational normative pressure can improve human rights conditions around the world. “Naming and shaming” is now the preferred tactic of human rights organizations worldwide, and a number of studies in IR claim that transnational pressure can effectively improve states’ human rights practices. This project challenges this conventional wisdom. In many cases, shaming not only fails to induce compliance but incites a backlash, provoking resistance and worsening human rights practices. When does shaming lead to an improvement in human rights conditions, and when does it backfire?

This paper identifies a mechanism linking compliance pressures to norm resistance and backlash, which I label defiance. When compliance pressures provoke a defensive reaction in relevant audiences, leaders are penalized for complying with foreign norms and rewarded for violations. Here, transnational pressure is not merely irrelevant but counterproductive insofar as it (unintentionally) generates incentives for leaders to persist or increase norm-violating behavior as a way to accrue legitimacy. I discuss how defiance unfolds, and the conditions in which it occurs. A study of Iran’s response to the “Save Sakineh” campaign in 2010-11 illustrates the utility of the model. The paper concludes by outlining an empirical approach to defiance as well as its theoretical implications to the study of international norms.

Author

• Rochelle Layla Terman, University of Chicago