International and Domestic Determinants of Interstate Human Rights Shaming Restricted; Files Only

Abstract

Why do governments publicly shame other states’ domestic human rights practices? Existing scholarship emphasizes the strategic interests of the sender, showing that geopolitical alignment with the target constrains principled criticism. This dissertation argues that interstate shaming is not only about who commits abuses, but also about principled commitments, domestic political incentives, and competing visions of human rights.

The dissertation combines evidence from original text data on U.S. State Department press statements, a survey experiment with 3,600 Americans, and data on the United Nations Universal Periodic Review, analyzed with natural language processing and other statistical models. Chapter 2 maps the full rhetorical toolkit—shaming, pressuring, and praising—and demonstrates that praise is employed when it is most effective and that geopolitical alignment serves as a source of leverage rather than a constraint in shaming the worst human rights abusers. Chapter 3 discovers the domestic microfoundations of interstate shaming patterns. Shaming boosts foreign policy approval without much cost for inaction later, but not so much when it is targeted towards allies, especially among the isolationist public. Abstention is costly: it decreases support for a follow-up coercive measure among the engagement-oriented segment of the public that is most likely to support such action otherwise. Chapter 4 examines which issues receive the most attention in interstate naming, showing that states systematically differ in the human rights issues they emphasize in their speeches, in ways that reflect variation in domestic public opinion and political institutions. LGBTQIA+ rights rise as the most contentious issue that divide states. States that emphasize civil and political rights tend to de-emphasize socioeconomic rights.

Together, the chapters advance our understanding of ``human rights diplomacy.'' They show that rhetoric is not cheap talk but a central instrument of statecraft---one that manages international reputation, signals priorities to domestic audiences, and contributes to the evolution of international norms. The findings offer new insights into theories of international legitimacy, the politics of human rights promotion, and the domestic foundations of foreign policy.

Table of Contents

1 Introduction 1

1.1 Research question . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1

1.2 Overview . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3

1.3 Position in the Literature . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4

2 Strategic Deployment of Human Rights Shaming, Pressuring, and Praising

7

2.1 Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7

2.2 The U.S. Human Rights Statements (USHR) dataset . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11

2.2.1 Motivation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11

2.2.2 Shaming, Pressuring, Praising . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13

2.2.3 Methodology . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17

2.3 Theory . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21

2.3.1 Incentives for Signaling Commitment . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21

2.3.2 Balancing Diplomatic Costs, Reputational Benefits, and Leverage for

Impact . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23

2.4 Estimation Strategy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 27

2.4.1 Data . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 27

2.4.2 Models . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 28

2.4.3 Estimation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 31

2.5 Results . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 32

2.5.1 Incentives for Signaling Commitment . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 32

2.5.2 Balancing Diplomatic Costs, Reputational Benefits, and Leverage for

Impact . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 35

2.6 Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 41

3 Signals of Engagement: How Americans Interpret Human Rights Shaming

and Abstention 45

3.1 Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 45

3.2 Literature Review . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 47

3.2.1 American foreign policy attitudes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 47

3.2.2 Human rights rhetoric and domestic signaling . . . . . . . . . . . . . 48

3.2.3 Relationship between shaming and coercive policy tools . . . . . . . . 50

3.3 Theory . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 50

3.3.1 Shaming and abstention as engagement cues . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 50

3.3.2 Isolationism and the evaluation of engagement . . . . . . . . . . . . . 53

3.3.3 Engagement cues and coercive policy space . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 55

3.3.4 Strategic context and the meaning of engagement . . . . . . . . . . . 58

3.4 Research Design . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 59

3.4.1 Sample and Randomization . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 59

3.4.2 Treatment . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 60

3.4.3 Outcome Measurement . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 61

3.4.4 Estimation Strategy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 62

3.5 Experimental Findings . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 64

3.6 Implications for State Rhetoric . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 74

3.7 Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 76

4 Competing Visions: the Politics of Shaming Issue Choice 78

4.1 Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 78

4.2 Literature Review . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 81

4.3 Empirical implications . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 84

4.4 Measurement . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 87

4.4.1 Data . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 87

4.4.2 Empirical strategy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 89

4.4.3 Description . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 92

4.5 Posterior Predictive Evidence . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 93

4.6 Determinants of Issue Specialization . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 95

4.7 Revisiting the Strategic Issue Selection Hypothesis . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 102

4.8 Mapping International Human Rights Norms . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 103

4.8.1 State-level positions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 104

4.8.2 Relationship between rights . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 109

4.9 Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 111

5 Conclusion 115

Appendix A USHR Data Methodology 119

A.1 Data collection and preprocessing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 119

A.2 Binary classification . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 120

A.3 Target identification . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 122

A.4 Polarity classification . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 123

A.5 Issue classification . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 125

Appendix B USHR Codebook 132

Appendix C USHR Modeling 138

C.1 Binary Classification . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 138

C.2 Polarity classification . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 141

C.3 Issue Classification . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 143

Appendix D Chapter 2 146

D.1 Summary Statistics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 146

D.2 H1a,b,c Results . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 146

D.3 H1a,b,c Convergence . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 152

D.4 H2, H3 Results . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 160

D.5 H2, H3 Convergence . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 165

D.6 Exploratory analyses . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 172

D.6.1 Multinomial logistic regression . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 172

D.6.2 Ordinal logistic regression and ordinal probit . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 175

D.6.3 Heckman Model . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 180

Appendix E Chapter 3 182

E.1 Pilot Results . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 182

E.2 Evidence from others’ data . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 185

E.3 Statement examples . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 187

E.4 Deviation from the Pre-Analysis Plan . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 188

E.5 Summary Statistics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 189

E.6 Balance Tests . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 191

E.7 Survey Instrument . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 193

E.8 Manipulation Checks . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 198

E.9 Hypothesis 1 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 199

E.10 Hypothesis 2 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 203

E.11 Hypothesis 3 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 205

E.12 Conservative and Liberal Isolationists . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 208

E.13 Observational Analysis . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 210

Appendix F Chapter 4 212

F.1 Replication of Terman and Byun (2022) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 212

F.1.1 Sender preference model . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 212

F.1.2 Target sensitivity model . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 214

F.2 Thematic Issue Clusters . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 222

F.3 Descriptive Statistics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 223

F.4 Predictive performance comparison . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 224

F.4.1 Main measurement model identification . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 224

F.4.2 Hypothesis 1 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 225

F.5 Hypothesis 2 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 227

F.5.1 Hypothesis 2(a) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 227

F.5.2 Hypothesis 2(b) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 229

F.5.3 Hypothesis 2(c) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 233

F.5.4 Hypothesis 2(d) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 234

F.6 Hypothesis 3 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 235

F.7 Network Analysis . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 237

F.7.1 Global patterns . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 237

F.7.2 Issue Preferences by Cosine Cluster . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 240

F.7.3 Full List of Community Membership . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 242

F.8 Discussion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 244

F.8.1 Issue to Issue Relationship . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 244

F.8.2 Jackknife stability . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 245

Bibliography . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 246

About this Dissertation

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School	Laney Graduate School
Department	Political Science
Degree	Ph.D.
Submission	Dissertation
Language	English
Research Field	Political Science, International Relations Political Science, International Law and Relations
Keyword	human rights international politics domestic politics international norms
Committee Chair / Thesis Advisor	David Davis, Emory University
Committee Members	Dan Reiter, Emory University Renard Sexton, Emory University

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